UploadVR’s Ian Hamilton and David Heaney went hands-on with Steam Body at Valve HQ.
In case you missed it, Valve simply formally introduced Steam Body, a “streaming-first” standalone VR headset launching in “early 2026”.
Steam Body has a light-weight modular design and runs a VR model of Valve’s SteamOS, the Linux-based working system utilized in Steam Deck. With an advanced model of the Proton compatibility layer it will probably run virtually any Linux, Home windows, and Android recreation, together with SteamVR video games. Many titles will not carry out effectively on the cell chipset, although, so Steam Body has a wi-fi dongle within the field to leverage the ability of your gaming PC – therefore Valve’s “streaming-first” positioning.
The headset doesn’t require or assist base stations. It tracks itself and its included controllers utilizing 4 onboard greyscale monitoring cameras, two of which can be utilized for monochrome passthrough, and it additionally has eye monitoring for foveated streaming.
Steam Body will substitute Valve Index available on the market, which the corporate confirmed to UploadVR is now not in manufacturing, and joins Valve’s “household” of {hardware} merchandise, which will even quickly embody a Steam Machine consolized PC and a brand new Steam Controller.
Valve Formally Declares Steam Body, A “Streaming-First” Standalone VR Headset
Steam Body has an included wi-fi adapter, and is launching “early 2026”. Learn the complete specs, options, and particulars right here.
You’ll find a full rundown of the design, options, and specs of Steam Body in our information article right here. This text describes our impressions of utilizing the headset at Valve HQ, the place we have been invited to a {hardware} briefing that included hands-on time with the brand new Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and the Steam Body headset.
Ian’s time with Steam Body was principally spent in standalone titles on SteamOS, whereas David’s time was totally in Half-Life: Alyx streamed from a close-by gaming PC utilizing the wi-fi adapter included within the Steam Body field. This is what they considered their time with Steam Body.
In fast succession I performed Ghost City, Walkabout, Moss 2, and Gorn 2 within the light-weight standalone SteamOS headset, and I additionally briefly tried some Half-Life: Alyx streaming from a close-by Home windows PC.
Ghost City is without doubt one of the finest VR video games of the 12 months and Valve says I performed the PC VR model – the model made for x86 processors – utterly in standalone via a compatibility layer. Walkabout Mini Golf’s construct was extra totally featured than the one proven throughout the demo day at Samsung a pair weeks earlier, permitting me to putt with one controller in full VR joined by an iPhone participant logged into the identical room code by way of the Pocket Version of the sport. I loved waving at Quill in Moss 2 and, in Gorn 2, I punched barbarians with my fists utilizing the analog sticks to maneuver myself out of the way in which of their makes an attempt to hit me. Taking part in principally seated, all of them labored easily with Steam Body operating as a standalone private pc – no streaming from a PC.
Portal 2 ran on a big digital show, as if on a large Steam Deck, with what appeared like a really excessive body charge. That was a very nice, responsive expertise. So was stretching out my farm in Stardew Valley to control many of the farm directly. Each of those flat video games are fairly highly effective to see operating effectively instantly on such a light-weight gadget alongside any variety of standalone VR video games.
I opened the Linux desktop, went to Chrome and voice looked for the No Time For Warning scene from Interstellar on YouTube. I kicked off my footwear at Valve HQ (apologizing for doing so) and stretched out horizontally on a sofa. I propped up a pillow behind my head and left the controllers on my abdomen with the display screen stretched throughout the sky. Matt Damon stated “there’s a second” and I watched him blast into the grey of area with my controller drifting off with him.
Regressions in controller monitoring in contrast with Valve Index and its SteamVR 2.0 base stations could grate towards builders and gamers who’ve come to anticipate rock-solid monitoring from Steam-based laser techniques exterior the play space. I attempted nothing like Longbow, for instance, from Valve’s authentic Lab expertise, nor one thing with a number of physics objects like Boneworks, nor something with quick movement like Beat Saber.
