STEAM DECK NEWS – Late last year, the OLED display version of Steam Deck hit stores, and Valve celebrated in a very unusual way… and now Gabe Newell’s company has explained it in more detail.
Last year, Valve took 100 OLED prototypes and turned them into a sphere. It was the company’s way of breaking the champagne when they launched their Steam Deck OLED model. They used it for the launch trailer because instead of using some computer graphics (which they could have done), they used a traditional camera solution to create the video for the portable PC.
Now Valve has released a video that gives a behind-the-scenes look at this. How was the sphere created, and how did they get 100 prototypes working simultaneously to light the scene? Well, the company needed a hundred prototypes, a combination of a custom and a prefabricated aluminum frame designed and built by employees in Valve’s hardware prototyping lab, and then they needed two interconnected power switches long since retired from Steam.
They also needed an old cell phone rack left over from The International that they found in the corner, all the spare network cables they’d scavenged from IT offices, dozens of Deckmate Steam Deck mounts (made by a Steam Deck community member, not yet publicly available), and hundreds of tiny 3D-printed clips, mounts, and brackets to hold it all together.
It was also a software challenge. Steam Deck is Linux-based, and in order to see the same video on all the displays at the same time, a plugin called NDI was used alongside OBS to stream the video over the LAN, but a pattern was needed to eliminate any distortion. The CAD files used in the original spherical design were straightened by Valve to map the location of all the OLED prototype displays onto a flat square, and then a high-resolution Adobe After Effects file was created to animate them.
In the end, Valve didn’t disassemble the sphere after the video, but left it in the lobby for everyone to enjoy when the power comes back on. And yes, Valve’s developers have openly stated that if they have the opportunity to create a sphere, they will. Rather than part three of any Valve IP…
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