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CAD files for the external shell (surface topology) of Steam Deck (steamos.cloud)
317 points by sohkamyung on Feb 12, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 130 comments



> As mentioned in our “Take a look inside Steam Deck” video, you have every right to open up your Steam Deck and do what you want with it.

The fact that they wrote this into the readme, even though strictly speaking it's unrelated to the outside topology, makes me wanna work for valve.

They're seriously one of only a few tech companies I really admire, and that's despite the fact that I don't have much inclination towards gaming.


My belief is that they're flush with Steam money, and hardware isn't core to their business. If anything, they want to expand the PC gaming ecosystem, which is already very DIY and mod-friendly.

Thus, they can afford to set themselves apart from the likes of Apple and tell their customers to have fun.

Pessimistically, I imagine that if their hardware business boomed exponentially, their support costs would rise and the hardware designers would be pressured to reduce PEBKAC risks...


People look at companies too cynically here. While obviously Valve wants to make money, they also have a culture and values that don’t always align with a Homo Economicus perspective. Not all of Valve’s actions can be trivially explained as the fastest route to dollars.

Unlike most companies we discuss here, Valve is not publicly held, and doesn’t seem particularly interested in being so. That, combined with their dominance of the PC gaming market, means their culture is more free to let them target things orthogonal to making money, when the whim strikes them.


Yeah, I think we really should see difference sometimes between public and private companies. And on extension companies that aim to be public or sold like most VC backed startups.

The public aim to make as much money as possible or at least increase valuation. The private however can be content with making enough of it. Which can really change the long term plans.

Also being public company and not increase enough valuation always runs the risk of being acquired and someone else doing it.


They worry less about money because they have so much of it. Steam’s 30% cut of all game revenue is a lot. It’s different at companies that have to worry about making money.

Speaking of which, there’s a lot of negative sentiment around these parts for Apple and Google taking 30% of their stores (“rent seeking”), but not so much around Valve for doing the same. Possibly because HN skews more towards app developers who pay fees to the former and less towards game developers.


I think Steam gets a pass on that more than Apple/Google because Steam is just one of many avenues for selling a game on the PC whereas Apple has a monopoly on it and Google have an effective monopoly.


Exactly, game developers publish on Steam because they want to be on Steam while the App Store is the only way to publish for iOS and the Play Store is also heavily favored by the Android OS to make other avenues for publishing apps unrealistic. That said, a large value of Steam is the network effect (users wanting to have everything in the same store/launcher, friends on Steam for multiplayer) rather than platform features that others could directly compete with so I don't think the cut Valve takes is beyond criticism.


Steam allows you to generate keys that you then sell (or give away) on other stores. With no cut for them (purely third-party information, I have no personal insight), but the same UX as if someone had bought it on Steam.

That alone makes a huge difference and is nothing that either Apple or Google offer.


This. There are some limitations on how many keys you can request, but it's purely to stop abuse. E.g you can't ask for million keys for title that sold 10 copies, but it's super easy to get tens and hundred thousands of keys if your title is modestly popular.


At the end of the day though, those keys are only redeemable on the Steam platform and serve Valve's interest in keeping users within the Valve eco-system.

As an existing Steam user though, this is great for me! It means one less third party DRM platform I need installed.


Well, the comment I replied to, was about the 30% cut, though ;)

And regarding DRM: People often forget that the use of DRM with Steam is in the hands of the Devs/Publisher. There are DRM-free games on steam. Now, how convenient it is to back up those games is another thing, but it’s often possible.


As others have alluded to, I think the situation is different exactly because there is at least a real potential for competition. Epic seems to take a good swing at this. Sure, a huge market share _favors_ Valve in this case, but that's nothing compared to the technical infeasibility of the same approach say on iOS.

The PC remains an open platform, even MacOS to a degree (albeit apparently less so as of late...) and Valve have aggressively campaigned for it to stay that way. Competition there is possible.

I remember the debates from ~10 years ago around Microsoft's moves towards a more AppStore-like experience on Windows, where Valve really led the charge against it. The move towards SteamOS and Steam Machines seemed to be part of their reaction at the time. And it seems to pay off big-time now, not just for them but also for users, Linux users especially of course. :)


Also, some of the bigger devs/publishers just use their own platform and seem to do fine, like Riot and Blizzard.


Steam takes 30% under 10 million in sales, 25% under 50 million, 20% after that, and there's also internal agreements to lower that cut.

