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The Steam Deck OLED spot ad was made with Steam Deck OLEDs

gumballindie
21 replies
21h32m

I am continuously amazed at how awesome valve is and what awesome products it makes. Also steam supporting linux single handedly advanced adoption of that os. Apparently the best types of companies are those founded by deeply technical people, still owned and run by them, no venture capital. In an ideal world we would favour such companies over toxic ones.

charcircuit
11 replies
20h20m

Also steam supporting linux single handedly advanced adoption of that os.

Android using Linux is what single handily advanced the adoption of Linux among consumers.

redundantly
7 replies
19h51m

Saying Android is Linux is like saying macOS is BSD.

rstat1
3 replies
19h8m

No it isn't.

Android is as much a Linux distro as any other.

eptcyka
1 replies
17h25m

Android is a Linux distribution unlike any other. They use a completely different framework for drivers for hardware, they have their own patches for binder and other things that see no use outside of Android and will never get upstreamed. They have their own libc which is not used in any other distro. Very little of the work that has been done to make Linux work better on Androids has benefited the rest of the Linux ecosystem. Even the WiFi/Bluetooth drivers, which is a massive shame.

charcircuit
0 replies
15h33m

They use a completely different framework for drivers for hardware

No, both use kernel modules or statically compiled code for the part of the driver that actually talk to the hardware.

they have their own patches for binder

Binder is part of mainline Linux, but yes I guess technically there are some patches that are related to binder, but remember that Android works on a mainline kernel.

cherryteastain
0 replies
4h2m

It's a Linux distro but not a GNU/Linux distro

Krssst
2 replies
17h28m

Android uses the Linux kernel and keeps up with upstream to some extent.

macOS uses the XNU kernel.

Though as a user that likes having control over the software, I recognize that not having GNU/Linux being number one is a bit of a waste. (though one weekend of fighting NVIDIA and wayland tamed that quite a bit. Somehow my DE does not load with the proprietary driver unless I also load nouveau for some strange reason).

charcircuit
0 replies
15h47m

Android uses the latest LTS kernel and works using a mainline kernel provided mainline supports the hardware you are on.

though one weekend of fighting NVIDIA and wayland

Wayland is freedesktop software which is different than GNU.

Krssst
0 replies
1h43m

though one weekend of fighting NVIDIA and wayland tamed that quite a bit

Looking back on that, this was mostly self-inflicted (used Debian testing rather than stable, and upgraded from Bullseye to Bookworm then to testing rather than clean install). I like twinkering a bit so I don't mind the pain that much but this is absolutely not representative of what new users would experience: my comment was clearly wrong (cannot edit/remove unfortunately).

This is not telling at all for regular stable distributions (Debian stable, Fedora). In general I had pretty good experiences with clean installations of those.

fckthisguy
1 replies
19h39m

Adoption on desktop is 100% more related to Steam support, at least in the gaming segment.

Anecdotally, among friends and colleagues, people are only staying with Windows for gaming support.

People generally dislike Windows but are forced to stay their for gaming. As support for Linux improves, they'll be less willing to put up with Windows' BS.

shortrounddev2
0 replies
3h46m

I'm one of the rare people on HN who likes using windows as a software development platform

wiseowise
0 replies
20h16m

Not as a desktop.

randyrand
4 replies
19h38m

And they only take a 30% cut! Practically altruism.

gumballindie
2 replies
18h44m

That’s messed up indeed.

sph
1 replies
8h30m

They should do like everybody else, take 30% cut and NOT improve Linux.

gumballindie
0 replies
5h3m

AND spy on people, steal their data, and force sell couple of broken games.

mey
0 replies
13h18m

What is an acceptable fee structure for the service they provide?

depr
2 replies
19h35m

Without taking away from the great things they are also doing, I'm mostly amazed at how bad and laggy the Steam app is, and has been for years, on all 3 platforms I've used it on.

(I'm sure there are loads of people who have never had any issues but to me that's like people saying there are no problems with Linux on the desktop because they don't have any problems.)

gumballindie
1 replies
18h45m

It could be improved yes, but that’s an acceptable kind of issues. Steam’s important functionality works well and is reliable - package management for games. It doesnt spy on me, doesn't push crap, doesnt use dark patterns. We need more apps like steam tbh.

depr
0 replies
2h59m

I wouldn't say it works well. On some machines it takes ages to start up and will always say it's updating even though it isn't. The ingame browser that is used to view the store breaks often and thenI can't open it inside Steam at all. On Macos, the system menu completely stops working most of the time and I can't exit the app normally, I have to kill it instead.

OK, the core functionality of downloading and running games works. But I think we can expect a little bit more from a billion dollar company.

shortrounddev2
0 replies
3h42m

Personally I've been pretty disappointed with valve over the last 10-15 years because of the almost complete lack of output on their games and the way they abandon others (TF2). They'd rather squeeze more money out of steam than release new games

pawelduda
14 replies
22h3m

Ultra-bright means higher burn-in risk, or am I wrong on this one?

