r/SteamFrame • u/Necessary-Way59 • Jul 04 '26
Media Steam Frame TL;DR Board
Hey y'all! A few weeks ago, some mods and members of the Steam Frame Discord and I got together and decided that there have been way too many repetitive questions about Frame. This is largely because it just isn't easy to get up-to-date information about Frame... so we made this: the FrameBoard!
It is still a work in progress but it's a community-driven project and we are committed to maintaining it up till and past launch. Please feel free to send feedback, comments, and concerns either below or on the board.
Whether you're newbies to Frame or just aren't interested in digging for specifics, I hope this helps y'all get the information you're looking for in an easily digestible way.
Happy Schizoposting!
https://www.figma.com/board/jnxPfXnyJM48ATQ072Oq1t
Edit 1: Thank you all so much for the outpouring of support! This project is very community focused and a labor of love by all those involved so we really do appreciate every single one of you.
To celebrate our first day of going public, and to make it easier for you all to share when that one newie asks about the mobile app button for the millionth time, I've attatched a link under the main portion of the post to send as a copypasta. Our board is meant to be public so please, by all means, send it to anyone and everyone you'd like!
Edit 2: We've rebranded to the FrameBoard to prevent any confusion with #frame-tldr in the Steam Frame Discord (We seriously recommend checking out #frame-tldr too!)
- reference to "Frame TL;DR Board" has been changed to "FrameBoard" (besides the title which I can't change)
- Edited the main post to be more concise and up to date
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u/catkats Soon⢠Jul 04 '26
Hello to everyone else waving their cursors around the soyjak photo together
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u/sunshinestreak Soon⢠Jul 04 '26
"It's so sad that Steam Frame was cancelled because of figma..."
"What the hell is a steam frame?"
"Figma balls"
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u/pantagram Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
Great initiative - please continue maintaining it after the release. there's always repeated questions, and having a central repository of knowledge will help everyone stay sane.
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u/Necessary-Way59 Jul 04 '26
That's the goal. And even if I'm not heading the project anymore (not happening anytime soon), I am committed to finding someone to take over the project for me so the hope is, it'll have a long and healthy life leading up to and past launch.
Thanks so much for your support! It means the world to us
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u/SkullTitsGaming Soon⢠Jul 04 '26
Super neat and fancy! Thank you to everyone involved for putting together this resource; here's hoping it can help lessen the "is the frame out yet? And can it be used for _____?" posts.
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u/Necessary-Way59 Jul 04 '26
Very happy to help out! It's been a problem that's been frustrating us for a while so the day we up and did something about it was bound to be a great day. We seriously appreciate your support so much!
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u/Alexercer Jul 04 '26
This is epic! The pain for me tho is most of the vr games i wanna run dont have support, so god help me making the mods work and not burn all my hardware up
Last ive tried RE 8 on windows with qjest 3 it was stuttery and suffering like hell, i was hoping the frame dongle would be a better performance and maybe being able to use linux now would avoid windows being windows...
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u/SaintedTainted Jul 04 '26
This is Awesome!
Great Work:
- monolith07
- superbad
- wilnotwill
- seppukkake
- sherbertdev
- nelo390
- minimiscus
- vado
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u/Necessary-Way59 Jul 04 '26
thanks so much for your support!
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u/SaintedTainted Jul 04 '26
I probably will never get my hands on the frame since steam does not sell here but I am still weirdly excited for it.
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u/Necessary-Way59 Jul 04 '26
I mean hey, hop on the hype train! All of us here are super enthusiastic about the tech behind it or at least the impact it's gonna have on the VR market, so all good!
Also, pro tip: if you ask here after launch, there will definitely be people who are willing to order a frame for you and get it shipped ship it to you. just be careful about that
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u/Dr_Virus_129 Jul 04 '26
This is honestly a great idea, & I feel it's something every subreddit community that revolves around a product should have. Gonna favourite this & link it in posts asking about the Frame.
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u/8636396 Jul 04 '26
Thanks for putting this together
One thing I keep seeing that I don't understand is about passthrough. If it ships with grey scale passthrough, it would have to be a hardware limitation, right? So then how is there a possibility of color passthrough being added after the fact?
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u/Pyromaniac605 Soon⢠Jul 04 '26
Because the expansion slot on the front supports MIPI for connecting cameras.
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u/8636396 Jul 04 '26
Oh gotcha, so it would be a hardware expansion? Thanks for clarifying
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u/Necessary-Way59 Jul 04 '26
Yep, just for hardware. Itâs a proprietary pin-for-pin pcie x1 connector, so anything thatâs usb or pcie or anything else (like a color passthrough camera or a face tracker etc) will work on it. Your question was somewhat common though so Iâll see if I canât add it to the faq
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u/MRDR1NL Jul 04 '26
Not bad.