That said, negative sentiment about Steam has been a heavy subject in years past. There's a reason Epic came in swinging with super low fees.


Part of it is that Steam seems to have a lot more features than those app stores, especially user facing features. If you’ve ever browsed around Steam’s UI and store, there’s a LOT of stuff going on.

The other part is that you have many actually useful alternative avenues to selling PC games. Yes, Steam is far and away #1, but lots of devs go direct to consumer themselves, and some use alternate stores like Epic, GOG, or Itch.


With Steam, you get your money's worth. A user forum, a friends list and invitation system, Steam Workshop, extensive controller support, etc. The lack of any features other than the ability to deploy on the platform at all is what makes the App Store's cut rent seeking.


Good linux support and promoting linux for gaming is also one of their hedges against Microsoft pulling an Apple and making installing software from the Microsoft store the only convenient way in the future. Along with a 30% cut.

Having a mature linux support helps with that.

In the case of SteamDeck the lack of Microsoft tax also helps the price.


Yes, but many of their efforts don’t make much sense that way. The Index and Alyx made them some money, but were they the best use of Valve resources in terms of profit, even without the benefit of hindsight? Nah. It was immediately obvious that it was closer to a passion project for them. It’s something they believed in and wanted to try, not something that was gonna make them richer anytime soon.


On the other hand, Valve has been on the forefront of adding microtransactions and lootboxes to their games, including paid games. They are not beyond optimizing for maximum profit even if it that mindset does not infect all of their projects.


Valve's principal line of business right now is utterly eradicating Epic Game Store from existence.

Its tool for doing that is consumer sentiment.

This all plays into Valve's business strategy. They're fighting to justify ye ole 30% cut.


Hey, if Apple released repair videos, device schematics, commit their translation tech and kernel development to upstream, maintained CI/CD pipelines for all major operating systems, built platform-agnostic hardware APIs for third-party vendors and built safe inroads for the modding/enthusiast community, I think their 30% wouldn't be so hard to swallow. All we got were some lame whitepapers instead.


The prescience of doing SteamOS/Steam Machines/Steam Controllers years before EGS seems to have paid off for them. (Eventually, and probably by accident, time will tell but the device seems to be pretty badass so far).


> Its tool for doing that is consumer sentiment.

That is the tool for basically doing anything productive as a business... it isn't as if they've done some about face at the emergence of genuine competition - they've always been unusually well liked (especially considering the industry).


In contrast, a prominent thread about Adobe currently sits on the front page.


Valve already decreased it cut for highest-grossing titles to 25% (after $10 million in sales) or 20% (after $50 million in sales).

And fortunately for Valve even 3 years after release Epic Games Store don't even have half of Steam features. Also Epic is so consumer-hostile (or as they call it pro-developer) that they won't ever implement player-reviews into their system.

So it's not that hard for Valve for keep their mindshare. Far larger danger for them is Microsoft with it's Xbox game subscription model and unlimited amount of money.


That seems backwards. The vast majority of games aren't making $10mm, definitely not $50mm. Why take more money from the small indie developer?


Because they can. Where are these small developers going to go? Itch.io, GOG, Epic, Humble? These are all options but it’s suicide to not list on the Steam store. Too many PC gamers use Steam exclusively.

Meanwhile the large developers, the ones who are making $50M+, those developers have enough pull to make the user install a custom client like Origin. That’s why Valve cuts them a better deal.


Because they can and there are is no real competition. Epic Game Store so far is laughtable attempt at pumping money into user-hostile service that missing tons of features. For now the only good reason to release on EGS is Epic giving your company money.

Disclosure: I work at small indie PC gamedev studio.

I just point out how Valve changed rules for big companies back in 2018. So they have different revenue share compared to both Apple / Google and consoles.


The fixed cost of hosting a game is relatively fixed (providing a storefront, first level customer support, license management), and the part of the cost that scales but is still cheap (bandwidth is larger for bigger titles).

However, there are many times more small indie titles than there are big successes, and it's the big titles that draw users to your platform and bring in the money.

If Valve flipped their model, those indie titles would be even more of a net drain on their profitability, while there would be more incentive for the big titles to release on their own platforms.


From the license in the same repository:

> Furthermore, please be aware that opening the outside enclosure of your Steam hardware will void a warranty you may otherwise enjoy (https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=4577-TUJ...).

I'd say that significantly diminishes the good will statements like "you have every right to open up your Steam Deck and do what you want with it." buys them though.


