The real question is why did they release this as a standalone unit for $1049 and then claim they couldn't sell it for less due to the RAM shortage - when that implies they could have released a dumb unit that depends on the Steam Deck or Steam Machine for far less?
You're asking why they couldn't completely change the product from a full-fledged VR machine into a headset in roughly a year, especially when they already sell a regular VR headset for $1,000?
They do not, in fact sell such a headset, in that it is permanently out of stock. You can risk buying it used for $1800…
It was released in 2019 and by comparison, sucks. A new index with new displays of the frame but without the things that make the frame expensive (ram) would be welcome.
It still shows the headset in stock in the US. The bundles, controllers, and lighthouses seem to be out of stock though, which is likely because they're a much more popular product (the controllers/lighthouses break quite often, and they're often used with other headsets as well).
If it can do innside out tracking its way more data efficent to have compute onboard. And if you already have a decent amount of compute you can scale it up just a little more to have. a fully standalone unit.
I'm not sure going from less than $50 of RAM and a $50 processor for foveated eye tracking to 16 GiB of RAM ($300) and a Snapdragon 8 ($200) is a "slight bump".
Yeah, can't wait for the AI hype bubble to finally end. Hey, we might even get some nice fast repurposed HBM from the scrappers reusing stuff from the bankruptcy auctions. :)
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.
Maybe 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.
I 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.
