Yeah, they gave a lot more background than I was expecting. Packed a lot into an hour.

Well, this is for the Steam Frame and it looks like invite only at the moment. Or at least just established developers eligible for dev kits. The article is light on details and I think mixes up some things. Time will tell, I suppose.

Oh, something else I found out that was pretty cool. The Frame can track the new Steam Controller. Neat!

It’s a moot point because it’s not something I’m going to be able to budget anytime soon, but I’m fascinated with VR so I find the Frame intriguing. I’ll be very curious about the pricing for both the Frame and the Cube. The more I learn about the headset, the more I wonder if they’re not going to try and eat some cost on the Frame to encourage people to buy the Cube. Apparently, the Frame was designed with a mentality of Streaming First. It even runs a less capable chip than the steam deck, in order to tackle thermal issues. So while it will be able to run a lot of titles from your Steam Library, it’s primary usage was meant to be a wireless streaming headset for your Cube. It will be interesting to see how they present that in the pricing.

From a developer standpoint, having a set hardware standard with large adoption sounds like a dream when it comes to optimizing. Plus, less Microsoft hardware out there is always a plus.

I’m guessing it’s gonna be about $2000, I’d very surprised if it’s less than $1500. For context, Samsung released the Galaxy XR last month which is going for about $1800, the Play For Dream MR is about $2000.

It’s for the milker!

Exciting. As a dev, I wish the Frame had face tracking, but eye tracking is a step forward. Now how to afford one.

Bring back cum sprites!

although I do worry a bit about e.g. bumping into things or feeling nauseous

There’s a thing called a chaperone that you set up to define your space’s boundaries and then a little glowing wall pops up as you approach them, which can be super helpful. Most folks don’t have nausea issues until they start doing stuff like using the stick to move or a rollercoaster or something. If you’re just moving around in your space you will hopefully be okay.

As much as I dislike Meta, I do recommend buying their headsets used because for the price point that you can usually find them at, you’re not going to beat it with the feature set they offer. Plus, you can use them with SteamLink for PCVR.

I know you’re not in the US, but I’ll include the prices I would recommend holding out for in my area so you’ll have a feel for value.

• Quest 2 (2020, discontinued Dec 2024. Will Receive Feature Updates until Dec 2026 and Security updates until Dec 2027.) is the oldest of the range I would consider still usable. It has Hand Tracking only and very limited pass through. ( Passthrough is the ability to see through the headset cameras with AR placing virtual objects in your real space.) People try to sell them around me for $200 to $300 dollars but they’re not worth that at all and eventually show up for less than $100. $50 - $75 is not out of the question if I’m checking once a day, and I’ve even seen them go for as little as $25 but they go very fast.
• Quest Pro (2022, also discontinued Dec 2024. Will Receive Feature Updates until Dec 2026 and Security updates until Dec 2027.) Way more features. Better pass through cameras, better (supposedly best) hand tracking, has eye tracking and face tracking. This is what I would recommend if facial expressions are important to you. It was released more as a Developer Kit / Enterprise unit and became popular with VRChat folks because of how much it brought to the table. People around me try to sell them typically $600 to $800 on the high end. But more realistically around $400 or so. A good deal would be $200 to $300. Anything below that would be someone strapped for cash or no idea what they have, and they will go quick.
• Quest 3 (2023) No face or Eye tracking. Better Hand tracking than Quest 2. Supposed to the best as far as Passthrough cameras go. Better screen than Quest Pro. I have not tried this one or the next yet. On the High end $400 - $600. Realistically around $200 is a good deal, but I’ve seen it for as low as $150 on occasion.
• Quest 3s (2024) No face or Eye tracking. Better Hand tracking than Quest 2. A much cheaper version of the Quest 3 because they removed a depth sensor, and changed up the lenses. $300 is high. I’ve seen as low as $100, I wouldn’t pay more than $150.

End info dump.

Do you have VR? VRChat might be an option. I know you’re not looking to spend money, but if you’re looking to do a bunch of projects like this, it might be worth it. It’s at least possibly much cheaper than a full mocap setup. I recently snagged a Quest Pro off of Facebook Marketplace for a couple hundred bucks and it’s got eye tracking, face tracking, and hand tracking. Of course that’s assuming your gaming laptop can handle it. If it’s 1050ti or newer you might be okay.

I don’t have any experience personally, but just googling webcam face mocap will give you plenty of options because AR like filter stuff is so plentiful. You might have to roll your own, but it could probably be vibe coded if you’ve got any experience in a specific game engine or something.

Oh, ho! Suddenly the guy building a virtual CCP Brainwashing Milker App is at the forefront of leftist propaganda technology.

I told you folks about the milking program in confidence. Somebody here is a narc.

emulated teledildonics?

Hooking an LLM up to The Handy API or Intiface Central is rather trivial. There are a number of them already out there, I believe. At least one I know of, for sure.

Got mine the other day. A sampling of shoving my arm deep into the box and grabbing at random a few times makes me think the entire box I got was manufactured late November 2020. Not great, but not the end of the world. I’ll probably keep a couple hundred for myself and try and give the rest of them away on a local fb still coviding group. Haven’t decide how long past their date I’ll use them but, for the same price I typically pay for a bag of 30, this is still a deal.

Yes! This is the first time I’ve ever caught one of these while they’re still live. Thank you!

Exactly.