So if you crack open your unit and break something while messing around, you expect Valve should fix it for you for free under the standard warranty?

Allowing you to make the choice between hacking or not seems like perfectly good will to me. You can't have your cake and eat it too, as they say.


> So if you crack open your unit and break something while messing around

I don't expect a warranty from that, but I very much do expect a warranty if I crack it open and don't break something while messing around.

Thankfully the actual warranty doesn't say it's voided by opening.

Some of the exclusions on there are worrying, though. Improper cleaning? Refurbs have no warranty? "Commercial use" is much too vague.


Valve can't invalidate your warranty if your opening up the deck wasn't responsible for the damage, at least in the US.[0]

So yes, opening it up and improperly cleaning it (for example, you take a q-tip with rubbing alcohol to clean off some gunk and accidentally dislodge a capacitor) could void your warranty.

----

[0] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2018/04/ftc-s...


> So yes, opening it up and improperly cleaning it (for example, you take a q-tip with rubbing alcohol to clean off some gunk and accidentally dislodge a capacitor) could void your warranty.

My complaint is that the warranty page only talks about whether you caused the damage for the clause about opening it up or making modifications. The clause about warranty loss for cleaning "in any manner other than as specified in the Hardware manual" is unconditional.


A lot of people don't think they damaged something by opening it up...

But when the put a screw back too tight, which then a year later cracks the plastic support its screwed into, falls out, and shorts some terminals on the voltage regulator, and the whole thing goes up in smoke...


Then it sounds like the person voided the warranty by assembling incorrectly, not by opening it.

I’m sure that if people opening their devices, breaking them, and expecting warranty to cover it is such a big problem, then there is enough financial incentive to find an actual solution.


I don't expect to keep warranty, it just diminishes any praise you could give for other statements they make like quoted in the OP

> you have every right to open up your Steam Deck and do what you want with it.

We already have this right for things we own, on exactly the same terms, which is it voids warranty.


Except that merely opening something _does not_ void the warranty in the US. It is in fact illegal for a manufacturer to claim that it does! It has been illegal since 1975 and people still believe this crap. Even repairing something does not void the warranty.

https://www.ifixit.com/News/11748/warranty-stickers-are-ille...


Just noticed that they use different wording on the readme:

"Any damage you do will not be covered by your warranty – but more importantly, you might break your Steam Deck, or even get hurt!"


As much as I want to work there, they're also responsible for peddling the pile of shit like treasure chests, unlock keys and "trading cards" which I find extremely repulsive.


I don't like that crap either, but Valve's contribution to that dreck is really easy to ignore in Steam. It's the game designers and business types that put gambling features in games, and that is the precise moral equivalent of selling cigarettes to kids. You might fault Steam for hosting games like that, but then you'll be faulting every platform, including the free ones, because lets face it, learning to code doesn't require passing an ethics class, or even taking one.

My point is that you're probably better off being repulsed at someone else because in the scheme of things Valve really isn't that bad, IMHO.


The CS:GO and dota2 (developed by valve) item market places were probably some of the earlier and more influential loot box / gambling games.


It all started when they turned Team Fortress 2 into a free-to-play game (remember all the memes about the "hats"?). The move originated from Yanis Varoufakis who later became Greek minister of finance.

https://archive.fo/IXtkd

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanis_Varoufakis


I have over 4000 hours in dota and I've never bought a loot box or cared about skins. I never felt like I was pushed into it. You can play those games without any issues even if you don't buy the skins. Contrast that with games like Hearthstone which uses packs with random cards as a way to pay to win and which require a lot of money to get into.. I see nothing wrong with Valve's business model.


Same. I don’t worship Valve like some people do, but I can confirm that I never felt pushed into buying any of their micro transactions. 2000 hours in Dota 2 and I think $40 spent total. Comparing with coworkers who’ve played similar hours of League of Legends, they were saying numbers ranging from $600-12k. I looked up posts on /r/Hearthstone when I was considering playing the game and they were talking in the range of $500-$3000. Basically $200 to make a decent deck every new season. That’s too rich for my blood.

I have no doubt that some people spend money they can’t afford to even in Dota 2/CS GO, but that feels more of a choice than other games.


CS:GO player. I have wasted money there. But I'm getting my Deck out of it and still have lot left... So it could be worse. I really think their model the least bad one. At least you have chance to reuse the money you spend.


$600 to 12k??

