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Latest Comments by anth
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game engine OpenXRay gets taken down on GitHub
9 January 2024 at 9:35 pm UTC

I assume their position which causes false claims is their ties to Ukraine, or have they been involved in some scandal I've not noticed?

SteamVR 2.0 Beta released with a big UI overhaul
26 September 2023 at 11:10 am UTC

Just ahead of the Meta Connect event being held by their competitor in the VR space. Perhaps this is just coincidence, along with that "What are you doing next Wednesday?" tweet from the official Counter Strike account.

Reminder: Update your PC info for the next round of statistics updates
27 February 2023 at 8:15 pm UTC Likes: 5

Quoting: Eike"owning Steam Deck [ ] yes [ ] no"?
I'd prefer a couple more options:
- Yes
- No
- Planning to get one
- Would get one if they were available in my country

Steam Replay gives you an overview of your 2022 gaming habits
26 December 2022 at 7:58 pm UTC Likes: 1

I've only played on Linux this year (and for the previous several), don't have VR or a Deck, and my recap doesn't have a "You played on more than one device" section.

Valve are finally fixing buying games on Steam Deck that need a pop-up
5 December 2022 at 8:29 pm UTC Likes: 3

I'm actually quite impressed that it took so long to fix this despite the very active development for other Deck software. Many other companies prioritise their storefront with anything else an afterthought.

Minecraft set to be 30% faster on Linux with Mesa drivers
2 December 2021 at 7:30 pm UTC

It is probably worth noting that this is for the vanilla Minecraft shaders and may cause problems for others.

I'm using MultiMC so Mesa doesn't turn this feature on by default. If I add it for vanilla Mincraft that runs fine, I'm guessing better than normal but I've not checked. If I add it for the Fabulously Optimized modpack which includes the Iris mod and turn on an alternate shader it crashes immediately, though I think in that case there is multithreading anyway so there wouldn't be any benefit.

NVIDIA Beta 495.29.05 rolls out with GBM for expanded Wayland support
14 October 2021 at 10:34 pm UTC

Another factor: SteamOS 3 will be launched alongside the Steam Deck. This uses gamescope and so requires some driver features which Nvidia have either only added recently or don't support yet.

A new Valve game for the Steam Deck? It's not out of the realm of possibility
22 July 2021 at 11:29 am UTC Likes: 1

Dota 2 releases in 2019 and early this year had data for a project called citadel. Rumour is that it has asymmetric gameplay between players using VR and normal screens, and some claim that the non-VR play is optimised for gamepads. Gabe Newell has since been asked about it but says he doesn't know of any project with that name. If the rumours are true then it'd be a good fit for someone who has both a PC with a VR headset and a Steam Deck, and who invites a friend over.

Valve corrects the RAM specs for the Steam Deck, games should run nicely from SD Card
21 July 2021 at 10:46 am UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: EikeAll Steam Decks got an M.2 slot for short (M.2230) SSDs. In the smallest variant, it's empty. I cannot say how accessible it is, though.

The website you linked to says that, but the tech specs on steamdeck.com says "All models use socketed 2230 m.2 modules" which suggests that the eMMC is on an M2 card too. It certainly makes more sense to manufacture a single main PCB and plug in the appropriate storage card rather than having to make two with just this one difference.

As for how accessible there has been a widely circulated screen shot of Plagman (presumably Valve's Pierre-Loup Griffais) saying:
Quotethe slot is behind emi and thermal shielding so its not really "user replaceable" like a regular m2 tray on a laptop

I look forward to the iFixit teardown.

Half-Life: Alyx now available on Linux with Vulkan
16 May 2020 at 3:34 am UTC Likes: 2

To explain the GPU recommendation ...

Valve's Dan Ginsberg tweeted:
QuoteI'm really pleased with how the Linux version runs on AMD RADV where we have async reprojection in SteamVR via a high priority compute queue. We look forward to getting that on NVIDIA but are awaiting driver support, so for now we recommend mesa/AMD.
I'm guessing that refers to VK_EXT_global_priority. Valve were involved with adding that to the Vulkan spec, RADV, and AMDGPU back in 2017.