Steam Frame can now track one eye only, and you choose which eye it uses

A Steam Frame can be told to track one eye and ignore the other, and told which of the two to keep. The option reached every headset on October 8, in the SteamOS 0.4 release Valve published at 23:23 UTC, which puts it under Accessibility: "Added accessibility option for users who want to limit eye tracking to a single eye. VR Settings -> General -> Track Dominant Eye Only. (requires enabling 'show advanced settings')".

The dominant eye setting decides which eye drives spectator view and screenshots. Image: Valve

A second control decides which eye that is: "Users can now specify their Dominant Eye in VR Settings. This controls which eye is used for spectator view, screenshots, etc."

Spectator view and screenshots follow the eye you pick

Eye tracking is not decoration on this headset, and Valve's own wording hands the dominant eye two jobs beyond tracking: the view a spectator sees, and the view a screenshot captures. Owners got an on-screen sign that someone is watching that view in a client build on October 6, so the dominant eye setting decides what that watcher gets.

Spectator view got attention of its own in the same release. Valve writes that it "is now smoothed by default", reachable "on PC via Steam > Settings > Remote Play, or any device that supports Steam Link", with a developer toggle to switch the smoothing off again. So the picture a Frame sends out to a watching PC is now steadier, and the owner chooses which eye it comes from.

After screenshots, Valve writes "etc." and stops. It does not say what else the choice touches, whether the headset keeps running both eye cameras when the limit is on, or what an application that asks for both eyes receives. It gives no reason for the setting, names no condition and describes nobody it is for. The switch also sits behind "show advanced settings", so it is not somewhere an owner stumbles across it.

It took 12 days to reach everyone

Neither control is brand new. The dominant eye choice first appeared in the SteamOS 0.4.1 beta of September 26 at 03:19 UTC, and the single-eye limit followed in the 0.4.3 beta of October 1 at 18:23 UTC, both behind the Frame beta channel that owners had to opt into through Settings, System, System Update Channel. The notes were read at 21:36 UTC on October 10.

What changed on October 8 is who has them. SteamOS 0.4 is the first 0.4 build Valve has released without the beta wording, and it carries 22 changes that beta testers had been running for days, including the presence sensor control for glasses spacers from 0.4.4. For most of that list the wait cost owners a few conveniences. This one is the item in the release that decides whether the headset suits somebody at all, and Valve's whole account of who it is for is "users who want to limit eye tracking to a single eye".

The two controls arrived separately and waited different lengths of time. The dominant eye choice sat on the beta channel for 12 days and the single-eye limit for seven, and both rode through the 0.4.4 and 0.4.5 betas unchanged before 0.4 carried them to everyone.

Valve gives no build number and no word on whether more accessibility settings follow. The two lines are the whole of it, and for the people they are for they are the most useful thing in the release.