Steam Frame ships with MONOCHROME PASSTHROUGH. A $149 clip-on module from Arcturus Vision is the accessory Valve lists to put HDR COLOR back into the room — and to turn the headset into a tracked SPATIAL VIDEO recorder.
Per Mixed News reporting by Michael Zelich on September 22, and UploadVR’s earlier hands-on, the ARCTURUS VISION CAMERA attaches to Steam Frame’s front EXPANSION PORT. Arcturus — not Valve — makes and sells it. Valve’s own Steam Frame page lists the module under STEAM FRAME COMPATIBLE accessories and describes it as adding HDR colour passthrough and spatial video capture.
What the Module Specs Claim
Arcturus’s product page and the Mixed News write-up agree on the hardware outline. The camera uses two 32MP SONY RGB sensors spaced 64 mm apart — near average human IPD — in a housing under 10 GRAMS. Passthrough defaults to 60FPS at 5K stereo (4928×2464), with up to 72HZ at that resolution and up to 144HZ if resolution drops to 2.5K.
UploadVR’s David Heaney breaks the same modes as FULL RESOLUTION (2464×2464 per eye, up to 72Hz) and HALF RESOLUTION (1232×1232 per eye, up to 144Hz, labeled experimental). Arcturus warns that higher refresh rates can show flickering or banding under artificial light.
Recording, Stabilized Playback, Gaussian Tools
Recording is a separate mode: up to 2464×2464 per eye at 60fps, or 1232×1232 at up to 120fps, in 10-BIT HLG HDR. The twist UploadVR calls out is that Arcturus also saves the headset’s TRACKED POSE for each frame. That enables STABILIZED IMMERSIVE PLAYBACK inside VR — the recorded view moves with the original capture path — plus a recommended Linux/Nvidia workflow for building GAUSSIAN SPLATS.
Three free Steam apps ship with the product line: Arcturus Vision Camera (Arm64, Steam Frame required), GAUSSIAN XR for on-device splat viewing, and Sync on Windows/Mac to pull recordings and convert them for Apple Vision Pro, Meta Quest, and ordinary 3D players. Recording in the companion interface still shows as COMING SOON in some screenshots, per Mixed News.
Price, Checkout, and the Growing Bill of Extras
Shopify checkout shows $149 in the United States. Arcturus says it ships delivered duty paid to the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Switzerland, and that orders ship at the same time as Steam Frame. The camera is exclusively compatible with Frame. Steam Frame’s own 45W POWER SUPPLY is already a separate $29 Valve add-on; colour vision is another $149 from a company Valve does not own.
UploadVR, evaluating a unit ahead of its full Steam Frame review, already calls the module an ESSENTIAL ADDITION for seeing the room clearly in the home interface or while playing flatscreen games — with a BATTERY LIFE tradeoff while the cameras run. This post is distinct from today’s prescription-insert story and from Cubism’s monochrome Frame passthrough update; those cover lenses and a game build, not the color camera accessory.