Valve: Future Hardware Plans

wait... what? 2 stage trigger to zoom and then shoot, but also a pad further round under remaining fingers?

I appreciate the use of more fingers in a natural position rather than millions of triggers, but that sounds really uncomfortable?

Kinda tempted to get the controller but I don't feel like it's urgent. I'm pretty happy gaming on my PS4 for now.

I've had a go at the earlier versions with no joystick. Im glad they added it. I felt that was the biggest thing missing.

Been playing about on the steamlink my parents got me for christmas- recommended so far- it's fast and really intuitive. Not tried 2 players at once yet tho which is the reason I wanted it..

I was initially disappointed with the Link when I had tested it with my Macbook, but once I had my games PC here, I was impressed. It does 1080p/60 fps without a hitch over wifi, it's insane. Sadly they broke Steam Controller support with the latest steam betas, which keeps me from using it right now.

I'm loving my Steam Link and Steam Controller so far, it's meant that I didn't need to buy a console and I can play local multiplayer steam games much easier than on my pc monitors.

Also HTC Vive hype, the Aperture VR demo with the Hive was one of the greatest gaming experiences I've tried, it has huge potential but I'm worried about the space limitations in games where you could walk around due to the cable attached to your head.

Then get a steam link? my friend has one and is happy with it

Quote from blackdog

The cables is the limitation atm, I'm not much into VR but it's the device I'm trusting/interested the most in.

The Link necessitates of Ethernet right? I'm really interested because I'm connecting the laptop continuously to the TV to play, and it's a pain (at least for now that I only have 1 HDMI cable)… but I can't have the cable goodness where I'm living so far I was just thinking if to build a machine on the cheap to play at least less demanding games. (But I guess any cheap machine would cost as much as a console, although I want to play my Steam library)

what's your wifi speed? it runs REALLY well over 10mb/s eth so if your wifi matches that it should be fine.

@blackdog don't forget about powerline connectors if you "can't have ethernet". The boxes plug into and use your mains circuitry to communicate between each other and you can run ethernet cables out of them into your router for the source and your PC as the target.

You can pick up a pair for about £20, and additional adapters can be bought to add into the network. The best ones are those which have a socket still in them so you don't lose the plug socket, but they can also work from multi-socket adapters as well.

I just ordered Steam Link and Controller. I can't wait!

Any pro-tips or things I should know about?

Quote from jackophant

@blackdog don't forget about powerline connectors if you "can't have ethernet". The boxes plug into and use your mains circuitry to communicate between each other and you can run ethernet cables out of them into your router for the source and your PC as the target.

You can pick up a pair for about £20, and additional adapters can be bought to add into the network. The best ones are those which have a socket still in them so you don't lose the plug socket, but they can also work from multi-socket adapters as well.

This is a decent solution to increase the spread of your wi-fi and potentially speed. But don't forget that every device and router splits the available bandwidth further, and thus after 2 or 3 splits (as I am forced to do) the speed is decreased dramatically. Just something to keep in mind.

Received the Steam hardware today. They're all set up and I did some tests on different games.

Steam Link: It was very simple to get the thing working. I was running it as wireless on 1080p (I'll probably get an ethernet cable for it in few weeks) and it was very responsive. Image was clear and sharp on my 42" screen. This was the first time I actually used the Steam's Big Picture for real. Seems like a nice system, works well (occasionally it lagged a bit) and looks nice too. Good thing with Steam Link is, that you can stream your desktop from it, not just Steam or Steam's games, which I thought would've been the case. Don't know what else to tell after few hours or testing, it's quite a solid product actually.

Steam Controller: The firmware that was on by default, made the cursor twitch even when the controller was on the table and still. Connected it to PC and installed latest firmware, which made it work nicely so I could start the playing now. I felt like some 3 years old kid playing games for the first time. In HL1, I was playing the training. Aim was on the ground or ceiling, missed the platforms more often than it's legal, missed few jumps, almost blew myself with M203 and after all that, I thought that maybe I shouldn't even try using the train in the end, just walk on the tracks.. but I took the train and it worked nicely. So I was starting to get better with it! Controller is still very hard to use though, requires some learning for sure. The touchpad-thingies are something that need some proper fiddling to be adjusted nicely.

Quote from blackdog

I'm curious with the Link: you have to start Big Picture on the computer or it will be automatically be displayed that way on there? And how you switch to desktop?

When I got it working the first time, it was streaming my desktop from the first monitor. Then I got hint/message that it's recommended to turn on the Big Picture Mode, which I then did (can be done on TV using Steam Controller or just going to PC and then turn it on there with one mouse click, which was easier for me). To get back to desktop, turn off the Big Screen Mode.