Valve Built An Orb: The making of the Steam Deck OLED launch trailer

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/593110/view/4118051100641390121

by lesona • 2 years ago

197 45 2 years ago

store.steampowered.com

pyrolistical• 2 years ago

Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to do this with VFX?

EveryPizza• 2 years ago

Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to do this with VFX?

Yes but this seems much more fun

balls1873• 2 years ago

From the write up, it’s hard to see that this was fun.

It seems more like Chris Rock’s joke about driving a car with your feet.

wpietri• 2 years ago

As they write in the article: "we wanted to shoot it practically (with actual cameras) to show off the new screen"

Because VFX can show anything, a synthetic video tells you nothing about the actual brightness of the screen. Which was their whole point: "Then, as we began to the see the new screens around the office, we were shocked. We knew we'd spec'd bright, OLED screens, but these things were EXCEPTIONALLY BRIGHT. Startlingly bright."

larkinrichards• 2 years ago

unlikely. They'd already created the prototype decks. They had the fabrication know-how in house. Sure they have in house VFX experience, but rigging the scene and trying to match lighting to reality and ultimately disappointing customers? It's a no brainer to use the real deal when you can.

Many would hire an agency to create an ad for you but that would 10x the cost, not to mention dealing with the opinions of an outsourced creative director...

a1o• 2 years ago

Honestly looks great. Liked the short videos, the one that shows the orb in After Effects with the cut of what goes into deck screen was also very interesting.

Ages ago I saw a work that was (I think) a piece of art that reused many phones for their screens to show things in sync. I don't remember if they were early Android phones or if it was done before with screens of feature phones. But the work here reminded me of that.

dublinben• 2 years ago

If this seems familiar, this seems to be largely republishing a Fediverse thread that was originally posted back in November.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38240861

Phiwise_7• 2 years ago

Somewhat off-topic, but I've been feeling really burned by my steam deck purchase lately. When it came out, I gave Valve the benefit of the doubt there was some good reason why they weren't providing an OLED option, and bought the highest tier even though money is tight. I figured their commitment to opening the PC platform and quality hardware earned them my trust on that. Now what am I supposed to do? Sell my model and take a bath on the used item depreciation to get a worthwhile screen? Buy a second device with pretty much identical performance otherwise? Pay for the screen I should have been able to choose separately and go through the headache of replacing it myself? This is tripping at the finish line, especially since I waited a massive fraction of the time it took them to release this for the inferior version anyway. I get Valve prides themselves on being different than most other technology companies, but innovating on what delivering the best product you can for the money to your customer means is the wrong place to break the mold, especially for a company of Valve's profitability compared to overhead. On so many things, they could do much better at comparatively little dollar cost if they just thought wanting to was important. It's really disappointing how much this has correlated with their success.

amiantos2• 2 years ago

The original Steam Deck came out Feburary 2022 and the OLED model came out November 2023, nearly two years later.

This is tripping at the finish line

It sounds like the only person tripping here is you.

Phiwise_7• 2 years ago

The original Steam Deck came out Feburary 2022 and the OLED model came out November 2023, nearly two years later, and I got my original Steam Deck nearly one year after giving Valve my money.

Closi• 2 years ago

Now what am I supposed to do?

I don’t know, maybe just live with your existing screen?

It’s not like it’s mandatory to have the latest version of something, and it’s pretty common for companies to iterate new versions with improvements.

Phiwise_7• 2 years ago

Now what am I supposed to do? Sell my model and take a bath on the used item depreciation to get a worthwhile screen? Buy a second device with pretty much identical performance otherwise? Pay for the screen I should have been able to choose separately and go through the headache of replacing it myself?

skinner927• 2 years ago

I agree. When Intel released the i7, I was pretty upset they were holding out all that tech and left me stranded with my Pentium 4.

Phiwise_7• 2 years ago

This is a mystifyingly bad comparison. Did Valve invent OLED? Did the Steam Deck release before that invention?

NikolaNovak• 2 years ago

I get the FOMO, But I have the original steam deck too and it's still great. Yes two years later something slightly better came out. No its nowhere nearly different enough for me to bother or be bothered. Technology changes but steam decks selling point was never that it would be bleeding edge technology (in fact there are many devices out with far higher specs) . It's a well thought out ergonomic device with great ecosystem. And the killer feature for many is the flawless sleep system which is there in our og unit :). Hopefully you don't end up too bummed out for too long that something slightly better came out two years later.

zachromorp• 2 years ago

This comment doesn't pass my Turing test

Phiwise_7• 2 years ago

rsynnott• 2 years ago

Yes, indeed, once you, specifically, buy a thing all iteration on the thing should stop.

