Valve Leaks Upcoming Proton Support For ARM Devices

From Microsoft's docs: Arm64EC ("Emulation Compatible") enables you to build new native apps or incrementally transition existing x64 apps to take advantage of the native speed and performance possible with Arm-powered devices - from that I'm guessing that valve is preparing for windows messing around with executable formats

Maybe Froid is a reference to the F-Droid app store

It's probably because of the new Wayland frog protocols

ARM. As much as I love what ARM has done for portable computing, well. UGH. I have lived through enough ISE changes under Apple to know that going this route, especially for gaming, is a nasty hack. They may be forced to go this route, but let me say now that I’m not looking forward to this nasty period to transitioning to ARM for gaming and emulating the ISE of older games. Perhaps JIT will save the day, but I don’t have much hope.

Currently the best chip in a standalone VR headset in terms of raw power and vr/xr computing is in the Vision Pro headset so unless Qualcomm manages to get to m2 level performance that match the Apple Vision Pro there is speculation that the next valve headset would utilize potentially a apple silicon chip of some sort IMO the only chip company that makes more sense then apple is NVIDIA which they do have arm chips that are class leading compared to the other chips makers

Wasn’t the stream decks code name vanguard or at least the chip that amd made for it?

Tux Racer FTW

Deckard supporting android .apks via waydroid makes perfect sense. Most android games for standalone headsets are running on android. This allows the potential for developers to more easily port their existing standalone VR titles to Deckard whenever it releases.

Playing Space Pirate Trainer and Pistol Whip helps you get over VR sickness. People call it "getting their VR legs"

That frog droid is epic

FEX emulator is nothing like WINE (Wine Is Not Emulator - is in the name). It is actually completly different tools. WINE do not emulate, this is not needed for intel game running on intel, ARM is a different arch and emulation is needed there.

I remember my wine struggles circa 99. Steam Deck is everything I hoped it would have been by 15 years ago, lol.

A custom Arm-box (whatever form it may take) from Valve would make sense, considering that once Proton got mature enough they released the Deck

The wukong and vanguard versions might be 'knife' versions for those games

Glory to Gaben!

Steam On Linux exists because Valve have seen the Future of Windows beeing a Walled Garden...

waydroid already works on arm. atleast for me

I don't think Proton expanding to include x86-to-ARM translation makes much sense. If your goal is to run Windows software on Linux on gaming-capable hardware, then unless there are lots of Windows-x86-to-Linux-ARM mappings that are more straightforward than the corresponding Windows-x86-to-Linux-x86 mappings (which I highly doubt), you would be taking on a lot of extra workload for a result that's just worse than using x86 hardware.

If you want to be very forward-looking and prepare for a future where ARM has eaten up a lot of x86's market share for gaming specifically, then I'd argue that you might as well be just a bit more forward-looking and focus on RISC-V instead of ARM.

The one suggestion I haven't heard is that Valve wants to allow people to download games to their phones and use the Steam Mobile App to launch them using Proton

imagine
just imagine
Crysis running "almost natively" on a raspberry pi 5.

How about Windows games on Android Steam? 🐸

And they're funding "build infrastructure" because they want SteamOS on every processor I presume

Insane.

"ec" appears to stand for Emulation Compatible

I hope this means we can get games running on a raspberry pi, i would LOVE that to make something like a pi remote play box for lightweight games

The team Behind asahi linux was working with fex for make some game Playable on their os i Wonder if they are involve in this

finally, macs can game

say IF valve is moving steamdeck to arm64, then the only "partner" i can think of valve to do this with is NVIDIA. maybe nvidia could make a custom chip specifically for the next steamdeck. something that is even more than what you will find in switch 2. (something with render device equivalent to the power efficient RTX 4060)

I know Wukong is also a Chromebook, but it's x86

Cant wait to start playing games under proton on a smart toaster.

Having recently built laptop with ARM SBC, this is interesting. Didn't really make this device for gaming, but if it can do some gaming i may use it for that.

Vanguard is another way of saying, tip of the spear, bleeding edge.

I know this is all speculation but geez, I so want Valve overtake Zucc and his Meta Quests.

I think I bought 20 of those initial games to support the initiative

So are you saying there's a leaky valve???? (I'll see my way out)

More and more of the same.. with 'the same' being good enough already! Still Linux suffers from a huge lack of good drivers, a decent sound system and the lack of some important applications.

We are one step closer to proton on macOS bros

Based on my .zshrc aliases, ec means emacsclient 😊

Maybe it's a VR headset they intend for people to play both VR games and flatscreen games on that uses an ARM mobile CPU/GPU for wireless & mobile VR gameplay. Like a Quest 3 running a Linux OS with an ARM chip or something.

My guess is that they want to be able to install Steam on an Android phone. The mobile gaming market is huge

seeing the focus from brands like Qualcomm for desktop/laptops and rumors of Nvidia working with Mediatek for making CPU's for desktops, the idea of an ARM based gaming device doesn't sound as unlikely as it used to be. The market in general is getting interesting with more hybrid workspaces and hybrid devices. This can extend to potential hybrid gaming systems (like using Laptops/ Handhelds with eGPU's or docking stations)

IMO, Valve is currently planting a seed for Proton-ARM, just in case ARM based systems are getting popular. Then, it will be up to Hardware Manufacturers to develop compatibility with those ARM-Based systems.

It's time to get Arm-gaming kick started. I've been so frustrated by the power these chips have for years now, and yet nobody is developing great games tuned for them.
I was amazed by what games they could get running on that old potatoe-arm in the Switch. I'm sure the new Switch will kick Sony to the curb, with an up to date arm chip and well optimized games.

A Linux VR Headset running on ARM would be amazing.

Thats why it is called Autoscroll 🙂

This being the Deckard makes sense to me, arm based and running android.From the documentation it seems waydroid could be used to bind to the headset directly from a container? : " The Android system inside the container has direct access to needed hardware through LXC and the binder interface. " ? I currently own a Valve Index and do my VR gaming almost exclusively on Linux. As such Ive been following the Deckard for a while now. Hopefully we get more info soon.

Playing steam games on android devices would be cool.

This would be amazing and add excellent additional battery life for the steam deck and i would definitely get it as soon as possible

As a RISC-V Desktop user I need RISC-V emulation.