You must be kidding. I mean at that point you'd hope some preservation instinct kicks in and you realize you are trading real dollars for a few bits on a server, and you go buy a chess set and play it down at the park.


Wait until you hear about state lotteries and casinos =P

It is amazing to me that people will just walk in with their pay check and leave drunk with pennies. Some serious neurochemistry going on there.


Gambling and addiction affect different people differently. Saying you did not fall into the trap is not an argument for the practice not being abusive.

It also does not account for the presence of microtransactions influencing the design of the rest of the game towards selling more microtransactions which affects you even if you never buy anything. Granted, this could be considered as "payment" for a free game but once microtransactions/lootboxes/NFTs/whatever have or will become acceptable there, they spread to paid games too.


Like others said, the start of these things was team fortress 2, also a valve game.


At least in dota2, you don't have to buy anything to play the game in its entirety. The lootbox and market places are only for cosmetics which doesn't affect the game play in any manner.

...which is a pretty fair business in my opinion.


Valve with csgo and dota are like saints compared to something like EA or Riot when it comes to microtransactions.


Or gacha games in general. Secondary market seems exploitative. But in the end it is actually a way to get some money back to spend on other games.


There really isn't such a thing as cosmetic-only microtransactions in a fast paced game. If it changes how something looks, it affects gameplay.

And beyond that, the rest of the game is not being designed independently of microtransactions and that affects you even if you never buy any.


The cosmetics don't give any advantage to the buyer that is noticeable by pro players. And that's a good enough definition of cosmetic-only to me.


They have been selling "NFT"s for 10 years.


They have been selling unique items yes, but I would not call them NFT...


A few of the hats have essentially been non-fungible tokens, almost indistinguishable from the way people have been interacting with these picture NFTs. The hats in question were one-of-a-kind and had an id that allowed you to check the provinence of them, if you kept track of the hats in the market.

They certainly weren't on a blockchain though, or give the user exclusive ownership over them.


Yeah, 100% fungible items.


Watch out, @richgel999 has posted many horror stories of working at Valve on Twitter. Things like bosses convincing employees to take on debt (so they'll have more leverage against them), employees competing ruthlessly for bonuses (breaking their code intentionally), and other weird side effects of working for a self-organizing corp.


If you get a job there can you BEG them to make Left 4 Dead 3


Or any third installment in any of their games: HL3, L4D3, TF3, Portal 3, DOTA3


Counter Strike had more than a third installment and HL got two episodes and a prequel.


Counter-Strike 2 and Ricochet 2 first.


Didn't the spiritual successor Back 4 Blood release not too long ago? No good?


The steam reviews are mixed, compared to overwhelmingly positive for L4D2. It's also Windows exclusive with Easy Anti-Cheat so it can't run on Linux. (It's a coop game, who cares about cheating there??)


Cheats can also be used to grief other players in the match making queue.


B4B does have a human vs zombie multiplayer mode


However, that mode is nothing like the versus mode people actually wanted.


I haven't played it, but this video gives the impression that it is much less polished in comparison to its predecessors. However it could just be nitpicking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdRLNUGmFC8


I would recommend giving this video a watch. It'll show you just how much care and attention to detail was put into L4D 1 and 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdRLNUGmFC8


It's okay. The difficulty ramp-up is really steep to the point where once you finish the easier difficulties it just gets way too hard. Maybe if you play with friends it would be different, but I was mostly solo queueing.

That being said... it was a lot of fun until I got frustrated with it! It's on the PC game pass.


Didn't know it existed you just made my weekend.


its not as good.


Thermal analysis of Steam Deck by Gamers Nexus[1] shows that back shell is very crucial for heat dissipation and so aftermarket shells for Steam Deck should have equal or better heat dissipation or else would certainly damage the hardware.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeQH__XVa64


The back shell isn't really involved in heat dissipation per se. Most of the heat is carried by convection out the vent. The critical thing is that the back cover is carefully engineered, in coordination with the spacing to various bits of the internals, to selectively restrict airflow, to produce the needed flow patterns to cool all the internals.

But, yes: if you change the inner mould line there's the risk of some components not getting the airflow they need. It might not even be obvious, as not everything has a temperature sensor.


Apart from the Engineering tolerances of the backplate, The fan is synced to APU temperature and if a backplate aggressively cools the APU then the memory and other components wouldn't get cooled.

