f13.net

I.. guess we don't have a thread for this yet?

Valve has announced: Big Picture

http://store.steampowered.com/bigpicture/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EFrL6-OhN94


I'm tempted to put together some cheapy PC for my living room just for this.

Huh, interesting times for Steam.  Between this, their new "Community Hub" design, Greenlight, and the announcement that they're going to start carrying non-gaming software, it looks like Valve is making a big push out in every direction.

 :cthulu:

Digital distro is the future, and they've worked out so many of the kinks already it makes sense to leverage that knowledge now before someone else gains similar knowledge.

So it's XBox Live, only hardware agnostic and using Steam?

And super niche. You still have to do all the work of setting up your PC to work with your TV, it just has a nicer interface once you get that all working. This isn't going to be the pebble that starts an avalanche of people to move from console to desktop, more like a QoL improvement for the Skys of the world who are already using their TV.

Valve's already admitted that this is just testing the waters.

It's super niche right now, but if the feedback is good enough and the metrics show it as a feasible model, you can bet your bottom dollar Valve will start to seriously work at getting a low-cost living room PC solution out there that's fully integrated with Steam, including gaming. Maybe not the mythical "Steambox", but probably something not terribly far removed.

To be fair "All the work" is hooking up a single hdmi cable, or a video game and an audio cable if you don't have hdmi.  Sure, that isn't going to be trivial, but there are a LOT of people who can handle something like that these days. 

I think that's oversimplifying it. There's a shitload more setup involved with a PC compared to a console, from getting an OS onto the box in the first place to working with drivers, the extra stuff you need to make a controller work with it, etc. The barrier for entry isn't just 'moving the PC you totally already have working as a PC into your living room and plugging it in', it's all that other stuff as well. Even savvy users are going to probably set up a new PC to do this kind of stuff with rather than moving the one they already have, not least because once you put it in your living room it becomes a bigger chore to do random browsing, email, etc., on it.

I'll probably do it with my old PC. It's got a TV card so I can convert it to a DVR with no work, but Ingmar's correct.  It's not zero effort for most folks.

Still, Valve wouldn't do it if their Steam polls said there wasn't enough of a user base there  to be supported.

As of right now it just looks like a 10 foot interface for Steam and maybe better controller support all-around. Which is cool, especially the controller keyboard layout, but nothing earth-shattering.

Valve has been hiring Linux developers, hardware engineers, porting Steam and games to Linux, etc.  Gabe has also been publicly very dismissive of Windows 8 and Microsoft's moves toward a more Apple-like walled garden app ecosystem.  And they're working on TV-centric UI.  Anyone want to bet *against* them having a Linux-based Steam enabled "console" on the market within a year or two?  They've got the people.  They've got the content ecosystem (at least for games -- they could partner with a number of different entities for movies and music or do their own thing). 

The only reason I keep having to buy new versions of Windows every few years is to ensure my gaming machine is up to date.  I think Valve is going to solve this problem for me before I have to upgrade to Windows 8.

The only reason I keep getting windows is because of Directx.  How big a hurdle is that for valve to port over pc games?  I would love to be able to ditch windows, I've dreamt of a Steam OS for years.

Valve apparently is seeing some upside in porting from DX to OGL:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/08/valves-optimizations-make-linux-port-of-l4d2-outperform-windows-version/

Porting a DX based engine to OpenGL is  work, but definitely doable -- in practice modern DX and OGL are getting closer and closer to each other featurewise as modern GPUs have evolved to programmable pipelines and deferred rendering models.

It's not inconceivable that one could build a DX compatibility layer on top of OGL -- dunno if there are IP issues there, etc.

 renewed my interest in using the steam interface - extra hdmi port for easy laptop hook up. The other hdmi's go to consoles that are extremely jealous of the smooth and fast gui interface.

I recall the days of OpenGL/Glide/Voodoo graphics, and how they would womp DX left and right every time.  What Microsoft did with DirectX is the same strategy that Sony did with Blu-Ray: THROW MASS QUANTITIES OF MONEY AT IT UNTIL EVERYONE CRIES UNCLE! 