With the controller in my hand, my index finger had some issue reaching each the index shoulder and set off buttons whereas additionally protecting my center finger on the grip button. Grip straps needs to be offered optionally at launch and there are capacitive sensors alongside the bottom of the controller supposed to see when the 4th and fifth fingers launch. I noticed it in motion in Half-Life: Alyx, with Alyx’s pinky and ring finger sometimes transferring as I launched my grip from that a part of the controller. It didn’t appear tremendous responsive, nevertheless it additionally wasn’t strapped to my hand and the grips of the Index controllers have been by no means notably responsive both. The enter from the 4th and fifth digits hasn’t proved essential to recreation builders for half a decade, so I am not too anxious about it being effectively supported right here. Nonetheless, we’ll intently watch what builders say about their suggestions on the Steam Body controllers.
IPD adjustment is finished by way of a wheel on the highest of the headset and, after I acquired it set proper, I largely forgot the headset’s weight because it disappeared break up between the rear and entrance in a outstanding feat of engineering. There’s no battery up entrance however no adjustment knob on the again — you pull on the comfortable straps on the aspect to regulate becoming — with the dual-cell skinny battery on the again held behind a soft foam. In hand, the compute unit feels a bit like I think about a mainline Apple Imaginative and prescient may, with the rear part of Valve’s headset in a position to collapse within the entrance for extra compact journey than every other headset I might wish to use.
On head, Steam Body is a reduction in comparison with all headsets with a battery hanging on the entrance of your face. The absence of the battery there’s simply probably the most impactful characteristic of its design. Although Google and Samsung hold the battery in a pack in Galaxy XR like Imaginative and prescient Professional, I discovered Steam Body’s soft back-mounted battery design to be an infinite reduction notably after spending 4 days in Android XR’s first headset.
In fact, that’s solely after a couple of minutes watching a film reclined on a sofa whereas lacking OLED shows each second, however Steam Body looks like glasses or even perhaps a sleep masks due to how effectively unfold out its weight feels throughout the pinnacle.
A Steam Body Wi-fi Adapter comes within the field with every headset supposed to handle the hyperlink to a close-by PC, together with to the deliberate Steam Machine. We’ll be in search of the Steam Body-verified label on VR video games for Steam within the 12 months forward, and trying to take a look at what it means to actually pump Steam all through the house with devoted Valve-managed wi-fi connections. There’s numerous area for builders to play right here in SteamOS, leaping off a Steam Machine or Deck and right into a Body.
Valve has so much to perform right here throughout a turbulent time in world relations and specifics like price and availability aren’t finalized. Valve representatives assume they will get Half-Life: Alyx operating performant in standalone, however they’re not promising it but and it’s clear there’s nonetheless so much for them to do.
My two Steam Body demo classes concerned streaming Half-Life: Alyx from a close-by gaming PC that had the headset’s included wi-fi adapter related to a USB port.
A hands-on demo can by no means definitively reveal whether or not a headset is snug to put on for hours, however even within the comparatively brief time I used Steam Body it felt considerably lighter and fewer burdensome than every other fully-featured standalone headset. The visor itself weighs simply 185 grams, a outstanding achievement, and your entire unit together with the rear battery simply 440 grams, which means the burden is extremely effectively distributed throughout your head.
Additional, the fabric Valve is utilizing for the facial interface and rear padding is an advanced model of the ultra-snug cloth used within the Index, which even six years and dozens of aftermarket equipment for different headsets later, I nonetheless discover feels the softest on my face.
Whereas I am cautious about making sweeping conclusions till I’ve the headset in my residence, my preliminary impression is that Steam Body is probably the most snug VR headset but, for my face not less than.
With regards to making Steam Body a perfect headset for connecting to SteamVR in your PC, Valve is utilizing a mix of each {hardware} and software program cleverness to refine the compressed wi-fi streaming expertise.
Steam Body has two separate wi-fi radios. One is used as a consumer, connecting to your property Wi-Fi community on the two.4GHz or 5GHz band for the final web connection of SteamOS. The opposite is for a 6GHz Wi-Fi 6E hotspot, created by the headset, that SteamVR in your PC mechanically connects to by way of the USB adapter included within the field. It is a devoted point-to-point connection between Steam Body and your PC.
