Valve is toying with a Steam Frame OLED and some Reddit users are already wondering whethe

Résumé de l'actualité

Only a month out from the launch of the Steam Frame, an OLED version is already the talk of the town. Moreover, us humans seem to have very short memories, as while this amounts to nothing more than a couple of lines in the Steam Frame source code—perhaps nothing more than someone at Valve messing around to see what happens—some Reddit users are already wondering whether this is worth waiting for instead of buying a Frame today. Oh, you lot…

In the Steam Frame source code, SteamFrameHub spotted various references to "deckard-oled" and "deckard-plano". Deckard is the codename given to the Steam Frame, so the deckard-oled branch (last edited in February) and the deckard-plano branch (last edited a few weeks ago) are some sorta version of the Steam Frame that Valve's playing around with.

I've had a quick look around the repo and, yep, deckard-oled and deckard-plano are in there. That's a very exciting prospect, as the Steam Frame's LCD displays are definitely lacking compared to VR headsets with Micro-OLED.

This excitement is not lost on some over on Reddit, who have responded to the news with various japes and bits about ditching their reservation for the existing model and instead re-enlisting for another excruciatingly long wait for the OLED model.

"Absolutely panic and cancel your reservations. Everyone knows how lightning fast Valve moves fast with development," says Runaway42.

Truth is, we're not likely to see a Steam Frame OLED for a very long time—or ever. There are the trifling matters of hardware, resolution, power, cooling, battery life, and performance all to consider. It's more than a matter of just swapping the optics in the core module—the main bit of the Steam Frame containing the displays, SoC, cooling, sensors, and more—with a couple of OLED panels.

That said, the Steam Frame is a modular thing. We should expect, or at least hope for, its modularity to develop into a bit more of an ecosystem of parts. We've used the Arcturus Vision RGB Camera, and we know Valve is working on an updated strap with off-ear speakers and swappable batteries, but there could be more in future. For now, we have the CAD files to make our own upgrades.

And if you're wondering if these mentions in the source files are some sort of viral marketing stunt or secret message intended to build hype once again for a future product, here's what Valve's engineers told me at their office last year.

"Everybody assumes that we have some sort of like grand plan with our leaks," Valve employee Gabe Rowe said, "and it's literally just somebody fat fingering something."

Jacob has been writing about PC hardware and technology for over eight years. He earned his first byline at PCGamesN before joining PC Gamer. He spends most of his time building PCs, running benchmarks, and trying his best to learn Linux.

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