2 hours ago
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Let’s talk about FEX, bay-bee
The Steam Frame, unfortunately RAM shortage-ravaged as it is, is unique among virtual reality headsets for its ability to run Steam games – VR or 'flat' alike – entirely on its own, internal compute hardware. It is, in effect, a SteamOS PC for your face. Yet as I waxed about in our review, this feature’s impact could extend far beyond the Frame itself, as it’s based on new compatibility tech that Valve now hope to bring to a broader range of PCs and laptops. Potentially, according to staff speaking with RPS, making bonafide gaming systems out of previously unfriendly computers.
Explaining, I’m afraid, involves some gear jargon. Most PC games are exclusively made to run on processors built using the x86 architecture, the type used for all the mainstream Intel Core/AMD Ryzen chips we probably have inside our rigs right now – as well as in the Steam Deck and Steam Machine. Processors based on the rival ARM architecture, however, have become popular in non-gaming circles for their efficiency and battery life benefits to tablets and skinny laptops. These advantages convinced Valve to use an ARM chip for the Frame, but while a few hundred games know how to play friendly with the architecture, that’s well short of the thousands that Valve fancied to run locally on their new headset.
The solution was FEX, an open source x86-to-ARM emulator whose developers were approached by Valve and funded by them, on the sly, for years. Just as Proton makes Windows games compatible on the Linux-based SteamOS, FEX makes x86 games compatible on the ARM-based Frame, and its benefactors aren’t stopping there.
"Oh, for sure," Valve engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais replied when I asked if Valve are exploring game compatibility for other ARM PCs. "Yeah, I think one of the things that we want to do, and that the Frame is kind of paving the way for, is just more general SteamOS for ARM, right? There's a bunch of devices where you could have a great experience running SteamOS on there, that are currently kind of this adjacent ecosystem that's just a little bit different. But not really that different, in our opinion."
In theory, then, FEX could be deployed to make (at least the bulk of) Steam libraries playable on machines that currently struggle. Modern ultraportable laptops, 2-in-1s, and mini PCs included. Performance on integrated graphics would, uh, vary, and there might still be a significant barrier in the form of devicetrees: basically data-based maps that tell operating systems where to find all the different hardware components of an ARM chip. These layouts vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, so part of Valve’s work may involve digging up as much devicetree data as they can before FEX is put to work.
Regardless, they remain keen on the idea. "I think we want to enable all that stuff," Griffais continued. "And yeah, I think in general, ARM chips are more of a force that's coming on the PC side. There's a lot of laptops and even desktop-ish platforms that are in the pipe, and so we're interested in making sure people can have a good experience working through their whole library on there. And to not have a situation where... like, the worst case scenario would be 'Oh this device is good, and the specs are good, the value is good, but I have to leave a portion of my catalogue behind if I'm even considering it.'
"We don't like those kinds of choices, so we're trying to make it easier for those sorts of new devices to show their value instead of having to be evaluated on a different [game] library. Or compatibility tradeoffs in general."
Fellow Valve engie Josh Hudman also suggested that the company prefers to develop tech with multiple uses and applications, citing their work on TMR (Tunnel Magnetoresistance) thumbsticks that made it into both the Frame and the recent Steam Controller refresh. Some ideas, he claims, were even cut from the Frame as they weren’t perceived to be useful elsewhere.
"A lot of the technology we work on, we try to keep that in mind," Hudson said of Valve’s multifunction fixation. "When we do, like, thumbstick development, or wireless development, it's not necessarily, specifically focused on whether it's for VR hardware or whatever. It's more like, 'Is this technology going to make us better at developing future technologies? Does it improve the gaming experience? Is it just a general technology that's a good investment of time and energy?'
"And I think there's a lot of elements in the Frame, and our other hardware too, that we make that decision, and go after those technologies. Because there were some technologies we could have looked at on the Frame, which felt like they were very specific and didn't scale to other things. We try to focus more on the things that scale to other hardware, and our overall technology efforts."
As someone who’s long coveted the endurance of ARM-y Snapdragon laptops, but was never quite sure enough of their non-work abilities to pull the trigger on one, the prospect of an even more hardware-agnostic Steam feels very much 'for me.' More so than the ability to play Hades on a headset, at least. Obviously it’s all possiblies and potentials right now, but I can see Valve making the effort to see wider FEX support through, especially if the £889 / $1,059 Frame doesn’t do the numbers they’d like.
English (US) ·