Greetings fellow Steam Deck modders,
By now I’m sure you’re aware that DeckSight has launched on Crowd Supply. I’ll be sending Weekly updates during the campaign to keep things interesting.

For this first update, I’ll go through a few questions and concerns I’ve been receiving. To start off, I made a video when things were first getting underway. It serves as a pretty good introduction to the project:

Now, on to the questions….

Q: Why is it 1080P, won’t that use more battery/hurt performance?
A: There are lower-powered, ARM-based handhelds that come with 1080P screens. Everything is a compromise, including the Steam Deck itself. When deciding what is a worthwhile mod versus something that’s probably not enough of an upgrade to bother, DeckSight is a balancing act. The only other aftermarket screen available for the LCD Steam Deck is 1200P, it doesn’t improve much of anything other than resolution and if 1080P concerns anyone, 1200P should be more of a concern. However that is only part of the story. Being a 16:9 panel vs 16:10 of the stock LCD, running a game at 720P is a good option that isn’t quite as appealing on the stock LCD.

There are a lot of assumptions about running a game at 720P on a 1080P screen, people start to get technical about integer scaling etc. To be honest, I don’t get into that discussion. All I know is I’ve tested some games running at 720P on DeckSight. At 720P on DeckSight, in a game like Metal Gear Solid 5 for example, not only did the battery last a half hour longer over the stock LCD at 800P, but it still looked better to me. At 1080P, most games will require more power to run, but if you’re sitting on the couch with it plugged in that’s a scenario where it probably doesn’t matter much. If you’re out and about, running the game set at 720P is still probably a better experiece than the stock LCD.

Q: Will it work with a 32 GB RAM mod?
A: It already does, in fact one of my test decks has 32 GB of RAM and a DeckSight OLED. I will make a BIOS available in some way for the 32GB+DeckHD. I haven’t decided yet on whether to make it available in the same place as the normal DeckSight BIOS as I don’t want anyone to get confused and flash the wrong BIOS. Besides that, the 32 GB BIOS will be available, but it will not be "supported". The reason for that is that 32 GB of RAM isn’t supported by Valve or anyone else. Besides that, the chips for that RAM mod generally come from sources that are less than reliable, so it’s not something that I can answer to issues about. All I can say is that I’ve been running 32 GB RAM for about six months and DeckSight + 32GB RAM for about two months now with no issues, though I can’t address concerns about the 32 GB mod itself.

Q: Why won’t it ship to Europe/UK?
A: To sell in Europe/UK, DeckSight would need proper CE certification, which requires a testing process that is fairly expensive. It can be "self certified" for far less, but that has implications in and of itself. While DeckSight should not have an issue conforming, it can only be worth going through the process of CE certification if DeckSight is a hit in the domestic market during the campaign. So get online, spread the word to all of your pals in the US, and tell them how great you think DeckSight is so you can get your own shortly after.

I plan to get into a bit more detail about the battery, touchscreen, etc. in a future update; in this update I just wanted to address the most common questions I’ve gotten up until now. For anyone who has already backed the campaign, congratulations (and thank you)! You made a wise choice. For anyone still on the fence, stay tuned and hopefully we’ll bring you on board.