Opafi

People keep complaining about 3d sucking... And I don't get it.

I once had a voodoo 2 card with shutter glasses and it was awesome if the games were compatible (huds were always an issue, but stuff like racing games or third person stuff worked well). 3d movies work well if they're well done. I even had an HTC 3d phone with an autostereoscopic display and a camera that could take stereo pictures. I just got a used 3ds off a flea market and am in love, wishing my steam deck had a stereoscopic display. I'm not sold on vr yet, but I really enjoyed it the few times I tried it.

Bad games won't become good in 3d. Neither will bad movies or any other type of media. But the constant complaining feels to me like those people that hated colour movies when they came out. Yeah, colour won't make your terrible script any better, but it's an additional dimension (ha) to work with... Just like 3d. If used well, it can enhance the experience. Mario Kart is nice - but the spatial perception does give you a better idea of where your opponents are on bumpy tracks. Prometheus wasn't a perfect movie, but man, that scene in the medical automaton that slices her up to get the xenomorph out really gave me vibes of claustrophobia, just because I felt a little bit more stuck in that tube with her. And that old picture of my son wasn't particularly good, but damn, even without a 3d display at hand I sometimes open it and simply cross-eye myself into the depth perception just because it's so nice to have that baby head almost touchable. So yeah, I think 3d displays and media rock.

Does anybody really use the steam deck with multiple users and can tell me what I'm doing wrong?

I got the mid range deck, enjoyed how I could play almost my entire library and created a steam account for my oldest son so he could use it, too, without us messing up each other's save games or stats. I set up family sharing for our accounts and added some games to the family library, but from that point onwards the experience has pretty much been a mess for me.

First of all, setting up the family sharing was pretty much a convoluted process where I really didn't understand what I was supposed to be doing... Were the family PINs supposed to be the same for both accounts? Who selects what in order to get the young man to play skyrim? It was all weird, but we eventually managed. The result is, however, an annoying setup that is just weird.

• When I turn on the deck, it now always starts in family mode on my account, so I always have to enter the PIN before doing anything that is not playing a game that I added to the family library. Which is most of my games. Shop won't open before I enter the pin, nothing works while being in family mode and it always starts in family mode.
• Considering how often I have to insert the family PIN, it's annoying how buggy the keyboard is with the PIN entry form... Every time I enter a digit via the touch pads, the keyboard just freezes for a second or so. No idea if that has something to do with localisation or something.
• Starting a game won't ask for the account... I have both accounts set up on the deck, but unlike e.g. the switch, the deck always starts games on the account that was last logged in, no questions asked.
• There is no proper separation of data for each user. When I added vampire survivors to the family library and he started it on his account afterwards, the first thing that happened was a hundred achievements getting unlocked because his game simply loaded my state. Same for other games which just show save games from all users, which is super annoying for the usual auto save and continue game flow.
• He says he can't really chat or play games in multiplayer if he's using my shared games on his account... No idea what's going on there, have not yet gotten around to trouble shoot that.

Am I doing something wrong or what is this? We had the deck with us on our last vacation and with the Internet being just not available a lot of the time (which is imperative to switch accounts) and all those issues outlined above, it basically got no usage at all and I'm getting more and more annoyed by this.

I just got a new Pixel 7a a few days ago. I specifically got that one to get the smallest of the bunch. It's advertised as the smallest (and cheaper) model, phone size comparisons showed it to be indeed smaller than most competing devices and it's even listed in some "best small phones" lists.

Now it's here and it's massive. If I keep the pinkie below the phone, I literally can't reach the top of the screen at all, which is the entire notification bar - and my fingers are long! It's annoying me to the point of being just about to return it to get something like the s22 or s23, just to save those 6mm of height - which is ridiculous, as it'd end up costing me a hundred bucks extra and I won't get the free buds pro. I've been using Android since the G1 and outright refused to even consider anything else over years... But now I'm thinking about the iPhones 13 mini and se, just because I'm able to use them with one hand.

I want to like this device. So, could you people please tell me if I'm... Dunno, just doing it wrong? Like, not getting it or something? How do you pull down the notification bar in apps with one hand? How do you post those top-left buttons to close your current view? Enlighten me, please!

/edit Just in case anybody still sees this: I returned it. Went back to my s10e, which is eol and needs a charge in the afternoon, which is still annoying me less than that massive piece of hardware.

It's a project that has been sitting on my bench for too long, but every now and then I try to get a little further. I still love the scale of the game and the mechanics of Epic: Armageddon.