Edit: thanks for clarifying

SXX
6 replies
21h58m

Fortunately in case of Steam Deck it's possible to replace screen in case this become a problem in a couple of years and new parts wont cost like a new device.

eloisant
5 replies
21h50m

I hope replacement is easier than with the OG Steam Deck because to replace the screen you have to completely disassemble the device, heat to unglue the screen...

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Steam+Deck+Screen+Replacement/1...

dumptruk
2 replies
21h9m

It's one of the improvements they listed regarding repair-ability

Improved display repair/replacement to not require taking rear cover off
BlueTemplar
1 replies
17h36m

Does it still work as a very efficient SD card cutter though ?

eptcyka
0 replies
17h24m

It does.

mdhen
1 replies
21h43m

They have made a number of changes to makebit easier to fix, not sure about the screen though.

Kerbonut
0 replies
13h58m

makebit

I make this same mistake on iPhone all the time. Is it just me or does Apple need to step up their keyboard and autocorrect game?

lukevp
3 replies
22h0m

Burn-in on OLEDs is really just uneven wear. I don’t think it really matters how bright they get for that, unless panel heat is an issue at higher brightnesses.

bitwize
1 replies
18h50m

Burn-in on CRTs was just uneven wear, too, but still a pain in the ass.

macNchz
0 replies
17h48m

I remember encountering CRTs burnt in so badly it was hard to read stuff in the worst areas (e.g. the taskbar clock or login prompt) but I haven’t encountered anything remotely close to that with current OLEDs. My iPhone and TV have no signs at all, and the last device I used that had legitimately easy-to-detect burn in was a Nexus One test device that sat on my desk with the screen on all day every day while I built an Android app in 2012.

jdiff
0 replies
21h10m

Higher brightness leads to faster wear. If the wear is uneven, this leads to faster burn at higher brightness.

upon_drumhead
2 replies
21h56m

Only if you drive the display at the top end. If you end up driving in the middle, it helps prevent burn in

By counting the time each subpixel is displayed and at what brightness, a "wear level" can be determined for each pixel, using an algorithm to estimate the luminance degradation this can be compensated for. However, to do this, you must have some spare luminance headroom that gets utilized as the display gets older. Or alternatively, if the display unlocks full maximum luminance when new without saving any headroom, the algorithm would dim the other pixels over time to bring them down to the level of the burned-in pixels, so the peak luminance of the display would diminish over time as the burn-in occurs.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/why-oled-monitor-bur...

MaximilianEmel
1 replies
20h49m

Do we know if the steam deck has this feature?

dannyw
0 replies
5h41m

Just about any OLED made in the past 5 years do.

JCharante
13 replies
21h44m

This is awesome. Video production just takes so many hours for each second and I don't think people know how much work it takes until you help out on a shoot.

Satam
10 replies
14h20m

It's why AI-generated movie shots would make a lot of sense. Hollywood spends billions of dollars, builds and blows up elaborate sets, and hires 100,000s of thousands of people... just to be able to have pixels move in a pleasing way. How much of that will be cut out when we just go straight to generating pixels? CGI goes in that general direction but it's still very labor intensive.

sph
1 replies
8h34m

Calm down, Satam.

Unless that's satire. But I'm not sure it is.

Satam
0 replies
11m

Rereading what I wrote... It does sound like satire - but no, I'm serious haha. If the tech is able to deliver without compromises in quality, I think the transition would be inevitable.

iAMkenough
1 replies
1h10m

This is a surface-level argument that could be applied to literally every industry if you trivialize the product produced.

For example: NASA spends billions on research and development just to be able to push a rocket upwards into space? How much of that will be cut out when we just go straight to AI-generated plans and schematics?

It only makes “a lot of sense” if you’re willing to compromise your standards and eliminate labor no matter the consequences.

Satam
0 replies
22m

I thought about this as well but I think research activities and such might be qualitatively different, at least for now. Movies are merely looking to please our senses, on the other hand, researchers look for truths and facts about the world. It's okay to have movie visuals not based on reality, but it's usually not okay to have non-factual research.

Also, no one is going to force actors and movie studios to go full AI and those who wish can stay with the old paradigm. It will be up to customers to decide where their money goes. However, if AI allows for the same or higher quality and more creative freedom at lower costs, I'm pretty sure the old ways will get outcompeted.

aldanor
1 replies
6h21m

... and taking it one step further, humans spend millions of hours watching those shows and movies, just to be able to consume movements of some pixels and parse it into some storylines.

What an inefficient way. How much time will be saved when we go straight to computers watching that content for us and summarising it in 140 characters.

chii
0 replies
5h0m

The explosion is even more vivid in one's own imagination!

Rovoska
1 replies
4h50m

Only on hn would you have someone miss the point of art this hard. That's not art anymore, that's not creative.

Satam
0 replies
16m

Would it be wrong and not art if one wouldn't need a $100 million budget to fully execute their vision?

