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Valve appears to be working on an upgraded version of the Steam Frame. The findings come from SteamFrameHub, a community publication dedicated to Valve’s VR headset, which analysed the Steam Frame kernel source code that Valve recently made public. The code has been mirrored to GitHub and contains branches specifically dedicated to an unreleased device codenamed Plano, revealing a significant display upgrade over the current model.
According to the source code analysis, Plano uses a pair of displays with a resolution of 3552x3840 per eye and support for up to a 90Hz refresh rate, with Valve apparently experimenting with getting 120Hz working. SteamFrameHub believes these are the same MicroOLED panels used in the Samsung Galaxy XR, likely manufactured by Sony or Samsung.
The catch is that Plano shares the same chip as the current Steam Frame, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which creates a significant bandwidth bottleneck. As a result, the default rendering resolution will be half the native panel resolution at 1776x1920 per eye, with an experimental 1.5x mode pushing up to 2368x2560 at the cost of performance.
The more technically interesting detail is how Valve plans to address the chip’s limitations: through foveated scaling, a hardware-level feature built into the OLED panel’s display controller that increases pixel density in the specific area a user’s eyes are focused on. This is distinct from foveated rendering, which adjusts detail in the game scene, and from foveated streaming, which selectively transmits pixel data from a remote PC.
By doing the scaling at the display hardware level rather than in software, Valve can give the impression of higher resolution while keeping bandwidth and processing demands in check. Code references show the Plano branch began development in December 2025, paused in February 2026, and resumed on a dedicated branch from March through to just a few weeks ago in early October.
SteamFrameHub is clear that Plano is not coming soon. The code is described as very incomplete, and the site’s author suggests late 2027 is the earliest realistic window for the device to ship. No price has been confirmed, though the expectation is that it would land at or above the Samsung Galaxy XR’s price point. Valve has not commented on the findings.
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