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Steam's Big Picture Mode beta starts Monday Sep 10th [out now]

Anyone know if I should set my nvidia settings to full or limited if I'm going to be playing on the tv? My monitor has been set to limited and I've just been playing on the pc. Not sure if that is right.
 
This is slick, but does VRAM usage scale? I was watching a video from the store and saw I spiked to 1.49GB of VRAM usage. Is this just because I have 2GB? Surely they can't require that for everyone, or there's going to be a lot of people with lousy performance in the client.
 
It actually does work in a sort of borderless window mode when I want to interact with the other screen, that's neat.

The button prompts also change on the fly (like they should) when you use kb/m or a 360 controller.

Still can't get my custom icons to work, they're displayed correctly in the regular Steam view (obviously) and the Recently Played list in BPM, but not when I browse through my library in BPM. Funnily enough, I've seen some wrong images popping up for shortcuts - like getting the original Team Fortress icon (which I don't even own) for Diablo III. :lol

So clearly there's something still iffy there.
 
1-D_FTW said:
This is slick, but does VRAM usage scale? I was watching a video from the store and saw I spiked to 1.49GB of VRAM usage. Is this just because I have 2GB? Surely they can't require that for everyone, or there's going to be a lot of people with lousy performance in the client.
Click to expand...

Steam UI to have a higher PC requirement than valve games?
 
neva- said:
The dpad works fine in the webbrowser, must be a bug.
Click to expand...

I still don't think it's a bug. As you say, the D-pad works for some things (back/forward/home/bookmark in the browser) but not for general GUI navigation (nor in the browser menu you get when pressing X). What that tells me is that they simply left the latter out.

mrklaw said:
On your monitor or TV? If TV, do you have the resolution and zoom modes set correctly? Ideally BOM would have a calibration screen like console games, but it's possible your TV is adding overscan and cropping your image?
Click to expand...

Nope, this has nothing to do with anything like that, I Also, overscan obviously wouldn't show up in a screenshot even if that was the case. Are you telling me it doesn't look like that for you? Could you take a screenshot of the same thing?

ShaneB said:
Ehhhh.. I'm more of the mindset that a beta is pretty open ended in what it can be. They've clearly specified they are taking suggestions whatnot in what will make BPM great. I see the potential, it's definitely awesome, but does need some work. I don't like how linear things are, scrolling through friends and games and whatnot can take ages.
Click to expand...

Well, if they're gonna keep adding a lot of features before this goes live they should have called it an alpha, because then that's what it is. A beta is about bug testing and fixing, not adding new features.
 
So i can still buy games from the Steam website inside Steam Big Picture mode, inside the Steam client.

TmEY8.jpg
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Absolutely love it so far. Slick, runs smooth, and chatting with the "daisy wheel" is easier than I anticipated. I wasn't excited about it like some people but I could find myself using it quite a bit after having played around with it. One thing I noticed though was that after going to Youtube in the broswer and watching a video in fullscreen, I couldn't exit fullscreen using the 360 pad. I pressed every button and nothing worked. Had to exit using kb/m. Anyone else run into this issue?
 
You can even start it using the X360 Home button while Steam is minimized to the taskbar. This is amazing.

I hope they'll make the presentation for the achievements a bit more elegant.
 
I really like it, not a big controller person but if I ever do just want to use one this will be great.

However there needs to be an option to only show games with native controller support.
 
My Steam now launches automatically into Big Picture mode :)

Since I use a TV as my monitor at the moment, I think I'm going to leave it that way.
 
It works faster than Steam's default UI does. So now they have to match themselves, because that situation is just unacceptable.

Haven't checked it all out, but it seems to be fairly amazing and feature complete. Probably the coolest thing Valve has done since Dota 2.
 
Posting from the built-in web browser to GAF. This is pretty nice.

And yeah, definitely more XBMC than Windows 8.
 
EatinOlives said:
So, big picture mode is amazing but unfortunately I already have several complaints.

  1. The Steam Community button is the same as the GFWL one. Pushing once brings up both. Pushing again only removes the Steam overlay. Pushing a third time removes the GFWL overlay but brings up the Steam one again. Pushing a fourth time finally removes all.
Click to expand...

Congratulations - you've experienced binary! :p

But no, no d-pad support does suck, especially since I use my ps3 controller.
 
mrklaw said:
Steam UI to have a higher PC requirement than valve games?
Click to expand...

Even regular browsing is taking me over 1GB. And I have occassional spikes to 30 percent usage on my 660ti. So it certainly uses more resources than Dead Space @1080p/60fps.

But having said that, it's worth it. Cause this shit is fast and slick.
 
Scotch said:
You can even start it using the X360 Home button while Steam is minimized to the taskbar. This is amazing.

