// PC GAMER — GAMING
Valve is toying with a Steam Frame OLED and some Reddit users are already wondering whether to wait an excruciatingly long time for it even though it may never happen
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Only a month out from the launch of the Steam Frame, an OLED version is already the talk of the town. Moreover, us humans seem to have very short memories, as while this amounts to nothing more than a couple of lines in the Steam Frame source code—perhaps nothing more than someone at Valve messing around to see what happens—some Reddit users are already wondering whether this is worth waiting for instead of buying a Frame today. Oh, you lot…
In the Steam Frame source code, SteamFrameHub spotted various references to "deckard-oled" and "deckard-plano". Deckard is the codename given to the Steam Frame, so the deckard-oled branch (last edited in February) and the deckard-plano branch (last edited a few weeks ago) are some sorta version of the Steam Frame that Valve's playing around with.
I've had a quick look around the repo and, yep, deckard-oled and deckard-plano are in there. That's a very exciting prospect, as the Steam Frame's LCD displays are definitely lacking compared to VR headsets with Micro-OLED.
This excitement is not lost on some over on Reddit, who have responded to the news with various japes and bits about ditching their reservation for the existing model and instead re-enlisting for another excruciatingly long wait for the OLED model.
"Waitlist 2: Electric Boogaloo," says brantrix in a thread over at r/SteamFrame.
"Absolutely panic and cancel your reservations. Everyone knows how lightning fast Valve moves fast with development," says Runaway42.
Truth is, we're not likely to see a Steam Frame OLED for a very long time—or ever. There are the trifling matters of hardware, resolution, power, cooling, battery life, and performance all to consider. It's more than a matter of just swapping the optics in the core module—the main bit of the Steam Frame containing the displays, SoC, cooling, sensors, and more—with a couple of OLED panels.
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Here's big VR fan and regular update spotter Brad Lynch on the whole thing: