3 ms·
They've doing inside-out SLAM to map the environment and tracking your eyes for foveated rendering at the same time. That's fairly heavy - I think the compute
by solid_fuel 18d ago
They've doing inside-out SLAM to map the environment and tracking your eyes for foveated rendering at the same time. That's fairly heavy - I think the compute required would necessitate a much higher speed connection with a desktop and a fair bit of CPU time, so it's probably cheaper and easier to put the compute right in the headset instead of scaling up the connection.
Also, they probably landed on this rough design a few years ago - before the AI hyperscalers bought up all the RAM - so the economics changed a lot under their feet.
- Apes 18d agoMaybe I'm misunderstanding - but I thought there's already "dumb" headsets doing foveated eye tracking, like the Pimax headsets. If that's the case, then you don't need $300 of ram and a $200 CPU to perform this locally.
- gamblor956 18d agoYou're misunderstanding. The Pimax headsets with foveated eye tracking start at $1599.
- WithinReason 18d agoYou don't need $300 of ram and a $200 CPU to perform eye tracking, otherwise the Steam Frame would be able to do nothing else
- solid_fuel 18d agoIf you read the chain of comments again you will notice that eye tracking is only one of several things that it is doing.
- deleted 18d ago[deleted]
- WithinReason 17d agowhy do you need 16GB of RAM for eye tracking and SLAM?
- gamblor956 17d agoI understand that thinking is difficult now that everybody offloads their thought to LLMs, but the math is very simple. The cheapest comparable device with the same (or better) level of eye tracking is $1500 (i.e., 50% more than the Steam Frame)...and that was the price before the tariff war and Iran conflict jacked up prices. While the ram may currently be $300, the CPU is not $200 unless you're including the custom processing units Valve is using to handle the eye tracking, which are (a) industry leading, and (b) made to spec in relatively small quantities and therefore more expensive (and given the limited chip capacity also affecting chip manufacturing, also significantly more expensive than they would normally be). If foveated rendering was cheap, it would already be standard in every VR device.
- WithinReason 17d agoIf Valve took the Steam Frame and removed: The SoC, memory, storage, battery and power system, wireless function and added a display cable, would it: A. become ~$300 cheaper, close to the PlayStation VR2 which also has eye tracking B. magically go up in price to $1500 like a Pimax headset? If answering is difficult try asking an LLM for help. You're their target audience.