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The reason I bring that up, is I have a little knowledge in acoustics and just wondered if your pc was putting out more lower frequency noise than that wood is realistically able to absorb. So, not personally interested, as all projects like this are case by case (ha, no pun intended), and moreso just if you wanted to fiddle with it more, like adding a piece of slate or sheet of rubber to the exterior or something.

I’m CURIOUS what it sounds like, but I doubt a phone recording or speaker is gonna be worth much to satisfy my dirty nerdy needs.

And it isn’t thermally throttling? If not, that’s awesome. Have you ever taken a sound meter with a spectrum analyzer and seen if there’s any frequencies you can try to kill?

I hate hearing fans and computers and have always wanted to do a project like this, but have always been concerned about heat buildup, like anyone would be. And while it LOOKS like it would be an issue… If it works, it works.

I have been on steam from the beginning (2003). I’m still an slower adopter compared to a lot of my friends from that time because I didn’t like always on drm (i still don’t). I’m well aware of the entire story of the nuanced relationship valve has with its playerbase, as well as its influence on gaming, commerce, and society as a whole. I was there, gandalf.

A LOT of people hated steam, and still do. And are very entitled to their opinions.

A lot of people also suckle the tit of grandfather gaben. And they are also entitled to their opinions.

I definitely fall somewhere in the middle. But I still hold the opinion that it only took a few years at most for steam to be accepted and its offerings to be seen as positive, with an asterisk - exactly how a lot of us older folk still feel about it. And it’s that positivity that I refer to: acceptably good enough, as long as certain stances and integrities were/are held, it would/will continue to be the cautiously chosen platform.

But my point primarily refers to that, by the time epic store started, all they had to do was understand what valve was doing and why, and not stray from that. Yet, so many years have passed, and shockingly little progress has been made.

Whereas valve, as slow as they are, are still light-years faster and actually innovate.

Epic just has their widdle thumbs up their widdle bum and complain that gamers don’t like them. When in reality, it’s just that their storefront sucks ass, always has, and for some bizarre reason STILL sucks. I give them all the chance in the world, yet it’s like… Zero effort on their part. So it’s less about “steam used to be hated and took a long time to get to now” (duh), and more about “holy fuck, epic, just put a MODICUM OF EFFORT in to have it not suck just as bad as it did on day one”

The whatnow steam logo???

Most people hated steam at first, for sure. But that didn’t really last that long. Maybe a couple years, definitely not ten.

What it sounds like is a liability…

Dude. Epic store isn’t even new anymore. Why the hell does it still suck ass and is basically the same? It took steam like, MAAAYYYYBE three or four years to be a really good storefront, and they had to pioneer it. What even is Epic’s fucking problem?

Edit: 15 years. Epic came onto the scene 15 years after valve debuted Steam. Epic has literally zero excuse and zero pity. Pathetic.

Not sarcastic, not sardonic. Just emphasis I think.

As for the votes, I don’t know what to tell you. But I’m a bit lost, now, too.

I need you to squeeze your iris a little

What part is confusing?

Uh oh, anime girl! Close the iris!

Professionalism = prioritizing getting the job done.

These people are incredibly unprofessional.

It’s like homophobia, but whimsyfunphobia

Yeah it makes me realize how short life is.

I think the same thing when I look at trees or hills or rocks or even older, human made masrony.

Those things have been there for many human life generations, and will be there for so many more.

Where I live, hiking is very popular, and it’s standard to “leave no trace”. Many people have been there before you, and many people will be there after. If you think you can leave your mark or that you’re an exception, likely, it’s only destruction of an otherwise nice thing. So people are encouraged to stay on the trail, not take shortcuts, etc.

I have a saying for myself that I’ve made recently, and it’s that “We are all just visitors here.” Sometimes it extends imagination and empathy to everything around us, even the inanimate objects like boulders. That random scraggly rock has seen many many people, most of the people pass by, some may build a relationship with the rock over their lives, but then they die and that relationship is entirely forgotten, the rock still a rock, maybe smaller, maybe more or less covered, maybe moved to a new location, but still there, watching us all pass by in our short stories, like a day’s sunlight through a window across a room.

When the entire pool is piss, it’s time to get out of the pool.

See what they don’t understand is that I, and many people like me, hate watching ads more than anything, and can, and will, stop using the entire Internet if it’s all just ads. YouTube is already so shitty that it’s basically already there, and I stopped paying for it and because it’s so shitty now, hardly watch YouTube, trending quickly to zero.

Congratulations, Google. You’re ruining everything.

I feel the need to clarify that I was half sarcastic teasing

Lmao, no, it’s exactly what it sounds like. And it’s actually GOOD too.

Hey, sometimes people are drawn to new games rather than tried and true games.

Highly depends on your vr experience and what type of games you’ve played.

Horror on VR is on a completely different level.

But some games that I put in a good pile are:

Arken age, Fujii, Zero Caliber, Contractors, Hotdogs Horseshoes and Hand Grenades, Vermillion, Kayak VR mirage, Until You Fall, After The Fall, Half-Life Alyx, Down the Rabbit Hole, Vanishing Realms, Anthro Heat, and Google Earth VR.

It’s hard to find well rounded games that are also fleshed out. You generally get one or the other. H3 (hotdogs horseshoes and hand grenades) is one example, where the guns are top tier (and oh god the mods are so extensive) and the dev is STILL releasing updates weekly, even though the game came out in like 2016 or something, which is basically the first rush of VR. H3 basically has no story or continuity, and is very much a sandbox game. The dev adds in this and that and maybe a new gamemode or map or feature, but that game is really what you make of it. And I’ve dropped a few hours in, heh.