I think MS has become complacent in recent years with PC gaming support, as they've got XBox to support and they consider themselves to be the 'winner' of the Glide vs DX battle.  Making Windows 8 come across as being "stupid" to game developers isn't going to help them, and will force many of them to do what Valve is doing; seek alternative methods of getting the job done.

I'm wondering if part of the motivation is that games are moving to higher level tool-sets than programming to directX or OpenGL. If you can buy an engine and development framework that has both openGL and directX at the back end maybe the game code itself becomes inherently more portable.


I suspect they more see the potential to unify opposition to Microsoft. There's quite a few interests that would gain from an open and progressive standard for a gaming PC. Something that Microsoft will never do because that would enhance competition to the Xbox. Get the linux people to provide an OS, get the hardware makers on-side (who are also being held back by microsoft) and with steam to provide the content to make owning this non-windows PC worthwhile. And all it would take is some leadership and luck.

The video stuff might be an issue but this? Windows 7 works with the XBox 360 controller natively. I grabbed my wired one, plugged it in and was ready to go. With HDMI, I think it'd be easier done than you think.

Hell, WinXP supports the controller natively.  As someone who can only play on the computer using the family TV right now due to space constraints, this Big Picture thing is a nice thing.

My point is that it has to as easy or easier than using a dedicated console to rally make a dent. None of those things I mentioned seem like big deals individually but when you add them up the inconvenience starts to mount.

There's also the issue of price. Yes the PC might be significantly more powerful than the Xbox, but when you get into the console space you're talking about a market where people are really price sensitive in general. Remember, this has to grow their user base to matter, not just get their existing PC gamers to think about switching to using their TV.  That means convincing people who are not current Steam customers to replace or supplement their current console(s) with this and all that stuff comes into play. And then they get to try to play TF2 with a controller on PC servers.  :why_so_serious:

Obviously it all potentially changes if/when a dedicated console comes into play, but for now? Not a game changer.

With even PC hardware specs flattening over the last few years, PCs should drop to console affordability soon enough even for gamers.

How many people here *really* couldn't run games on their 5+ year-old PC?  I know my only problem with the last machine was I didn't have an AGP I could upgrade to the new cards and a 32-bit processor and my rig was 6 years old.  Ran everything fine other than that.   This new one I expect will keep me a decade at least barring some quantum shift in PC computing.

I can't run anything on any of my old PCs because they all had various forms of hardware failure, does that count?   :grin:

I guess I'm just that far ahead of my time. I've been using steam in the living room on my tv since I've been using steam.

Using a tv as a monitor is not a big deal. Browsing doesn't need a new browser, though you may need a little ctrl+ help if you're my age reading a 1080p display with fine print. But hardly a deal breaker, it's as natural as hitting f5 to refresh a page.

I earned my grief tittle for a reason. You should all be playing pc games on a big tv (65" is good!). There are very few that don't translate well.

For me it is mainly the fact that sitting upright is important for me when using a keyboard and mouse.  But then, Steam Big Picture doesn't solve that problem.  My main use for this thing would be to maybe buy a cheapy mini-pc and just play indy games (which tend to be controller friendly and not demanding in terms of power) from the couch.  Even my wife would enjoy that.

Yeah sitting upright with kb + mouse, also we'd have to set up 2 side by side TVs.

Seems like a lot of trouble for absolutely no gain in our case, yes.

No, no, she gets the laptop for her facebook games and you get the tv for real games.

 :why_so_serious:

This is why a 'non-gaming' mate is awesome. No competition for the Kahuna.

Bah, new TVs are cheap! They're back to the CRT prices on the 24" units and they're cheaper than the old projection screens were on the largers.  Lord knows I never would have bought a 45"  120hz TV in the old days, but the one in the living room only cost me $600 two years ago and is cheaper today.   If you want to be cheap and replace that 19" television with a similar-size  LCD, there's even $99 units out there.

DirectX is more than JUST a graphics API isn't it? I thought it handled sound and controller input too?

S'true. My 61" in 2003 cost me $3650 - and that's with the salesman messing up and price matching $1350 off instead of the $350 he was supposed to. My 65" 120Hz I bought a year ago cost just over a grand, no tax and free ship from newegg. My mother wanted a CRT when her last one went and it was a struggle to find a decent one and it was more expensive than a flat panel would've been.

