Valve Steam Deck first reviews are coming out and apparently wowing reviewers. Mobile Second Life anyone?

[Echelon Alcott]

Valve's Steam Deck [link] is a full x86 PC. It has an AMD Zen 2 CPU, Radeon 8 RDNA 2 CUs (GPU), an AMD APU, 16 GB LPDDR5 onboard RAM, 64 GM eMMC memory, 256/512 GB SSD, Bluetooth 5.0, and dual-band 2.4 GHz/5 GHz 802.11a/b/g/n/ac WiFi. It runs on SteamOS (based on Arch Linux), with the option for Windows. It has a keyboard on the 7" touchscreen display, but can be connected to mouse, keyboard and external monitor/TV as well and be used as a PC. In addition to the touchscreen, it has a number of gamepad controls, thumbsticks and trackpads.

The first few pre-release units found their way into the hands of a number of reviewers [Linus Tech Tips][Gamers Nexus], and the opinions have been positive for select AAA games. Main caveats seem to be around poor haptic feedback - which we don't use in SL anyway - and battery life. More intense AAA games had mixed results. Considering that SL still uses OpenGL to render 3D graphics, which has been superseded by Metal/DirectX/Vulcan/others used by current AAA games, I hope the hardware will satisfy SL needs.

Reviewers also noticed that the thermal design built into the hardware throttles itself to keep internal temperature under control.

I hope this will be a good device for mobile SL, while we wait for the dedicated mobile SL Android/iOS viewer indicated by LL in their 2022 roadmap. Steam Deck will start shipping to consumers in 2.5 weeks (February 25). Has anyone pre-ordered it?

[Lucia Nightfire]

The storage pricing options are a joke.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

since it will run windows and with the specs it has,  should have no issues with running SL. Now it will be janky at the resolution and with no keyboard.   yeah,  let people try it?

[Bree Giffen]

I reserved one and the date was pushed back to Q2 2022. We will see how well it handles SL. Though I'm happy to play other games on it.

[LittleMe Jewell]

I have absolutely have no desire to have SL on that tiny of a screen.

Hell, I'm not really happy when I am traveling and thus running SL on my 17" laptop monitor.  I am totally used to my 24" monitors at home......... and chomping at the bit until I decide I want to afford 2 larger ones to replace these 2.

[Echelon Alcott]

14 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

I have absolutely have no desire to have SL on that tiny of a screen.

At home I sit about 3.5 feet away from my monitor. When I use my iPad mini, I usually hold it about 1 feet away from my eyes. So despite the fact that the iPad mini 8.3" screen is much smaller compared to my monitor, due to the shorter distance from my face, it does not feel that diminutive.

I believe that the 7" touchscreen on the Steam Deck will not feel that small either, given how people use handheld devices. But as @bigmoe Whitfieldpointed out, it would had been nice if the display had higher resolution.

[animats]

I'd like to see an SL viewer on NVidia's GEForce Now service. There's a free tier that's usually busy, and you get kicked off after an hour. More useful is a $100/year tier that lets you stay on for four hours.  The viewer runs on one of their servers, and sends video to the client, which can be anything with enough power to stream movies.

Why GEForce Now?

- Minimal effort to convert a viewer to it. LL or Firestorm might be able to make ti happen.

- Moderate cost.

- NVidia doesn't get involved in payments, so Linden dollars will still work. Valve's Steam, Google's Stadia, and Apple's store insist on games using the store's payment system.

Downsides:

- Resolution is limited to 1080 lines.

- It uses a lot of bandwidth. About 25Mb/s. If you use this on mobile and don't have unlimited bandwidth that's really unlimited, it will cost you too much.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

1 hour ago, animats said:

I'd like to see an SL viewer on NVidia's GEForce Now service. There's a free tier that's usually busy, and you get kicked off after an hour. More useful is a $100/year tier that lets you stay on for four hours.  The viewer runs on one of their servers, and sends video to the client, which can be anything with enough power to stream movies.

Why GEForce Now?

- Minimal effort to convert a viewer to it. LL or Firestorm might be able to make ti happen.

- Moderate cost.

- NVidia doesn't get involved in payments, so Linden dollars will still work. Valve's Steam, Google's Stadia, and Apple's store insist on games using the store's payment system.

Downsides:

- Resolution is limited to 1080 lines.

- It uses a lot of bandwidth. About 25Mb/s. If you use this on mobile and don't have unlimited bandwidth that's really unlimited, it will cost you too much.

Onlive did this without having to pay the lab if I remember right,  Nvidia would have to approach the lab with the same deal.   but let's face it,  there are hard curves here and Nvidia might as well just say no to the idea all together too,  since do they want associated with SL?  that's also a focus their need to consider.    Now if LL decided to go after it themselves using Nvidia's platform,  I could see it working, but LL is already invested in AWS deployment and other items currently and I'm not sure how much money Brad wants to start throwing around at something that might or might not work and might fail. 

