Valve has announced its first headset in over six years - the ARM-powered Steam Frame - alongside its console-like Steam Machine, but what we didn't get at the event was any kind of software reveal. Rumours persist of a new Half-Life chapter in development, but we were also hoping to see the existing Half-Life: Alyx running in standalone form on the new headset. For now, Valve is recommending streaming the game from a separate PC, but there is a desire to get the game running with good performance "natively" on Steam Frame.

"Half-Life: Alyx is a great experience when streamed from a PC to Steam Frame, and we are looking into making it a good standalone experience as well," Valve told us last night.

In theory, Half-Life: Alyx should run on Steam Frame already, barring incompatibilities with the new x86 to ARM translation layer, but the suggestion is that the game requires tailored optimisation to run well on the new hardware and to qualify for coveted "Frame Verified" status.

This is backed up by a report from UploadVR based on its press event impressions, which says that "Valve representatives think they can get Half-Life: Alyx running performant in standalone, but they’re not promising it yet and it’s clear there’s still a lot for them to do."

Valve's developers face multiple challenges in getting Half-Life: Alyx running directly on the headset with the high level of performance required for a good VR experience. The baseline specs for the game specify a Core i5 7500 or Ryzen 5 1600 CPU, paired with a GTX 1060 or RX 580. Those are combinations we tested five years ago, where our own Alex got a perfectly reasonable 60-90fps experience for most of play at medium settings at a 1080x1200 resolution per eye, capped at 90Hz. In the headset, the use of asynchronous timewarp produces intermediate frames to cover the "gaps" and produce a still-pleasing VR experience.

However, our coverage notes that there's not much scalability in the graphics settings and that in many scenes, the game appears to be CPU-limited on a Core i5 8400, which slightly outperforms the recommended i5 7500. Both of these factors would be a challenge in running Alyx in a "Valve-approved" manner in standalone form, bearing in mind that the Frame's graphics horsepower is more comparable with Steam Deck performance, while the CPU not only has to run game logic and prepare GPU draw calls, but also needs to run the title's x86 code through the FEX translation layer to run on an ARM-based processor.

A standalone Half-Life: Alyx experience also needs to contend with potentially limited battery life. Valve told GamersNexus that the headset uses up to 20W of power running native games, essentially giving you around an hour of battery life on the most demanding games. That's in contrast to around 7W when streaming, offering circa three hours of stamina from the 21.6Wh battery pack. Even if a standalone experience is delivered, Steam Frame remains a streaming-first product and even today's more mainstream GPUs will deliver a much richer experience.

In other news from Valve from our follow-up questions, it's confirmed that the Steam Machine uses 18gbps memory modules, offering total graphics bandwidth of 288GB/s - a missing spec point from initial disclosures. We also asked for any updates about anti-cheat compatibility with SteamOS, bearing in mind it is the biggest outstanding issue on the Linux-based operating system.

"No updates today," Valve says. "SteamOS supports all major anti-cheat solutions, and it is up to developers to decide whether or not they'd like to enable it for SteamOS."