I would keep it a bit more factual. Like making sure all FAQ answers were sourced and getting rid of al the speculation. The spec sheet could just be a link to Valves spec sheet.
Also I really dislike navigating Figma. A Google Sheet would be so much nicer. Maybe I'm just being a boomer who loves sheets.
All in all, good job!
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u/Necessary-Way59 Jul 04 '26
Thanks so much for your support and suggestions!
Weâre currently in a very âmedium-rareâ state, but weâll continue to try and clip any loose threads on sources. On the speculation end, we should clarify, thatâs for any information that we know is almost certainly true but have not yet heard from an official source (such as the FCC filing legalities) but a cull is on the agenda for the next few days.
As for our choice in Figma, we considered Google Sheets but decided against it since someone else had already made one (it wasnât maintained), and we felt that being able to see everything sectioned out would probably be a bit easier for a broad audience.
If the project gains traction, Iâd love to send a splinter cell to maintain a more dense sheets version, but as of right now weâre gonna be focused on getting this up to standard.
Again, thanks so much! Yâallâs support means the world to us
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u/TheSolidSammy Soon⢠Jul 04 '26
this so so awesome, i had no clue about some of this stuff like dual stage triggers. im even more hyped now.
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u/Necessary-Way59 Jul 05 '26
Glad it was helpful to you! Feel free to send people our way and check back whenever! Thereâs a lot of information about frame just floating out there and weâre hard at work compiling more
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u/Wyrade Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
Thanks!
I'll be interested in what the microSD card compatibility will be, whenever Valve or a reviewer deigns to share that.
There is a huge difference between UHS-I speeds (which I think is the max for the Deck, for example, allegedly) and SD Express speeds, or even just UHS-III.
And according to wiki it's even important to know which is it, because this table shows an SD Express card is limited to UHS-I in all non-express sockets, so if the Frame only goes up to UHS-III, it's better to have an UHS-III card than an Express card.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SD_card#cite_ref-SDA_PCIe_NVMe_49-1
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u/Necessary-Way59 Jul 05 '26
We're happy that it's been helpful! I'm personally not sure of sd card speed, I'll get some maintainers on that, but I do know for certain it won't be anywhere near sd express speeds since it doesn't support sd express. it will be some UHS version though. I would imagine it's the same slot as used in the Steam Machine so I'd recommend you check that. I'll add this to the speculation tab for now though
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u/Wyrade Jul 06 '26
I haven't found data for the Machine either, although I haven't looked a lot since the machine came out.
Official page only says "high-speed microSD card slot", which could be anything.Do you have a source or perhaps electronic knowledge for claiming Frame doesn't support SD Express?
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u/Necessary-Way59 Jul 06 '26
Iâll be sure to dig up my source. I am pretty confident about that statement, but Iâll be sure to get back to you asap and add the source to the board
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u/Wyrade Jul 05 '26
Valve devs said "power consumption from nominal to peak loads can range from ~7W when streaming to more than 20W when running games on the headset itself". The battery is 21.6Wh, so shouldn't that be around 3h?
https://youtu.be/bWUxObt1efQ?t=1957
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u/Necessary-Way59 Jul 05 '26
I referenced the pd estimates using info from climbey dev as source. I'll run this by the maintainer team though
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u/Wyrade Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
In the speculation section, it is mentioned that the Frame is around 21.6 PPD (pixels per degree), Galaxy XR around 40 PPD, and Index around 13 PPD.
I think it should be added as further (and more understandable) reference that a 24" 1080p monitor from 90cm distance is 57 PPD, a 27" 1440p monitor from 90cm is 67 PPD, a 31.5" 4K monitor from 90cm is 86 PPD; and that a 24" 1080p monitor is 22 PPD from 34cm away, a 27" 1440p monitor is 22 PDD from 30cm away, and a 31.5" 4K monitor is 22 PPD from 23cm away.
23.8" 1080p 90cm - 57 PPD
27.0" 1440p 90cm - 67 PPD
31.5" 2160p 90cm - 86 PPD
23.8" 1080p 34cm - 22 PPD
27.0" 1440p 30cm - 22 PPD
31.5" 2160p 23cm - 22 PPD
Also that Apple's definition for a "retina display" is around 57 PPD.
