An article about her work at Oculus and Meta: XR Update

No Frame today, it looks like.

Tweet from Amanda Watson: "I'm pleased to announce I recently started a full-time engineering position at Valve! I'll be working on various things, including VR (and Steam Frame)"

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[–] 167 points 2 months ago (15 children)

Nice! 2 hours ago in case anyone was wondering how old the screenshot is.

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  • [–] 103 points 2 months ago (12 children)

    Thank you!

    Social media's use of time since posting of timestamps is so frustrating.

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  • [–] 22 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    Yes, but it makes sense in relation to other posts. It is just frustrating after longer period of time then a few minutes or hours, or when screenshot like this.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 months ago* (1 child)

    The layouts generally have room to state time in relation and the actual time. Even a simple date would be better than only relational. Most hide the real time in a hover over or click on the relational time whoch isn't captured in a screenshot.

    Social media screenshots are so common it is time to update to show both be default.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago*

    But then it wouldn’t drive you crazy, and you wouldn’t sign up and find the post just to find out the actual time

    And if you don’t make the conversion then that’s basically stealing /s ^but not really, they actually think like this^

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    I think the compromise is a visual indicator of age - color or an icon indicating recency, in addition to a good old fashioned date timestamp.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

    I'm not a fan of coloring for age of post. Usually the compromise is, when mouse hover it will show the actual date in a on hover popup. How about when clicking the time it changes to a timestamp (and back) or while mouse is hovering / touching the time it changes on the fly (without any hover tip, Edit: I just realized that most people don't use a mouse on their phone :D also this would require dynamic changing with JavaScript).

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  • [+] -6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    But that’s perfectly fine if you’re not screen grabbing and posting elsewhere?

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  • [–] 114 points 2 months ago (6 children)

    I wish I could have a cool job like that instead of this soul crushing one I've ended up with

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  • [–] 19 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Jobs at Valve or Meta are very demanding and people can usually only cope with it if your life is your job and the many hours don‘t feel like working. These people are obsessed with what they are doing. It can be very soul crushing if you either loose that passion or want to have a life outside your job (like friends, a romantic partner, a time intensive hobby etc.).

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago
    • Valve handbook (if you read between the lines)
    • Working at Valve: 'A Fearless Adventure' or 'Lord of the Flies'?
    • Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley

    Note: I am not saying this is bad practice. These companies try to offer you the best work environment and a very good salary. If you like working then this right for you and it will not necessarily feel like work. Also things might have changed in the last few years at Meta.

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  • [–] 110 points 2 months ago (6 children)

    Good for her. Valve doesn't run on the same talent recycling process you see in much of the industry. They're small and retain talent.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago (5 children)

    I agree with the sentiment, and I'm sure Valve are one of the better companies to work for, so I'm happy for her...

    But Valve aren't small.

    They ARE the PC gaming industry. They generate billions in revenue and control something like 75% of the global PC distribution market. I know they keep trying to sell themselves as just a small company, because they're a small internal team, but I really wish they'd snap out of it and scale up a bit to match their market. Especially when talking about their hardware side. I live in New Zealand, and the number of conversations I've had with people who have gone to some pretty extreme lengths to get a hold of Valve hardware is ridiculous. I'm not even talking about the new stuff, I mean the damn Steam Deck. I find it incredibly frustrating to hear people refer to them as a small company. Jolla is a small company. Valve is not.

    Anyway, sorry, /rant

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  • [–] 14 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Neither Jolla nor Valve are small companies, 200 and 350 (ish) employees respectively. But company size has nothing to do with revenue or profit, it's literally just people on the payroll and a cutoff of your choosing.

    I don't think it's really fare to compare the distribution capabilities of a hardware company vs a software/service company, though. And doesn't this hiring kind of imply they're expanding their hardware side?

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  • [–] 21 points 2 months ago* (2 children)

    From employee count they both would easily fit the legal US definition of a small business, as that's usually 500 or fewer, but can be as high as 1500 in some industries, depends what they'd be classified as.
    Some are just directly about revenue too, so you could in theory be too big to be a small business even if it's just a single person - and by that standard, Valve is obviously not fit to be a small business.

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  • [–] 32 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Wouldn't it be great if turning that giant valve actually did something. Like...I dunno, someone in the next room shouts "turn that back on right now !"