And art is a term that's quite ambiguous and often means different things to different people. I think you would agree that a lot of people consume movies simply as entertainment. From that perspective, it matters less where the data about pixels came from. This is coming from a person who loves movies, artsy, not artsy, and everything in between.

shortrounddev2
0 replies
3h48m

What a sad world that would be

mplewis
0 replies
8h32m

No.

iamflimflam1
1 replies
21h43m

I do a lot of YouTubing and the consensus is that every minute of video takes at least 1 hour of work - and this is just amateurs messing around.

ancientworldnow
0 replies
18h49m

In the pro world it's common for one person to spend hours on seconds, multiplied over dozens of people working on those same seconds.

tomcam
6 replies
19h0m

When I see things like that I always think about their lifecycle. The frame will be stripped of the devices for another display. It'll still hang around in some honored spot, then they'll get new staff and it will be shunted into storage. In 3 years it will be disassembled and tossed into the dumpster because no one will have room for it at home.

throwaway-432
2 replies
16h34m

I work for a company which has made a huge satellite constellation and after a revision of a hardware component has run its course thousands have made their way to space, incomplete/failing units are shredded, and only a handful are kept. When the satellites eventually burn up in the atmosphere those ~3 builds are all that remain of the entire project, thousands of man-hours to engineer and build hardware that the world will never see. I think about those few survivors a lot.

tomcam
0 replies
12h9m

Oh the pain

Fatnino
0 replies
13h30m

We know you're talking about spacex

idontknowifican
1 replies
17h0m

is there something inherently bad in this? do you feel something is lost?

tomcam
0 replies
12h7m

I do feel a twinge sometimes. I tend to get a bit too sentimental about artifacts.

ip26
0 replies
15h7m

Props, acts and jigs are always like this. In reality, a small metal structure like this is not really so precious that it need be cherished or repurposed. Metal is very recyclable. It’s function was brief in time, but relatively high in impact.

FirmwareBurner
5 replies
22h20m

Do we know who's the supplier of the OLED panel? Samnang? LG? BOE?

PrivateButts
3 replies
22h14m

Last I heard, it's the same supplier as the Switch OLED; that's why it uses MIPI over eDP. Samsung is the manufacturer I think

Hamuko
2 replies
22h13m

That's what I've heard too. And yeah, Samsung makes the Switch's panel according to iFixit's teardown.

https://www.ifixit.com/News/53272/nintendo-switch-oled-teard...

pests
1 replies
21h40m

(GP)> "same supplier as the Switch OLED"

That's what I've heard too

Is any of this confirmed or just rumor from the LTT video?

smileybarry
0 replies
20h18m

The other comment chain (2 levels above but in the same first-level thread) links to this tweet with a code screenshot that seems to confirm it:https://twitter.com/SadlyItsBradley/status/17227592388066431...

    if ((vendor_product->product == GALILEO_SDC_PID) || (vendor_product->product == GELILEO_BOE_PID)) {
        // ...
I'm assuming SDC ("GALILEO_SDC_PID") is Samsung Display [Corp?] (a search seems to confirm that's their acronym).

Philpax
0 replies
21h50m

Samsung, but BOE may be dual-supplying it:https://twitter.com/SadlyItsBradley/status/17227592388066431...

smusamashah
1 replies
16h2m

On the note of OLED increasing battery life, does anyone know the max number of hours of gameplay you can get on a single charge when the game is as simple as "snake"?

I have searched for answers on reddit and Google etc but I have only found the number to be 8hrs which is not for low power games. Given steam runs Linux and is hacker friendly, one should be able to juice it for much much longer if only early retro games are played.

chucky_z
0 replies
15h49m

8hr sounds accurate. There’s a wattage slider and you can only set it so low. You might be able to get more out of using the desktop and forcing some idle modes, however it’s impressive enough as is at a few watts and many hours on a portable Linux machine occupying less total space than a 13” laptop.

quasarj
1 replies
21h44m

Damn, no call out to DeckMate by name in the thread? Sad

jw_cook
0 replies
16h4m

I assume that's what"some Steam Deck clips made by an accessory designer on Reddit"is referring to? Going back and watching the video again, yeah, it definitely looks like Deckmate grips holding all the decks to the orb frame.

bigyikes
1 replies
21h57m

Gorgeous! It's a shame that CGI is so prevalent, because without context I would totally assume this was CGI. Some of the shots would fit right in with a Portal cutscene.

Imagine playing on the one in the center of the orb. It's the ultimate Steam Deck gaming throne.

pdpi
0 replies
19h30m

Some of the shots would fit right in with a Portal cutscene.

The music really helps sell that idea.

thih9
0 replies
9h58m

Part of me thinks this crazy, the other part wants to see this running doom with 360 vision.

karaterobot
0 replies
18h57m

I got pretty excited that it was Jake Rodkin posting this on something with the Idle Thumbs name.

extraduder_ire
0 replies
20h2m

I love how each of the decks being a proper computer made this much easier to pull off. Like, driving a display in a dummy device would probably get you the same effect, and take longer. But that's likely the route a third-party production company would take.

butz
0 replies
38m

So, how much for the orb and when we can order one?

HellsMaddy
0 replies
15h22m

Norm from Tested has a short vid on Twitter of him in the sphere:

https://twitter.com/nchan/status/1722688222713749881