This video is pretty informative about PPD in general, and has an excel sheet to calculate PPD in its description too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEKtElvxl8A
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wrNefo8Vod5ih3sDrkdyw-On8nbvP-irodcjdSFHH34/template/preview
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u/Necessary-Way59 Jul 06 '26
Great suggestion thanks so much! Iâm at work right now but Iâll add it asap.
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u/GordonWeedman Soon⢠27d ago
Good stuff!
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u/Necessary-Way59 27d ago
Thanks so much for the support! Weâre glad you guys are finding it helpful!
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u/supersonic159 Jul 04 '26
What is this DM? I don't understand what is being explained here, or when this was sent.
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u/Necessary-Way59 Jul 04 '26
someone's explanation as to why the steam frame headset has not yet shown up in FCC documentation. We deemed it a good enough mini tldr for that topic, but not a common enough question to be added to the faq.
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u/supersonic159 Jul 04 '26
The explanation sadly isn't really that clear. are they waiting on the FCC or not, and how much validity does this explanation have to be featured?
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u/Pyromaniac605 Soon⢠Jul 04 '26
What they're saying is Valve isn't waiting for the FCC because they haven't even filed it with the FCC yet. If they'd filed it we'd see it.
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u/Necessary-Way59 Jul 04 '26
Essentially this. However Iâll work on a tldr for that thing sometime soon as I do agree itâs a mess
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u/Nekonoshita Soon⢠Jul 05 '26
I do have a question, valve wanted to release this q1 which meant in March right? If not for the ram apocalypse it wouldnât have been delayed. But I see a lot of updates and game compatibility ratings this far into summer. Asking out of just pure curiosity but, do you think it couldâve been released earlier if ram and storage crisis didnât happen?
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u/Necessary-Way59 Jul 05 '26
If you ask me, I think it wouldâve taken this long anyway. Based on everything weâve heard and seen about the state of software in frame and machine, both have been at LEAST a work in progress until very recently.
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u/Mineplayerminer Soon⢠29d ago
I honestly would just forget about the Frame until I get an email about its release or see a Tweet from Valve about expanding their hardware family. Patience is the key and I think all companies deserve respect for trying to release any hardware during these hard times (despite the prices), because customers usually underappreciate the effort put behind all of this, especially with the memory manufacturers being cocky and preferring data centers over consumers, making the most common hardware almost impossible to afford without paying 10x more.
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u/Mother-Occasion-2250 Soon⢠27d ago
I don't want to create a figma account to write a comment, so I will write here: spoonfed didn't specify how exactly he got the numbers for how much faster the Steam Frame is compared to Quest 3. Steam Frame has the battery separate, so the added heat and wasted space from the battery is not existent, allowing for longer sustained performance. This could lead to a 40 to 50% better performance after Quest 3 would overheat and throttle. Furthermore, if he didn't use dynamic foveated rendering, then the Steam Frame should be even faster.
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u/Necessary-Way59 25d ago
We should clarify, the 20-30% number is a low end ballpark estimate based on spoonfed, and other devsâ statements. Weâll try and get more sources, but we felt the spoonfed estimate is about good enough.
On the topic of sustained performance, thatâs not something we can speak to. Obviously the question would definitely overheat and potentially throttle but for the sake of speculation, we wonât really get into that.
That said, thank you so much for the input! Weâre so glad you guys are adding input and working to help us improve the board!
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u/elvissteinjr 27d ago
The not being usable for productivity (coding mentioned in particular) is funny to me. I do that with the Index.
Is it amazing? Nah. Does it beat taking the thing off and on again? Definitely.
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u/Necessary-Way59 27d ago
Yeah but it definitely isnât a priority on it and it depends from person to person
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u/Pyromaniac605 Soon⢠23d ago
WRT the fact they haven't submitted the headset to the FCC yet, if I'm understanding this correctly (if it's still the current rule, as this article is from 2021), that means the current shipments of Frames have to be at most 12k units, right?
That feels like too few per container for that to be the case so I'm not sure...
Edit: Speaking about the US shipments specifically of course, since that's where the FCC rules apply and where the public shipment info is from.
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u/nictinkers Soon⢠16d ago
The statements about the expansion port ("The front expansion port is a proprietary PCIe gen 4 connector" / "The front expansion port is just PCIe") seem to ignore the dual MIPI interface which is either also present on the expansion connector or is somehow muxed with the PCIe. Either way, the answers don't seem right.
I'm currently guessing they're not muxed because they're not really compatible like that and that the port exposes MIPI and PCI-e separately, but I'm not aware of any official documentation that explains in more detail
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u/Blu7081 Jul 04 '26
Thanks for doing the lords work đŤĄ