... Eh?

Phiwise_7• 2 years ago

Allow me to suggest to you that this is the inverse of my actual opinion.

ErneX• 2 years ago

Your Steam Deck does everything it was meant to do even if a better model is out. This happens all the time, Nintendo also released an improved model with OLED, it doesn’t make my launch Switch worse but it’s great people have the option to upgrade to that.

branon• 2 years ago

Huh, I have TWO of the top end LCD models, bought them specifically because Valve hardware tends to be limited run and I didn't want to be left in the dust when they moved on.

Now the OLED is out, they're discontinuing the LCD models. Good thing I got two then! Feeling pretty vindicated about this.

It's all a matter of perspective. Be happy you snagged one of the rare, discontinued SKU ;)

dotnet002• 2 years ago

It isn't exactly the same as OLED, but if you really want to upgrade your screen so much, you can look into the DeckHD screen.

rkachowski• 2 years ago

[NDI] it's commonly used by modern planetariums and megachurches. It was perfect for our needs.

out of context but I love it

RunningDroid• 2 years ago

Continuing off-topic, my (very much not-mega) church used to use NDI (for overlaying the presentation onto the view of the speaker/band) but we recently switched to using an extra HDMI hub + an HDMI capture card and had a notable improvement in performance/framerate (on an underpowered laptop.)

Hamuko• 2 years ago

Glad that they didn't tear it down afterwards. Seems like a fun artifact to have around the office.

resource_waste• 2 years ago

You just wonder what the would would be like without Marketing.

Imagine we only had facts/specs of equipment in advertising, and all these people maliciously using your own psychology against you, had productive jobs where they contribute more resources/services to the world.

Steam is one of the good companies, but when I see this much effort go into marketing, it just makes me think of waste. There is poverty, environmental degradation, cancer... but hey: Look cool video to convince me to buy something.

dkdbejwi383• 2 years ago

Not to mention the waste of resources, manufacturing a bunch of computers to be used for a short period of time to create an ad to sell the same computer, before being relegated to the corner of an office to gather dust.

jeeva2• 2 years ago

I quite liked this line from the article:

We figured we would need about 100 Steam Decks to pull this off. And as luck would have it, we had that many old OLED prototypes laying around the office.

SiempreViernes• 2 years ago

I understand the feeling, but I think it is ultimately not marketings fault.

It is much more likely that the type of leadership that splurges on marketing would, if forced to put the money somewhere else, direct it to something else that directly serves their own personal needs. So if C-suit can't boost their personal brand by ordering expensive marketing, they'll more likely to spend on ostentatious offices or expensive company cars rather that headcount in in-house testing departments or getting technical writers to work on documentation.

dotnet002• 2 years ago

I feel like you're being way too cynical. You're complaining about advertising for a gaming product, which also isn't exactly something that one needs to survive. In your world where everything is only done because it is productive, gaming itself wouldn't exist.

Lio• 2 years ago

I like the reference to Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon.

For anyone interested, the story of how he was able to film by candle light[1] is a really interesting bit of engineering in the pursuit of art.

1. https://neiloseman.com/barry-lyndon-the-full-story-of-the-fa...

pityJuke• 2 years ago

Did Valve re-render the "Meet the Spy" video for that gag in the article? Could you... pretty please do an official HD remastering of it? :)

me_me_me• 2 years ago

this whole post is the most valve thing, valve has done in a while.

We built orb. Video shows building orb... there is no great reveal at the end no crescendo.

We built orb and that's it.

Love it.

l-p• 2 years ago

Looks composited to me, look at the odd wobble of the picture overlapping the Gonarch, that's not present in the original video.

OliveMate• 2 years ago

I'll always be peeved that Valve showcased Meet the Spy in SFM when they were advertising its release[1], yet never released the project files for it unlike their earlier shorts.

If they released the full project files to the public we could render our own HD remasters as we please.

[1] https://youtu.be/Zri1c_If6Ic?t=73

Valve Built An Orb: The making of the Steam Deck OLED launch trailer

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