Now that the Steam Frame is available, I think it could be nice if people would share their experiences / issues / fixes using the Frame & UE.
My first impressions after testing the frame:
The visuals in the headset look nice to me.
Setup is easy:
charge battery of the Frame
install updates and Steam vr on the headset
on desktop, set Steam vr as default openXR app
start UE project and start in VR - works out of the box
Some issues I need to investigate / fix:
the steam controllers have a different orientation compared to the oculus (+ different 3d model of course).
need to test which settings are relevant / possible to get FFRendering working (besides the always-on FFStreaming) @VictorLerp Maybe you can share some experiences? I guess Epic was able to test the Frame themselves to be able to support it?
Will update when I have tested more / had time to test
Some more observations after a few days of using the SteamFrame (SF) in Unreal. Tested using a Ryzen 9 5950X + 64Gb + 4090 in a Lumen archviz project.
Using the current beta software for steam & SF. Nvidia driver 610.47
Performance (stat unit) only using the dedicated dongle (and not the wifi as second source/fallback) seems on par or even better compared to using the Quest3 & link cable when doing ‘vr preview’. Within a few meters of the desktop while using the headset. Still have to test what happens with a proper windows build of the project.
When moving your eyes to the side of the view in SF, there is some chromatic aberration. On Quest 3 I didn’t see that.
Battery really drains too fast to my liking. Will see to upgrade at some point (or attach a power bank).
Ordered a usb3 extension cable and put the dongle on the desk. No more occasional hiccups. After putting the cable into the fastest usb-A port (3.1) of the system, ping is 4 to 5ms. Line of sight is really important though - can easily drop above 10 ms.
On one system the framerate was strangely low. Turned out it had its video settings on ‘auto’ and that used a 50% higher resolution per eye compared to the native 2160x2160. After putting the SteamVR-video settings on ‘custom’, it switched to native 2160x2160 and the framerate was 40% better again but, at a loss of quality. I read somewhere it needs the extra pixels to correct for the stretching of the pixels in the lenses.
In the UE project settings: disable oculus quest entries, enable support vulkan and arm64, enable start in vr
enable package for openXR devices in general
set android min sdk and ndk both op 30 + make android build
connect Frame to PC using cable
install SteamDevManagement tool from steam on PC
Choose TitleUpload, select apk directory, apk, lepton and upload.
title will end up in the Frame library in the non-steam folder
press the icon of your app in that folder and wait a bit. It will start, and the start button will switch to resume (starting lepton?) and after 20 seconds or so you’re in your VR game