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  • [–] 55 points 2 months ago

    It's great if you can work for a company that hires the actual smart people instead of management.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 months ago
    [–] 16 points 2 months ago

    Congratulations to her on getting the job

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  • [–] 15 points 2 months ago

    It's cool that she was hired. Let's hope more VR hardware is released from Valve in the near future.

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  • [–] 45 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

    I am extremely hopeful about steam frame. Wikipedia says it will still run linux like steamdeck.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    I really think they need to do a Frame Lite that just does streaming. A 16GB ARM powered standalone device was probably a great idea two years ago, but now we have all this. *gestures to fucking everything*

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

    Considering Valve's customer base, this is really what I expected out of the Frame. I find it odd that they focused on standalone compute alongside a novel streaming function (foveated streaming) when the two are mutually exclusive in gaming use.

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  • [–] 54 points 2 months ago (18 children)

    Very cool! You known what would also be cool? Releasing the damn thing!

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  • [–] 47 points 2 months ago (16 children)

    Given the current chip market there'd be a 400+ USD upcharge from the previously stated price of "below the (Valve) Index"

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  • [–] 12 points 2 months ago (7 children)

    What's upcharge? Is that like updog?

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  • [–] 12 points 2 months ago (4 children)
  • [+] -15 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (7 children)
  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago

    It's more than good enough for CPU imo but the GPU is going to really struggle. I think though most people just want onboard processing for the foveated streaming support and plan to use it with an actual PC, where I've heard the headset is extremely comfortable and lightweight despite what is then an overspecced processor

    For standalone it should be faster than a Quest 3, so I think it's a stretch to call it outdated, it's still not great though

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    It might be outdated, but it won't be overpriced. Meta made it clear their next headset will not be subsidised. And Pico are saying their next headset will be a Apple Vision Pro competitor.

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  • [+] -1 points 2 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    It's not overpriced if that's what components and comparable hardware costs now and in the future, it's just the new normal.

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  • [–] 20 points 2 months ago

    Ohhh! I like that!!! Fuck Meta!

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  • [–] 10 points 2 months ago

    Good for her. And for us!

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  • [–] 26 points 2 months ago (8 children)

    I love it when people demolish stereotypes. Nice work.

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  • [–] 24 points 2 months ago (7 children)
  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago

    That engineers can't have awesome style obviously. Too long have we suffered under the burden that we all dress like dweebs, sometimes with a really bad attempt at dressing cool, but here she is actively challenging that stereotype

    (But fr I absolutely love the skirt + leather jacket look and am making a note to try it at some point)

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Amanda after 15 mins: wait, don't we want to steal every piece of data of every user??

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago

    Even valve is poachin' gee whilickers.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (10 children)

    Has there been any news on some kind of proper VR desktop? Not a version of windows but something that is a new OS shell and can be used with a keyboard and allows task switching and using multiple VR apps at once?

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago* (2 children)

    There are multiple such projects, for example: https://wiki.vronlinux.org/docs/fossvr/stardust/

    But the same wiki mentions a few more.

    The problem is that the hmd resolution isn't really good enough for reading small text.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (1 child)

    Thanks! And yeah I expect higher resolution to be the real killer app for VR. Once you can actually replace a multi monitor setup with VR?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    I was told the Apple headset's resolution is like the lower limit in resolution for that to work ok, so I guess those type of screens will come to more affordable HMDs some time in the future.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (5 children)

    did you forget that Linux exists?

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    It should definitely be on the basis of linux, but not really what I mean. I mean a UI OS shell optimized for VR and things like eye tracking and controllers and how to switch from controller to keyboard. This is like an unsolved problem afaik. Like IOS and android designed a new shell for a non-desktop platform. I read a bit about Apple Vision Pro how they designed their UI widgets with eye tracking in mind.

    At the minimum I want to be able to play a VR game like Elite Dangerous and pull up a video chat panel or browser window / notepad to look up stuff without exiting the game.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago* (3 children)

    reminds me of that one episode of community

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Which one? It's been a while and I haven't seen the last season I think.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    oooh sry cant remember the specific season/episode, but it revolved around the dean and superintendent getting hooked on a experimental vr operating system iirc

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    Now if they hire Guy Godin as well, the wireless VR dream team will be complete

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Is it true that their only like 5 engineers (exaggerated obviously and rule all of valve code)?

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