Then again the eventual 'Water-cooled Steam Deck' modders would know about this already(Water-cooled Xbox/PS have very high memory chip failures due to improper cooling).


I'd love a replacement shell with threaded screw holes so that, when the joysticks eventually drift / battery starts to die, I can feel safe opening/replacing things.


That makes sense, Opening the shell seems to be bit finicky and I hope the plastic clips are strong enough.

But TBH, A compute hardware which is designed to be opened from a mainstream company is something I never thought would see again. I really hope general consumers dig into this and demand it from others.


Commoditize your complement.

The complement of video games is video game consoles.


Interestingly, it looks like Steam is using Siemens NX for their designs. That's according to the internal info side the .stp files in the repo.


> Interestingly, it looks like Steam is using Siemens NX for their designs.

I'm not surprised, use of NX or SolidWorks is expected for such products design.

> That's according to the internal info side the .stp files

2D drawing also produced with NX (according PDF properties)

ADDITION: Just tried to open this STEP-file with gCAD3D[0] CAD app — no luck.[1]

[0] https://gcad3d.org

[1] https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1492437707427127298


UPD: Latest nightly of FreeCAD[2] and LinkStage3/LinkDaily[3] opens it succesfully under Linux.[4]

[2] https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD

[3] https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD_assembly3/releases

[4] https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1492457657277497348


Yeah, it's good news from my point of view. NX is pretty good, especially compared to Solidworks.

That it produces decent Step files which FreeCAD can open is even better. :)


I’m so excited about the SteamDeck. My hope is that I’ll be able to install Ubuntu on it and turn it into an ultimate robot controller.

If I can also dock it to my screen, keyboard and mouse then I can see myself doing some light development on it too.


Its already got Arch Linux on it, doesn't it?


Yes, but it's pretty nerfed. For starters, there's been heavy rumors that it uses a flattened OSTree for the root directory, mostly to prevent consumers from mucking up anything by accident. That also means that you can't install software that isn't a Flatpak, which severely limits the usability of the device for a lot of people.

If I end up getting one, I'd probably install Arch over the Arch-based distro they use. I don't mind the OSTree approach (I guess it makes sense for consumer tech), but I'd like to get the most out of that thing; ProtonGE and MangoHUD included.


After watching those clowns at Linus tech tips, its hard to disagree.


My jaw dropped when I saw how poorly Linus manhandled Linux. No wonder he hired his own in-house Gentoomen to handle his onsite...


Yeah, Linus Tech Tips is considered harmful at this point. Even Luke, who has used Linux before, played along. I guess dont bite the hand that feeds.


That was my thought too. If your entire career was dedicated to shilling consumer technology, I can't imagine many of your sponsors would be happy to hear about a focus on OSS. What really pushes it over the edge is the soyfacing over the Steam Deck; Linus showed up on The Wan Show a few days ago just gushing about how the Steam Deck is going to revolutionize PC gaming, meanwhile he failed to play Don't Starve on Linux less than a month ago. It's almost like a comedy routine.


> Linus showed up on The Wan Show a few days ago just gushing about how the Steam Deck is going to revolutionize PC gaming, meanwhile he failed to play Don't Starve on Linux less than a month ago.

Is that really relevant? The Steam Deck is not trying to be Desktop Linux - it boots directly to Steam and most users won't ever care what runs underneath. Just because you can run other Linux programs does not mean that problems with Linux (even the self-inflicted kind) will apply to the Deck.


> Is that really relevant?

I'd like to think so. Linus' conclusion was that Linux is inappropriate for any PC gaming, so I'd really like to hear his line of reasoning that has given him newfound hope in the platform if his own experiences were so rough.

> it boots directly to Steam and most users won't ever care what runs underneath.

Correct. It still uses DXVK though, and it's arguably even worse than desktop Linux for gaming since it's harder to tweak the files that might be necessary for smooth gameplay. We'll see how things turn out, but certain titles like Fallout 4 and the Battlefield games are borderline-unplayable on Linux without hacking a few INI files.


I'm hyped for a long time and apparently you can install whatever you want. It's just a very small computer. Steam has a history of working on tho support of Linux gaming, so I think Ubuntu should be no problem. Edit: they even release a docking station for the real desktop PC feeling


These are licensed CC-NC (NonCommercial), which I guess will cut down the amount of after-market case sellers?


In the same way that copyrights on photographs cut down on the availability of picture frames?


Since they released the CAD files can anybody even reverse engineer and sell new shells?