[LittleMe Jewell]

1 hour ago, Echelon Alcott said:

given how people use handheld devices.

This is probably totally true.  I'm not a handheld device gal.  Old and set in my ways, I guess.

[Maryanne Solo]

Toy. x86? meh.
I do have a Steam controller though.

[Nick0678]

Ahh... yes. Saint Gabe did it again with his Linux gaming handheld pc. "Thank you!"

 

[Setsuki Takeda]

14 hours ago, Echelon Alcott said:

Considering that SL still uses OpenGL to render 3D graphics, which has been superseded by Metal/DirectX/Vulcan/others used by current AAA games, I hope the hardware will satisfy SL needs.

Linux has far better OpenGL support than Windows, so a SteamDeck could potentially run this better than a more powerful Windows PC.

[Paul Hexem]

19 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

I have absolutely have no desire to have SL on that tiny of a screen.

Hell, I'm not really happy when I am traveling and thus running SL on my 17" laptop monitor.  I am totally used to my 24" monitors at home......... and chomping at the bit until I decide I want to afford 2 larger ones to replace these 2.

Q: How much screen space is best for gaming?
A: Yes.

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

What @LittleMe Jewell and @Paul Hexem say. Four years ago, I got myself a 32-inch 1440p screen especially for SL and I still think it's way too small. So, mobile SL? Hell no.

Edited February 10, 2022 by Arduenn Schwartzman

[Silent Mistwalker]

The future of humanity. No thanks.

[Coffee Pancake]

On 2/9/2022 at 10:36 AM, NanashiNyx said:

Linux has far better OpenGL support than Windows, so a SteamDeck could potentially run this better than a more powerful Windows PC.

That's not how any of this works.

 

[animats]

21 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

Q: How much screen space is best for gaming?

Wide view. Who needs VR goggles?

Ultrawide monitors are becoming cheaper. The same processes used to make 4K TVs work to make these. This may be the practical answer to how Second Life competes with VR.

[Echelon Alcott]

16 minutes ago, animats said:

Wide view. Who needs VR goggles?

Ultrawide monitors are becoming cheaper. The same processes used to make 4K TVs work to make these. This may be the practical answer to how Second Life competes with VR.

Suddenly I feel so dumb. I use my ultrawide to play games, but somehow it never occurred to use it for SL. 

I think this is how I'll play SL from now onwards.

[Maryanne Solo]

I do like the idea of a semi circular work console with say, two ultra-wides?
Maybe 4. Stacked two high? But I don't know how they'd go for precision 3d mesh work. 🤔
(we also have an 8 camera security system on 27" permanent display because
its a huge, non fenced corner block).

[Paul Hexem]

11 minutes ago, Echelon Alcott said:

Suddenly I feel so dumb. I use my ultrawide to play games, but somehow it never occurred to use it for SL. 

I think this is how I'll play SL from now onwards.

Yeah, mine's only a 21:9 but I've had it for years now. Some games don't take advantage of it, but SL always has. I'll give LL credit for that much, at least.

[Echelon Alcott]

6 minutes ago, Maryanne Solo said:

I do like the idea of a semi circular work console with say, two ultra-wides?

That is how one of the monitor makers envisions a possible use of their monitors, as they show here.

9 minutes ago, Maryanne Solo said:

But I don't know how they'd go for precision 3d mesh work. 🤔

The one I have at home is an IPS monitor with 5120x1440 native resolution at 60Hz, 1000:1 contrast ration and supports 1.07 billion colors, which usually suffices for most applications.

[LittleMe Jewell]

34 minutes ago, Maryanne Solo said:

I do like the idea of a semi circular work console with say, two ultra-wides?

This is how I'd have to go if I decide to get one of the super wide circular monitors that I want --- because I also MUST have at least 2 monitors.   I want one huge monitor for SL, but must have another monitor for all the other stuff I do while logged in to SL (and my desk is not large enough for 2 hug monitors side by side).

Edited February 10, 2022 by LittleMe Jewell

[Chaser Zaks]

NO PROMISES, but I am going to look into adding steam deck support to the viewer (or branch of the viewer), people could pick the code out of that if they want to add it to other viewers.

Steam dick support will include:

• Support for the on screen keyboard module
• Modified skin to fit more in the steam deck style as well as fitting the native interface
• Joystick configurations

Again, this will be a personal project of mine. I may be on a team for a TPV, but this absolutely does not mean it will be added to said TPV, hense personal project.

[Coffee Pancake]

As an ultrawide user .. just shut up and go buy one already. 1440p on the vertical .. as wide as you can get.

Thank me later.

[Madelaine McMasters]

4 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

1440p on the vertical .. as wide as you can get.

Noooooo, I'm already 2880 on the vertical!