From a complexity standpoint audio and input are tiny compared to the GPU interface stuff.

I'm not sure if DX includes a full content pipeline solution (which would mean a bunch of middleware, format loading/conversion, etc) or if that's just XNA.

Direct3D is the 3D graphics part of DirectX.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectX#Components

Had a play with this today on the PC that I have hooked up to the TV in the living room.

It's very beta. Lots of bugs, images that don't load, limited options etc. A glaring omission is any obvious way to turn off the interface sounds, which are obnoxious and unnecessary. I also couldn't get a single item page to load in the Store, so it's essentially non-functional at this point in time.

It's an interesting idea but it's got a long way to go before it's useful yet.

I don't get why this is necessary. My point about having used steam on the tv since I've been using steam (I dunno, many years) is that it already works fine on a tv.

Actually, I hadn't logged in for a while and I'm not happy with how they fucked up the community page to be much less useful.

Steam was unusable for me on the TV before because it ignored the Windows DPI setting, so the entire interface and text were far too small to be readable at normal TV viewing distances.

How do you manage to read any of the text on Steam on your TV? Do you have amazing eyesight or are you running at a low resolution or sitting really close? At 1920x1080 and about 2m away I couldn't read anything!

Ingmar is too skeptical. I've had a "media center" PC for tv viewing that uses a network cable card tuner device for three years now. Any computer in the house that's connected to the network also watches tv. Also all of my computers are more than capable gaming rigs. The smallest tv anyone uses here for a computer is 40 inches the largest is 65 inches. I think ingmar underestimates the number of people that are ready for this new steam service paradigms.

Dunno, never bugged me. Not as easy as my old 720p tv (the 61"), and some GAMES are not very playable (like Dawn of Discovery, unfortunately, and CK2). But steam text is perfectly legible. 1080p, 65", about 10' away.

Note that Sky has a 61" TV. 61". That's a viewing distance of ~10' for "full visual coverage" and a max distance of ~23' for normal mortals.  It's huuuuuuge.

Yeah, I reckon that'll give you more legible text than I get  :awesome_for_real:

I do also have crappy eyesight though, plus I'm very overdue for new glasses, which is an expense I can do without frankly :/

65"

And it's not really that big, you don't even notice it after a while and everything else looks puny. Not sure I'd want anything much bigger in my small house, though.

Sky's TV is as big as an average woman.  He has a woman hanging on his wall.

Let's just go with that.

Diagonally too. Sky is a monster.

I Plan on setting up a machine just for the TV in the front room. I will likely play X-com that way. So, this all works for me.

Not really related to Big Picture, but in general Steam news, I noticed they're putting software titles on Steam.  I guess I didn't realize how deep this rabbit hole goes, though...

(http://www.kerao.net/external/GMAchiev.png)

Update on this.

I've been using it on & off for a while now and it's improved a lot since the initial launch. It's very usable on a TV screen from sofa distances and works well with either mouse & keyboard or a controller. I've been using an XBox360 controller and it's great, although hampered by limited support for controllers in Steam games (Torchlight 2 having no controller support at all made me grr a bit).

They even implemented volume options for the UI sounds.  :awesome_for_real:

Visual studio has had achievements (http://channel9.msdn.com/achievements/visualstudio) for a good while now. 

I need to buy a new TV for my bedroom. The shitty one I had in there died so it has just been the computer for like 3 years. I have a nice TV out in the family room but if I moved that into my bedroom the living room would pretty much just be a couch and some bare walls.

I've messed around with Big Picture with my 360 PC controller I just got and it's pretty not-bad.

(resurrecting this thread rather than starting a new one for a minor post)

I've been annoyed by tearing in Big Picture mode -- in Steam itself, not in games.  Today I learned that if you use an Aero desktop theme the tearing goes away.  Apparently choosing Windows Classic (which I do when I install Win7 because it's smaller/tidier/less-full-of-translucent-goop) windows disables desktop composition, which Steam Big Picture mode relies on to draw without tearing.