I thought this might be useful as more and more people have gotten their Frames (me included), and many more will be getting theirs.

Me and many others have run into some problems using their Frame, so a thread listing common problems and their solutions is a no-brainer.

Right eye ghosting

This is a known issue. It manifests as “ghosting” of bright parts of the image (menus and text usually) but only in the right eye view, and only when streaming wired or wireless. It persists regardless of streaming, framerate or projection settings. It affects not just the Frame, but other headsets like the Quests as well.

The fix is currently in the beta branch, update SteamVR on both your host system and the Frame to fix it.

Dongle not detected

The wifi chip in the dongle requires kernel 7.2 or newer. I was on the LTS kernel on my Endeavour OS install, so that was one part of the problem.

Valve has a troubleshooting script for linux users available, which for me revealed that my system had no regulatory region set.

On arch this is fixed by installing the wireless-regdb package, which provides region data. Then setting your region in /etc/conf.d/wireless-regdom by uncommenting your country.

After a reboot, the dongle shows up!

Dongle doesn’t pair

For some reason, pairing does not seem to work when attempting it from the streaming toggle button inside the Frame.

However, if I navigate to the “Remote Play” section in settings on my Frame, and do it from there, it works immediately.

Stream keeps freezing in single-link mode

Temporary solution is to just re-start the stream, but when it keeps happing, it’s because the Frame tries and fails to switch to multi-link.

To solve it, go to Remote Play in settings on the frame and disable the adaptor.

If you want to use multi-link, but it isn’t working, toggling the adaptor setting off and back on can fix the Frame failing to connect to it.

Streaming stutter

Edit: follow up post

My streams did not start off perfect. I’ve done many things to improve it, most of which are relevant to my particular router and hence not applicable to everyone.

But in general, it seems that for 6Ghz, 160Mhz channel width works better than 320Mhz. Also having ANY other device on the same connection can cause stutter. I also improved things by disabling some power saving features on the router side.

I’ve not messed with the dongle much, as I have a far more powerful router with much better coverage of my play space. Using it for the 6Ghz connection did not seem to work better than the router for me, but I’ve seen others get the best result by using ONLY the dongle, and disabling the LAN+WiFi stream entirely.

SteamVR desktop mirroring does not work

This seems to simply be broken on linux?

I’m using WayVR for this instead. You can add it to Steam so you can launch it from the Frame after starting a stream from your PC.

Other problems or solutions to bring up? Comment please!

Edit: added info on my recent discovery on how to fix stream freezes in single-link

  • Cricket@lemmy.zipEnglish
    2·
    12 hours ago

    For opensuse tumbleweed users: Installing wireless-regdb like the instructions in the OP seems to be required in tumbleweed as well. After that, I was able to use ‘sudo iw reg set’ to set the wireless regulatory domain. Before installing wireless-regdb, that command ran but had no effect on the wireless regulatory domain that was set.

    Note that the above does not set it permanently. In order to do that, I had to run the following command (replace XX with the desired regulatory domain two-letter code):

    echo "options cfg80211 ieee80211_regdom=XX"|sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/cfg80211.conf

  • Ascense@lemmy.zip
    1·
    5 days ago

    For the desktop mirroring, if you are using Wayland, have you tried starting Steam with the -pipewire argument? Seems to be required for me for Steam to request the necessary permissions to capture the desktop for streaming.

  • vividspecter@aussie.zone
    1·
    5 days ago

    It’s interesting that an unset region for the dongle causes issues, as it has generally not been a problem with wifi adapters in the past for me. Must be something specific to this adapter, or it’s interaction with the Frame.

    EDIT: It seems that 6GHz is disabled in the world domain, according to this NixOS wiki article, so that would explain the benefit of setting the region.

    • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyzOP
      1·
      5 days ago

      6GHz is not globally legal. That part of the spectrum is used for other stuff, too, not just wifi. Unless software (and in some cases hardware) can verify in some way that they are in a region where that spectrum is allowed to be used, they won’t put out a single signal in that range. Phones and laptops often check whether other 6GHz devices are around. If they are, they will usually allow you to at least connect to 6GHz networks, simply assuming that if devices that create such networks are nearby, then they must be legal wherever you are.

      But the dongle CREATES the 6Ghz network. That’s why it needs to be extra sure. That is also why the warning on the Arch wiki page I linked about ABSOLUTELY NOT setting your region to anything other than what it actually is, is so serious.

  • Björn@swg-empire.deEnglish
    1·
    6 days ago

    To add non-Steam games you can use the commandline tool steamos-add-to-steam. You have to adjust it to be able to add apk files. Just add “application/vnd.android.package-archive” to the list at the bottom.