This offers Valve exact firmware-level management over your entire community stack for wi-fi PC VR, and eliminates the issues you may expertise utilizing different standalone headsets for this, comparable to being bottlenecked by a router that is both too distant, blocked by too many partitions, congested by different visitors, or simply equipped by your ISP as a result of it was low cost, not as a result of it is any good.
The opposite characteristic Valve has applied to make the wi-fi PC VR expertise nearly as good as it will probably presumably be is foveated streaming. Steam Body has built-in eye monitoring, and once you’re utilizing PC VR it is at all times used to encode the video stream in greater decision the place you are at the moment trying.
The results of this {hardware} and software program effort, in my demos, was a comparatively excessive element and secure picture that felt as if it may have been arriving from a DisplayPort cable. There have been no seen compression artifacts, nor was there perceptible latency.
The exception to this stability was that within the second demo room, I noticed a body skip concern at an everyday interval. Asking Valve’s staffers about this, they debugged it as an unexplained body spike on the Home windows PC aspect, displaying me the SteamVR efficiency graph on the PC monitor so I may visually verify this. The difficulty did not happen within the first demo room, and is unlikely to be inherent to the product.
Steam Body’s pancake lenses made the picture look clear and sharp all through, with an identical feeling to Quest 3’s lenses (together with the vast eyebox) however with a barely taller discipline of view, and that elevated vertical discipline of view meaningfully contributed to an elevated feeling of immersion. There did look like some minor pupil swim, nonetheless, which means the geometric stability of the scene ever so barely shifted as I panned my head.
I requested Valve’s Jeremy Selan concerning the thought of utilizing dynamic distortion correction, having the attention monitoring constantly replace the lens distortion coefficients, and he instructed me that they “have not discovered the necessity” however “may if we wished to”. It most likely is not a sufficiently big concern for most individuals to note or care.
The one actual downside with the picture I noticed was its poor distinction, given Valve’s description of Steam Body as a “premium headset”.
In case you at the moment use an OLED or micro-OLED headset for PC VR, and even LCDs with Mini-LED backlighting, Steam Body’s distinction can be an enormous downgrade. Valve is utilizing common 2160×2160 LCD panels, with no native dimming of any variety, and in the dead of night sewers of Metropolis 17 I noticed the identical element crunch I see with every other plain LCD headset.
To be clear, that is the distinction expertise that almost all of SteamVR customers have as we speak. However a lot of this utilization comes from headsets that have been purchased for round $300. Valve is not but giving a worth for Steam Body, however stated it is aiming to promote it for lower than the $1000 Index full-kit. To what diploma the common LCD panels are a suitable tradeoff will depend upon precisely the place Steam Body’s worth lands.
With regards to the controllers, monitoring appeared flawless in my time, and whereas on one headset there was a minor positional jitter, on the opposite it was rock strong. Steam Body Controllers have 18 IR LEDs, in comparison with the 8 on Meta’s Contact Plus controllers, and this appeared to lead to higher occlusion resistance at excessive angles.
General, Steam Body felt like a tool optimized to be the perfect wi-fi PC VR expertise however with out being unaffordable for too many individuals. It is extremely snug, its wi-fi adapter bypasses the frequent problems with residence Wi-Fi networks, and its lenses are sharp and clear. It lacks the ultra-high-detail and wealthy distinction of 4K micro-OLED headsets, nevertheless it’s additionally set to lack their multi-thousand-dollar price ticket.
I believe Steam Body may very well be the headset to lastly persuade many tethered PC VR diehards to make the leap to wi-fi, and I am wanting to spend extra time with the headset to see the way it performs over multi-hour classes in an actual residence atmosphere.
Valve Formally Declares Steam Body, A “Streaming-First” Standalone VR Headset
Steam Body has an included wi-fi adapter, and is launching “early 2026”. Learn the complete specs, options, and particulars right here.