Valve can now easily claim that their CAD files were used even if they were not.


Now waiting for the first sand cast bronze version, and the first machined from billet alloy version. And probably a pre preg carbon fiber one too.

(I haven’t looked to see it the supplied files include enough of the interior to be able to produce parts that properly fit all the required internals…)


The bronze one might be good for a workout on the go or rucking


The license of these CAD files doesn't allow commercial use, so you wouldn't be able to buy one of those unless Valve themselves make different cases.


Meh, that really depends on how litigious valve is in going after small retailers.


> so you wouldn't be able to buy one of those unless

CC-BY-NC allows you reproduce even modify for non-commercial use, so each user may even 3D print it for yourself or create a gift for friends.


I so want to buy a Steam Deck, after it's been established in the market as a viable and high-quality product.


I'm happy gambling $5 on the pre-order.


You can even get it back if you cancel, so there's literally 0 risk placing a preorder.


You're an unsecured creditor (i.e. SOL) if they go bankrupt before delivering (though if you pay by credit card that may cover it).


If Valve went to bankrupt there probably would be bigger issues in the world that 5€ deposit...


How would one go about generating such a thing from an existing object lacking schematics?

Edit: …in an automated fashion. For example, is there an app where I can put an object on a turn-table, point my phone at it, and give it a spin? (Clearly that would work only for certain shapes.)


Take measurements, draw/model it. There’s a real art in being able to recreate something accurately.

For something like this, use a contour gauge at certain offsets from a set point will give you a set of curves you could model through.


+1 for contour gauge, that's one tool on my must buy list.


I tried printing a case for my phone. Aside from how annoying TPU is to print, finding the measurements of the device was surprisingly frustrating.

You can, if course, just measure and draw it out yourself. But the rounded sides are likely going to be guesses.

So, major kudos on this release. Could probably just sketch in blender and then just standard difference tricks to put your case on one of these.


> You can, if course, just measure and draw it out yourself. But the rounded sides are likely going to be guesses.

Use a caliper measuring device and a flatbed scanner.

With the flatbed scanner, make a high res (600 dpi, or maybe even 1200 dpi) 2D scan of the front of the phone. Keep the screen of the phone on while scanning, and have it display some image that contrasts well against the edges of the screen, so you can clearly see where the edges are. (Ie if the phone is black or other dark color, use a an all white image. If the phone is a bright color, use a dark image.)

Scan the back of the phone as well, so you can see where the camera lenses on the back of the phone are.

Import the 2D images into your 3D modeling software of choice and create a flat polygon covering the front view. Extrude into a 3D shape.

Scale according to physical width, height and depth of the phone that you measure with the caliper.

Make room for the lenses using the scan of the back of the phone.

Buttons on the side and charging port on the bottom you can decide on how to fit from using caliper measurements, and adding some additional room around those as that is often desired.

Then model a shell that fits around it.

It will probably take a couple of test prints and refinements to get it right even so, but I think said approach will work well in terms of benefit to effort.


If you’ve got curved edges that matter (my iPhone13 doesn’t, but my PinePhone does), it might be worth trying to get a good end-on cross section photo, and importing that into a 2D drawing tool you can use to create that shape in a format your 3D modelling tool can extrude. Looking at my PinePhone, and thinking in OpenSCAD terms, I’d probably model the phone as an intersection of two extruded objects one from the end and one from the side, where the 2D shapes I’m extruding would be as close as I could get to end and side profiles, then use rotate-extrude to make the rounded corners (these look “circular enough” for that, if they were more elliptical, it resize the circular extrusions to suit).

That’d work pretty well for phones (like the PinePhone) that are basically “rectangular prism slabs with uniformly rounded edges and corners”. It’d be much harder to model this Samsung S4 I have here, with its curved ends and it’s compound curved back…


Fun fact: Apple rounded corners are not circular arcs at all, but funky "G4" curves. Ref: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/313713/


The industry standard for manufacturing would be a CMM. Good ones quickly get you micron level resolution. Newer units will laser scan every surface and output a model. Older models physically probe the features. They are mostly used for checking a product vs its CAD design, but they can be used for data acquisition. They pair well with photogrammetry.

https://youtu.be/zCIe2CzQpT8


https://www.agisoft.com/

Take a photo of the object from all angles, I usually end up with 40 photos. Don't move or spin the object, the static background details help align the images and you want the lighting to be consistent. Smartphone cameras actually work best for small objects because their tiny aperature keeps everything in focus.