I hope they'll make the presentation for the achievements a bit more elegant.
Click to expand...
Hmm I can't get this to happen. Just does nothing when I press home.
 
Hmm, it's interesting that the Xbox button actually starts BPM from the desktop, if no program has focus. However, when doing that it leaves my task bar on the screen, while when starting it with Steam in focus it goes into proper borderless fullscreen.

EDIT: Eh, this only seems to work some of the time. Probably isn't an intended way of doing it anyway.
 
Using the Steam overlay Games for Windows Live games is hilariously awful, since both the overlay and Xbox Guide are mapped to the same button.

You literally have to press the Guide button 4 times to get rid of all the overlays.
 
Deadstar said:
Anyone know if I should set my nvidia settings to full or limited if I'm going to be playing on the tv? My monitor has been set to limited and I've just been playing on the pc. Not sure if that is right.
Click to expand...

Those video color settings for 0-255/16-235 only affect video files, pretty sure it shouldn't matter for games or anything. But i'm also pretty sure for your computer monitor it should be set to full or use video player settings, but depending on what program youre using to play video it might not matter. MPC-HC will automatically use the right setting but VLC doesn't unless you disable hardware yuv -> rgb conversion in video settings

you can just open a video file and switch between the two options and see which one gives you blacks that don't actually look gray
 
Not a fan of that startup video. Just...a waste of time and a click.

Would be one thing if I was booting directly into BPM from boot, but i'm already in Steam, so I don't feel that little transitionary video is needed.
 
Alright. What is everyone's solution to the problem of multiple monitors? I've been trying to automate this whole issue for a while now, but this has made me really want to get it right. I have 3 monitors. 2 for PC and a 63 inch HDTV. My ATI card has presets that I created that I can just click (or hit a keyboard shortcut) to switch between, so that issue seems to be solved. My problem is audio. When I set my PC to have my TV as the main monitor I want windows to switch the audio to the HDMI. I've also got a program running that lets me switch audio inputs with a keyboard press, but it would be so much better if it would just auto switch. Anyone have any experience with Auto hotkey?
 
With how much work theyve been putting into something only a tiny percentage of people would use (hooking up PC to a TV at a distance), I have to believe Valve hardware is next
 
My Mad Catz arcade stick is not working :s

I mean the guide button and ABXY buttons work, but the stick itself doesn't move the cursor at all, regardless of which mode it's in.
 
Razek said:
They need to let you disable sounds. They are really annoying.
Click to expand...

If you're using Win7, manually disabling Steam's volume works.

SdASq.jpg


HoosTrax said:
My Mad Catz arcade stick is not working :s

I mean the guide button and ABXY buttons work, but the stick itself doesn't move the cursor at all, regardless of which mode it's in.
Click to expand...

Does the stick register as the 360's dpad? Dpad nav doesn't work as of now
 
Cartman86 said:
Do the sticks act as a d-pad? Like if you go into the browser and press up?
Click to expand...
The stick has three modes that let it act as any of the three direction controls (left analog, digital pad, and right analog).

Edit: As far as I can tell, press up doesn't do anything that I can see.
 
Visualante2 said:
It works faster than Steam's default UI does. So now they have to match themselves, because that situation is just unacceptable.

Haven't checked it all out, but it seems to be fairly amazing and feature complete. Probably the coolest thing Valve has done since Dota 2.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I wish this was more functional as a replacement for regular steam (as a regular computer application). It's fast, but all the flaws just wreck it.

jediyoshi said:
If you're using Win7, manually disabling Steam's volume works.

SdASq.jpg




Does the stick register as the 360's dpad? Dpad nav doesn't work as of now
Click to expand...

The only issue there is I would have to do that every time I start steam. Right? I can't recall if Windows has memory for those settings.

Edit: Doing a quick restart, apparently it does. That would be a good workaround for now, thanks.
 
Cartman86 said:
Alright. What is everyone's solution to the problem of multiple monitors? I've been trying to automate this whole issue for a while now, but this has made me really want to get it right. I have 3 monitors. 2 for PC and a 63 inch HDTV. My ATI card has presets that I created that I can just click (or hit a keyboard shortcut) to switch between, so that issue seems to be solved. My problem is audio. When I set my PC to have my TV as the main monitor I want windows to switch the audio to the HDMI. I've also got a program running that lets me switch audio inputs with a keyboard press, but it would be so much better if it would just auto switch. Anyone have any experience with Auto hotkey?
Click to expand...

I'm also trying to figure this out with both my TV & monitor in use simultaneously. I can see my desktop on my TV and I try dragging Steam over, but Big Picture always launches on my monitor.
 
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