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Comment by mikl | Hacker News Reader

Typo in the title. It’s “Steam Deck”, not “Steam Desk”.

Interesting that Valve is diving deeper into hardware. Remember when they still made video games? Remember when there was still a hope they would some day release Half-Life 3?

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Honestly I'd much rather have Hardware Innovation and Linux Gaming Enthusiast Valve than Made Yet Another AAA Shooter Valve.

Yet another successful game vs Yet another failing hardware device.

The Valve Index is working just fine. If you follow VR devices, it's actually now the only one with good support and no huge privacy issues.

I wonder about the privacy issues here to be honest. The "FAQ" linked to by the site says "we can go to ign.com on it" but what happens if we do? Does Steam see that we went there? Do they log that? If we log into our bank accounts on the device does Steam see that too? What telemetry are they collecting? Does changing the OS prevent all of it? Will there be ads?

It's cool tech, but I have to ask how will it be used against me? Will it only be pushing me to spend more of my money on Steam games or is there something more?

They've basically configured an out-of-the-box Arch system to boot into Steam Big-Screen. That's as privacy-respectful as it gets.

I thought Half-Life: Alyx was basically our HL3? It certainly got critical reviews/scores suggesting it deserves its moniker of Half-Life.

Finally, the year of Linux on the Desk.

My understanding is that their Index VR hardware is quite good too.

I can confirm this. The index is a marvelous piece of tech in so many ways. It's a premium bit of kit (with the associated premium price) and I have zero complaints about it.

Does the Index VR work with the Steam Deck?

Yes. It’s a PC running Linux and can do anything a regular PC can. It’s probably a little lacking performance wise for VR though. It’s optimised for the native 1280x800 resolution.

Don't forget Alyx exists.

Alyx is a VR game, not a video game in my book.

"Half-Life is a PC game, not a video game in my book."

Seriously, Alyx is pretty obviously the future of video games. Have you tried it? It's incredible.

I doubt it's the future. There's a mini documentary called "Half-Life Alyx: Final Hours" and the majority of the developers at Valve said they don't want the next game they work on to be VR.

“Video” is a thing you can project on a flat screen. VR games is a separate category, imo.

And no, I don’t own a VR setup.

You can project VR content on to a flat screen. You don't want to look at it that way, but you can do it. The part that makes it 3D is entirely down to the lenses and optics used. The display inside is just like any other.

Because it is video.

That’s an extremely pedantic interpretation of the word video. The game isn’t designed to be playable on a screen with regular control input. It’s a video game the same way a full flight simulator is. Technically true, but it requires specialised and expensive hardware to “play”.

Hardly specialized and expensive, it works fine with a $300 headset aimed largely at serving as Facebook's next social platform hooked up to your PC. It's like saying a Wii game isn't a video game, or that games you can't play without stereo headphones aren't video games.

VR headsets are just a flat screen with a pair of lenses on them.

Cmon, don't gatekeep games. There are inputs, outputs and challenge. Fits the classical definition.

Not saying it’s not a game. It’s just not a video game. “Video” is a thing you can project on a flat screen. VR games is a separate category, imo.

Haha, I read it and wondered why they put a computer in a desk. Buy a desk, get a free computer!

What?!

Fixed now. (At one point the title on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27847007 said "Desk".)

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