Here's the thing. I agree that most people who come on here are coming to complain. And I didn't want to be one of those. But I'm really starting to question whether I should keep my Steam Frame and I think it's worth being honest about it. If anything, this might help some waitlisters feel less bad about waiting.
My first VR headset was the Rift-S, which I loved. I enjoyed VR so much I was happy to plop down the significant sum to buy the Index some time in 2022. I loved it even more. The field of view, the controllers, that incredible sound! Only thing I didn't like were the fresnel lenses and the god rays. When I first put it on I thought something was wrong. Eventually I came to disdain the cable. And I worried that some day one of my two lighthouses would die, or my controller would start to drift in a way that I couldn't fix, and that would be it. So when the Frame was announced I planned for that to be my next VR upgrade. I won the wait list lottery and got my Frame two weeks ago. The hope was that the Frame would be like the Index, if not a bit better visually, and that I wouldn't have to worry about the cable or the light houses. That's what I wanted. A cable-less Index so I could continue to play PCVR (stream) - very little interest in playing local VR.
Right out of the box it was a bit of a mess. The primary thing I wanted to do with my frame was stream from my PC, not run games locally. I watched all the reviews and was excited to try out the foveated rendering and the new dongle.
As far as I can tell, the foveated rendering works great. However, the connectivity to the dongle is the biggest tech-related shit-show I've ever witnessed.
Sometimes it connects to your Frame. Sometimes it doesn't. Even with wifi streaming turned off, I've found my dongle will allow me to connect cleanly, straight from a start-up, oh, I don't know, maybe 10% of the time? One in ten connection attempts it works. In all other attempts it's a stupid game of trying to connect to Steam VR, it not working, restarting Steam, restarting the headset, until eventually it works. And that's WITH both the Frame and Steam VR being in Beta. It helped improve it, but not enough to actually work reliably.
My complaint with the Index was it was annoying getting it "set up" and ready to play, but the amount of downtime I have before running a successful session with the Frame is three times as lengthy and frustrating.
Connection issues aside, I am very impressed with the visuals. They are an upgrade (though not a massive one) from the Index. The lack of fresnel god rays is a god send. I'm fine with the controllers. I do miss the Index's sound. These speakers are not great. The battery life doesn't bug me much as my VR sessions were usually about an hour anyways. The other thing worth noting, coming from the Index, is the inside out tracking of the Frame, while good, is noticably "floaty". It's hard to articulate the feeling. It just feels a bit floaty. Going back-and-forth with the Index/Frame you feel how rock-solid everything feels in the Index, whereas in the Frame the whole image will frequently judder and shudder and the environment doesn't feel as locked down.
My plan was to sell my Index to pay for the Frame, but I'm having doubts. I keep telling myself that I just need to give it time, that Valve will sort out these bugs and connectivity will improve.
But I can't help but feel like I'm kicking a perfectly good headset out of bed (Index) to make room for a sketchy headset that has made a very poor first impression. I feel like the longer I wait to sell the Index the more it's value will go down. So now is the time to sell it, if I am. But I do worry about the base stations... Just went on Ebay to check the price of a replacement, and it's ridiculous. So I guess I need to get used to the Frame and hope it improves. It should, but... I just feel shitty shunting my perfectly good Index for this garbage Frame experience.
Can anyone relate?