Arken Age, on the other hand, is kind of the opposite. That’s a somewhat linear explorer adventure game with a story (it’s also a much newer game… with more Meta money), and while it has SOME depth, it’s very much NOT a sandbox game. It’s closer to a Zelda game with guns and swords. Not my personal favorite, but still fun.

The Kayak one is cool, but feels like a big dev trying to make a money grab, until you realize it’s a very small indie studio of only a few people trying to pay bills and just charge too much for dlc because they’re probably too young or overvalue their work… i personally like their dlc, even if they’re really overpriced. Like very overpriced. I think they’re charging like $20 for each map that should be 10$ for all of the existing maps. And the progression feels live-service paced (slow). But it really is nice to just sit down in VR and kayak around in a beautiful, and sometimes exciting world.

I could talk about this for a long, long time. I’ll try to wrap it up.

Half life alyx is great, but VR has conventions that are developing and coming into popularity over time. An example of what I mean is this:

On a modern pistol, you have several controls. You have the gun itself, the magazine, the magazine release, you have the slide, the slide release, and the trigger. Which buttons do you map to what? The trigger and magazine release are pretty easy, but what about grabbing the slide vs grabbing the pistol itself? What about adding on a sight? What about a scope? What if you want to zero in or adjust the scope? Can you two-hand hold the pistol? Can you partial out the magazine to check how many rounds are in it? Can you add in individual rounds to a partial magazine? Are magazines unique or can you just drop a mag and release and not waste rounds? How far in do you have to load a magazine before it pulls itself the rest of the way in? Can you manually cock a hammer?

Now, what if you have a double barrel, side by side shotgun? Or fire modes?

You get the point. It’s a lot different in VR. If you play enough games, you definitely see the trends come and go.

Back to half life alyx, that game is really good, but it’s a game from 2019, and technology and conventions can move FAST. Some stuff catches on, other stuff gets forgotten, innovation usually keeps pushing.

I think a large part of VR right now is watching and being part of this insanely young medium figure itself out in ALL of the ways. What a time to be alive.

Oh! Another thing I’ve noticed, is that older VR games, especially ones funded by meta/oculus, liked to show trailers of players superimposed over in-game footage. It’s fucking awful and cringe, but I do understand where they’re coming from, trying to show off a very new technology to the masses that HEY, THIS IS VR AND YOU HAVE ACTUAL PRESENCE. Or currently, where trailers try to show off the game by recording players ACT out stuff in game by flailing or physically reacting to stuff in game. Like shielding your face from an explosion or flailing your arms when flying through the air. Unfortunately, it looks just pre-rendered motion and once the potential buyer figures that out, it’s like realizing you’re being lied to and instantly erodes trust. But at the same time, you have to advertise to NEW vr players, who honestly DO react like that a lot of the time. Even I sometimes still flinch or fight aggressively in games that have you use swords. Like Until You Fall.

Oh, I also forgot to add Into the Radius. Those two games (1&2) are deeply flawed, but really fun stalker-type games. Best in class 100%. They’re both somehow still being developed. The mod scene in the first game is much better, but the second one is coming along nicely, and recently just had an update that added in gun PARTS. Like uppers, lowers, trigger assemblies, barrels. Real h3 mods type stuff. But all in a world of horror and supernatural anomalies and death and shooting guns. I’m holding off playing more for the devs to finish the games, which may take a year or two. They’re fun now, but they keep adding in big patches that change the game a lot and it messes with the challenge continuity for me.

Ugh. I need to cut off my spiel.

Uh, tldr: buy hl:alyx and anthro heat, and don’t sleep on Google Earth vr because it’s free. Oh, arizona sunshine is a finished product and worth actually playing through. Sorry for my adhd.

Valid question.

Honestly like not-Anal said, it usually doesn’t make a ton of sense. However, I’ve found that not all sales are created equal, and sometimes some sales are much better priced, even compared to later sales. You really have to pay attention, though.

For example, if a dev is active or WILL be active (this is where the guesswork/gambling comes in), the price of the game could go UP. I see it all the time with early access games or games that get popular. Or even with real goods, like cars or other collectables where they become more popular and either resale goes up or the manufacturer realizes they can sell it for more, or outright increases the value of the product.

Another example is when devs play fuck-fuck games with sales, trying to draw in more attention, and it works. This happens often with undiscovered games, which, in the VR space, does happen pretty often. A good place to pay attention to is the Humble Bundles, but I know this isn’t exactly relevant to the steam sales, themselves.

And also just like in real life, and similar with devs playing fuck-fuck games with sales and not all sales being created equal, sometimes certain dates are meaningful to the game or the devs. Like if the dev has a case of brainrot and on June 7th they offer a particularly good sale, or the VR sale happens once a year, or Black Friday or something.

Additionally, shopping for games can actually be a bit time consuming, so even if the prices don’t go down further, finding games ahead of time can actually be rewarding. Buying your first VR headset or a headset with new features and having no games and having to shop can be a real bummer. Imagine buying a brand new car and having no gas/power until later in the year, and then also having to get it one gallon/liter/watthour at a time. With VR games, some of them do just crash in price. But usually, almost all VR games find their equilibrium in price eventually, since the community is generally all enthusiasts who want to see the community and technology grow healthy, myself included.

And that very last point sort of applies to the previous ones, and also applies across VR in general (minus a handful of devs and won’t last if the platform gets popular since it attracts money-ghouls).

You and your good advice.

If anybody is into vr, a lot of vr stuff is on sale right now

If you wait too long, larian’s new game will be out