Steam Beta Adds Native Apple Silicon Support for Mac

[teh_hunterer]

Did I miss something?

The Steam Frame VR headset is running a Snapdragon arm SoC, using FEX as an emulation layer to play x86 PC games.

 

[AgeOfSpiracles]

The Steam Frame VR headset is running a Snapdragon arm SoC, using FEX as an emulation layer to play x86 PC games.

AH! cool thanks. But is that SoC just to run the headset? ie, will this be a tethered experience like the Index was?

 

[teh_hunterer]

AH! cool thanks. But is that SoC just to run the headset? ie, will this be a tethered experience like the Index was?

It's pretty cool actually. There will be two modes.

Tethered mode - wireless via a specialised USB dongle

Standalone - the thing runs an arm version of SteamOS, and uses FEX for x86 emulation alongside Proton to run full PC games

Nobody knows exactly how it will perform, but they put in 7 years of work to make this emulation layer functional. So all bets are off for the next Valve hardware for what kind of chips will power them.

 

[rjp1]

Did I miss something?

The Steam Frame (headset) will run SteamOS on arm.

 

[rjp1]

Hehe this aged like milk didn't it 😅

This part has me wondering -

Steam Frame supports stand-alone play on a growing number of both VR and non-VR games without needing to stream from your PC.

 

[AgeOfSpiracles]

It's pretty cool actually. There will be two modes.

Tethered mode - wireless via a specialised USB dongle

Standalone - the thing runs an arm version of SteamOS, and uses FEX for x86 emulation alongside Proton to run full PC games

Nobody knows exactly how it will perform, but they put in 7 years of work to make this emulation layer functional. So all bets are off for the next Valve hardware for what kind of chips will power them.

gotcha. So like a Quest essentially, except SteamOS and PC games rather than bespoke games and ports.

 

[ignatius345]

nice, now do all the games

Seriously. I lost quite a few cool old games when 32-bit support was taken out of macOS.