By It’s been a busy few days for Steam Frame owners and hopefuls. A fresh batch of reservation emails is going out to people who were on the waitlist; Valve has pushed another SteamOS beta for the headset with some welcome streaming fixes; and the Android XR Bridge (AXRB) project has finally been released, opening the door to playing Meta Quest games on your Frame. Here’s a quick rundown of everything you need to know.
A New Batch of Reservation Emails Is Going Out
First up, and this is exciting news: a lot of people are now being moved from the Steam Frame waitlist into the reservation queue. Head over to Reddit and you’ll find plenty of people sharing the “You’re officially in the reservation queue” email, and community trackers are reporting the biggest spike of promotions since the reservation system went live earlier this month. It looks like the next wave of reservations has well and truly started.
As a reminder of how it works, once your kit becomes available Valve sends a separate email with the option to purchase, and you then have three days to complete the order before the reservation moves on to the next person in the queue. This is great news, as it shows Valve has more Steam Frame stock available and things are moving along nicely. If you were one of the lucky ones who got moved up from the waitlist, let us know!
SteamOS 0.4.2 Beta Improves Streaming and Proximity Detection
Next up, Valve has released SteamOS 0.4.2 on the Steam Frame Beta channel, and it’s a small but useful update. On the streaming side, it improves audio reliability while streaming and improves connection reliability while streaming, including fixes for the dreaded “protocol error 17”. If you’ve been having trouble streaming games from your PC to the Frame, this one should make the experience noticeably smoother.
Under general changes, Valve has also improved user proximity detection, which is the sensor that works out whether the headset is actually on your head. The release also includes SteamVR 2.18.1. If you’ve been running into any of these issues, make sure to grab the update by opting into the beta under Settings > System > System Update Channel.
AXRB Is Out: Meta Quest Games on Your Frame
Finally, if you’ve been hoping to play your Meta games on the Steam Frame, we’re now a lot closer. Android XR Bridge, or AXRB, has officially been released and is available to download from GitHub right now. For anyone who hasn’t heard of it, AXRB is a compatibility layer from developer Feli Reintgen that runs Android-based Quest VR apps on a Windows PC through a desktop OpenXR runtime such as SteamVR, which means Quest titles can then be played on the Frame by streaming from your PC.
Keep expectations in check for now. AXRB is still early, it needs a Windows PC with an NVIDIA or AMD GPU, you need to own legal copies of the games you want to play, and titles that rely on Meta’s platform services or features like hand and body tracking may not work. I haven’t had the chance to try it myself yet, but it’s definitely something I want to take a proper look at, and if it’s worth it, I’ll put together a full guide.
Final Thoughts
That’s all the Steam Frame news for now. More reservations going out is the headline here and a good sign for anyone still waiting on the waitlist, while the latest SteamOS beta and AXRB both make the Frame a better place to play. Let us know which piece of news caught your eye the most.