XR Daily: Steam Link Goes Wired
Steam Link for Quest Finally Adds Wired USB-C Streaming
Valve has shipped the feature PC VR players on Quest have been asking for since the app launched. The Steam Link 2.17.8 public beta adds initial support for wired USB streaming, so you can pipe SteamVR games into a Quest headset over a cable instead of WiFi. The patch notes are short but tell you what matters: USB streaming can run without any WiFi if you opt into the Steam Client Beta, plus a handful of latency improvements and framerate fixes.
Getting it running takes three opt-ins: subscribe to the Steam Link public beta on the Horizon Store, switch SteamVR to its beta branch, and enable the Steam Client Beta. Valve has not specified a cable spec, but the sensible bet is Meta’s own guidance: USB 3.0 or better and at least five meters of cable, which you can find for under $20. The timing is not subtle either. Meta is positioning Quest 3 against Steam Frame, and this update landed the same week Meta pushed Quest 3’s refresh rate up to 240Hz. For a lot of people, a reliable wired link is the difference between tolerating compression artifacts and treating a Quest as a serious PC VR headset.
Steam Frame Gets a Color Passthrough Add-on With Gaussian Splatting Support
Steam Frame’s built-in passthrough is monochrome, meant mainly for computer vision tracking. That is about to change. Komodo Station, Valve’s hardware vendor in Asia, published a product page a little early for an official color passthrough module built by Arcturus Industries, the same computer vision specialists behind Frame’s tracking system. The leaked spec is genuinely impressive: dual 32 megapixel sensors with 10-bit HDR capture and a 64mm IPD, capturing 5K (4928 × 2464, or stereo 2464 × 2464) natively at 60 FPS with headroom up to 144 FPS in special configurations.
The part that matters for this audience is what the module does with that feed. Beyond a full-color view, it is built for real-time environment mapping, spatial video recording, and native Gaussian Splatting support with the right tools. The claimed field of view is 125 × 105 degrees binocular, up to 125 degrees vertical with software updates. It all plugs into Frame’s modular design: a Gen 4 PCIe slot, two MIPI connectors, and dual 2.5 Gbps lanes, with Valve promising official CAD files so the community can design its own accessories. No price or release date yet, which is the standing caveat on anything Steam Frame.
Metro 2039 Targets 4K 60 FPS With Ray Tracing on Base Consoles
4A Games confirmed that Metro 2039, due February 4, 2027 on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S, will ship a Performance Mode that runs 4K at 60 FPS with ray tracing across PS5, PS5 Pro, and Xbox Series X. That is a serious claim for base consoles, and it reflects the studio’s pedigree: Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition back in 2021 replaced traditional lighting with fully ray-traced global illumination while still targeting 60 FPS on then-current hardware. Metro 2039 is the first entry built from the ground up around ray tracing on the latest iteration of the proprietary 4A Engine.
The first console gameplay, shown during PlayStation’s State of Play, was captured on a PS5 Pro at 60 FPS and follows the Stranger onto the thawing, irradiated surface of post-apocalyptic Moscow. It stays a solo, story-driven shooter with survival, exploration, stealth, and direct combat, plus radiation and equipment management. One thing worth flagging: the release date drops it into a brutally crowded February, landing ahead of Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, God of War: Laufey, Persona 4 Revival, and Fable.
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Bigscreen Cuts Beyond 2 to $959 and Restarts Halo Mount Production
Bigscreen is permanently lowering the price of its slim PC VR headset. The Beyond 2 now starts at $959, down from $1,019, while the eye-tracking Beyond 2e drops to $1,159 from $1,219. It is a rare move in a category where component costs keep climbing, and it lands alongside a fix for the headset’s most requested accessory. The long-delayed Halo Mount, which had a major redesign after negative tester feedback and a further June delay over its “sledge link” component, is back in production. Bigscreen expects the biggest shipment wave in October and says it will clear the preorder backlog by November.
The standard Beyond 2 also now ships with the Universal-Fit Cushion, the thin silicone light seal introduced late last year that removes the need to submit iPhone facial scans for a custom interface. At 107 grams the headset barely needs help distributing weight, but the halo option should matter for people who want to wear it for long sessions without the default strap.
Blender Studio Opens OVERGROWN’s Production Logs for Free
Blender Studio is running a limited Open Doors Week that makes the behind-the-scenes material for OVERGROWN, its next animated project, free to everyone. Six production logs walk through the project from early development through animation, shading, lighting, effects, music, and final compositing, covering character rigs and fur setup, voice casting, set construction, handcrafted shading details, and a dedicated look at how the team treated water including lighting and dripping effects.
Simon Thommes’ Painterly Shadows masterclass is also free, which is the one to grab if you want to understand the stylized shadow work behind OVERGROWN’s illustrated look. Blender Studio is framing OVERGROWN as a potential feature film rather than another Open Movie, and the open week doubles as a push toward its 7,000 subscriber target, which it says it still needs to move the project into its next stage.
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Steam’s Top 100 Wishlists Split Exactly Down the Middle
GEM Capital ran a full pass over Steam’s 100 most-wishlisted games and found the list divides evenly: 50 indie titles and 50 AAA, with 46 million and 48 million wishlists respectively. The averages are nearly identical too, roughly 910,000 wishlists for a typical indie against 955,000 for a corporate title. The takeaway is that a compelling indie with a distinctive look or genuinely new idea pulls the same intent as a billion-dollar franchise, no sheltering-under-giants effect required.
The report’s sharper observation is about time. A wishlist total has no timestamp, so two games can post the same number while one earned it last year and the other has been accumulating since 2020. Among the top-100 indies, only seven were announced before 2022, and demand clearly compounds over a long tail. For developers, that reframes wishlists as a slow-build asset rather than a launch-day metric.
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Quick Bites
- Puzzling Places turns five with a birthday update adding weekly puzzles and a guest pass for friends. → UploadVR
- Xbox is putting monthly limits on cloud gaming for Game Pass subscribers. → 80 Level
- Starclash is an immersive animated experience now available on both Apple Vision Pro and Quest. → UploadVR
- A new web tool lets you create 360-degree illustrations directly in the browser. → 80 Level