A $149 camera gives Steam Frame colour passthrough, and Valve lists it as compatible
The Arcturus Vision Camera costs $149 in the US and gives Steam Frame the one thing the headset cannot do on its own, colour passthrough. Valve lists the module on its own Steam Frame page under Steam Frame Compatible accessories, describing it as adding HDR colour passthrough and spatial video capture to the headset.
Arcturus's own comparison: the same street scene through Steam Frame's monochrome cameras. Image: Arcturus Vision
Arcturus, not Valve, makes and sells it. Arcturus says the module weighs under 10 grams and clips onto the front expansion port, which Valve's own spec sheet describes as a user-accessible port carrying a dual high-speed camera interface, eight MIPI lanes at 2.5Gbps, and a single PCIe Gen 4 lane. The four cameras built into Steam Frame are monochrome and there to track the headset and controllers.
Two 32MP sensors, 64mm apart
The camera uses two 32MP Sony RGB sensors spaced 64mm apart, which Arcturus says matches typical human eye spacing so that recordings keep true scale. Passthrough runs at 4928x2464 across both eyes, at 60fps by default and up to 72Hz, with 144Hz available if the resolution drops to 2464x1232.
Recording is a separate mode: 2464x2464 per eye at up to 60fps, or 1232x1232 per eye at up to 120fps, in 10-bit HDR using HLG. Arcturus gives the field of view as 125 x 105 degrees binocular and the focus range as 30cm to infinity, in a housing of curved glass, stainless steel and polycarbonate.
The order page shows $149 and ships duty paid
The order button opens a Shopify checkout at $149.00. Arcturus ships delivered duty paid to the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Switzerland, so taxes, duties and clearance charges are in the checkout total and nothing further is due on delivery.
Its terms of sale, last updated September 7, say the contract is formed only when Arcturus confirms that the product has shipped, and that the company may authorise or charge a card before it accepts an order. US buyers get a one-year limited warranty and a 14-day return window, with return postage at their own cost; elsewhere Arcturus says statutory consumer rights apply. On timing, Arcturus says only that orders ship at the same time as Steam Frame.
The apps are free and Steam Frame only
The companion app, Arcturus Vision Camera, landed on Steam on September 14, the day Steam Frame launched. It is free, wants an Arm64 processor and 550MB of storage, and its store page states plainly that a Steam Frame is required. It records spatial video up to 5K in HDR and plays recordings back in a window or immersively.
A second free app, Gaussian XR, opens 3D Gaussian splat scenes on the headset and ships with eight examples, and a desktop app called Sync pulls recordings off the headset on Windows or Mac and converts them for Apple Vision Pro, Meta Quest and ordinary 3D players, with Linux listed as coming. The camera itself fits nothing else: Arcturus says it is exclusively compatible with Steam Frame.
Steam Frame's bill of extras keeps growing. Valve charges $29 for the power supply, the first reviews flagged the price, and seeing the room in colour is another $149 from a company Valve does not own.