I've used the turntable laser scanners (NextEngine specifically) but it is far from automated, requires hand alignment of point clouds. Photogrammetry approach was much lower effort.

But really this gives you a mesh, which is far from being a CAD drawing. Taking measurements and drawing from scratch is usually how I've seen it done when accuracy matters.


3D scanners do exist, though in my experience their performance is very poor and requires lots of manual post-processing to get a reasonable model out the other end. They're also quite expensive, generally.


With something similar to this: https://www.scan-xpress.com.au/products/tactile-multisensor-...

You touch the object in as many points as you need and translate the touch coordinates from the angles of your tool's arm to XYZ. Or some systems allow you to do it optically.


Something like this: https://www.faro.com/en/Products/Hardware/ScanArms

I've worked with these, they are super cool. Just the laser part of the hand-held scanner was detailed enough to show the lettering on a laptop keyboard because of the differing depth of the molded-in characters.


You could use photogrammetry, or lots of measuring, trial, and error.


As the other comments here have already mentioned, automated methods are available but expensive and relatively low accuracy. I'll add that manually measuring parts with instruments like calipers or micrometers in order to reproduce them is common in the machinery industry.

Here's a random video of someone doing that:

https://youtu.be/i9Ow0jD4V5k


I’m hoping some of the mobile app 3D scanning software starts to take full advantage of the TOF laser dot point sensors available on current flagship phones, and fusing that point cloud data with the cameras and gyro/accelerometer data as you wave the phone around scanning the object. (That was a big reason behind me upgrading to an iPhone13Pro.)



It’s really great thet they are releasing it to the public. With cheap 3d printing we can finally replace broken parts. Create some mechanical mods, etc.

It’s also great material to learn if you are interested in mechanical engineering.

I’m not saying that every company should do it, or that they are better than others. For them it’s really not something that makes money or is a core product, so they probably don’t care so much about competitors etc. Also even if you mess with it and they need to replace it while on warranty, it’s still probably ok. They want you to buy games, not the console.

So they are not some messiah of eco-socialism that will save the world from greedy corporations. They just want to make some more money :) but that’s ok, and I appreciate they did it.


I know it is a meme. However, if Steam ever make Half-life 3 a reality. It will be one of the most hyped games ever. Mostly organic hype and a great game if their history tracks.


They did, it's called Half-Life Alyx.


No, that was was not Half-Life 3. That was a way to sell their VR.


It's a full fledged half life game that adds to the canon, so it serves the need other than having the number "3".


Half-Life: Alyx does not advance Gordon's story and doesn't really provide all that much new to the Half-Life universe. Yeah, we now have some more backstory on some characters and a few bits here and there but it is nowhere near what Half-Life 2 brought over Half-Life 1.

This goes for the gameplay and physics too - yeah, VR makes more things possibly but there really isn't anything revolutionary in in HL:A compared to other VR games.

Meanwhile player-initiated exploration has been replaced with an in-game currency that you need to collect to upgrade your weapons which makes it a chore rather the excitement of coming across a lambda cache. Speaking of weapons, there are far fewer than in previous HL games and the ones that are there are hardly anything new. Even the gravity gloves are not much more than a VR-adaption of the gravity gun - going as far as bringing back the supercharged version from EP1 for the final part of the game which is really fun but nothing revolutionary or creative.

Instead of level-specific puzzles, the game is filled with same-ish hacking minigames that while cool at first are overused and as a result are just an annoyance towards the end.

The choice of making the player character voiced in a medium that is all about immersion when previous games already had established the trope of silent player characters was also puzzling - it doesn't help that the Alyx's lines are pretty meh in this game and often directly contradict what the player might feel/want.

Graphics are impressive, but they are also cheating here by having many dark corners that you can't inspect because your flashlight only magically turns on where the game wants it to.

HL:A is a decently polished experience, a good game and certainly better than no Half-Life game, but hardly anything worthy of being called Half-Life 3, which is why it isn't called that. I won't go as far as calling it a soulless sequel that you might expect from a big publisher trying to milk a franchise, but I am also not calling it the opposite of that.

Finally, HL:A is also a VR exclusive requiring an expensive PC, additionall HW and physical space to play it in, which means for most people it might as well not exist.


However, that 3 would generate stupid amounts of hype on its own, which the HL name alone couldn't, it is one of the foundational PC gamer memes.




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