The $150 Arcturus Vision Camera gives Steam Frame a color passthrough view that Road to VR's reviewer found sharp enough to read a phone. He could not read one through Frame's built-in, low-resolution grayscale cameras. For owners who use the real-world view throughout a session, that is a practical upgrade.
The 10-gram module plugs into an expansion port under the headset's nose bridge. The reviewer says it takes over passthrough immediately, without a restart. Its picture appears wherever Frame normally shows the room, including the SteamVR dashboard and mixed reality games.
How good is the new view?
The reviewer puts Arcturus-equipped Frame roughly level with Quest 3 for passthrough. He also says both remain well behind Vision Pro. Much of the jump comes from Frame's weak built-in view, so the striking before-and-after result needs that baseline.
Arcturus also offers spatial video capture through its free Frame app. The reviewer says recordings can play back with depth and camera movement in the app. He cites Arcturus's capture specifications of up to 6 megapixels at 60 frames per second, or 1.5 megapixels at 120 frames per second, with 10-bit HDR. A separate Sync app transfers recordings to Windows or Mac and converts them for other headsets. Arcturus plans a Linux version. Its advertised 3D Gaussian splat capture currently calls for command-line tools and a Linux desktop with an NVIDIA GPU.
