Sony admits its PlayStation VR won't match up to Oculus Rift

[HEXUS]

...in image quality terms. But it will be easy to use, affordable, and aimed at the mass market.

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[Bagpuss]

It doesn't need to be as good/better than the PC VR hardware, it just has to be good enough.

It will succeed or fail based only on one thing, price.

Anything over £300 and it will go the same way as all the other console hardware peripherals.

[shaithis]

It cannot be as good. The PS4 is already going to have to turn so much eye candy down to even maintain 720p@30FPS while rendering stereoscopic.

[jimbouk]

Yay, looking forward to something affordable :-)

[The Hand]

Fingers crossed this will be launched with No Man Sky supported.

[Percy1983]

I do have an Oculus ordered and have no interest in this for me but I genuinely hope it is a success as VR in general needs as many users as possible to get devs behind the idea to get enough apps/gamesto make more people want VR.

[sykobee]

Affordable adequate VR is a good aim.

Sure, Oculus is there for the people with $2k to burn on the PC, GPU and headset, but the PS4 is targeting a market below that, significantly below that.

The important thing is low latency (you turn your head, your view updates immediately), even if the visuals aren't hyper-detailed. You might notice some polygon edges, oh no!

TBH how realistic do you actually want your VR warzone to be, it could be traumatising

[jamesnurse]

It cannot be as good. The PS4 is already going to have to turn so much eye candy down to even maintain 720p@30FPS while rendering stereoscopic.

You realise that it's going to have a separate box for some of the gfx processing... the only confirmed spec of the headset is 120FPS.

[jamesnurse]

I have a relatively high end PC and have tried Vive, Rift and Morpheus.

I'm pre-ordering the Morpheus, from the demos I tried, the Morpheus won hands down, and it's in a closed ecosystem.

I know that I'll get the same experience or better at home on a PS4 as I got in the demo booth... I doubt that with the other headsets, I hope to be proved wrong.

[spacein_vader]

VHS wasn't as good as betamax, but it was cheaper, ditto HD-DVD and Blu-ray. Those examples tell us that success is down to either lower price or having the porn industry onside.

[outwar6010]

I will most likely go for the sony solution above oculus and vive. The prices for the pc ones are absurd.

[jimbouk]

Fingers crossed this will be launched with No Man Sky supported.

Was discussing this with the other half last weekend - definitely would be sold on that combo!

[Percy1983]

Price is subjective.

I already had a PC up to the job and don't own a PS4.

So PS4+PSVR would probably cost me more than the Rift.

As far as specs go, the PSVR will be 1080p, (ie Oculus DK2) and the extra processing box is interpolating frames from the 60fps of the PS4 to 120fps for PSVR while running a timewarp effect to reduce latency on head movements.

[Spud1]

Sony must be sweating - they have one huge problem here, regardless of the price - that 1080p resolution, which is the same as you get in a DKII at the moment.

It's great fun playing games or watching videos etc on the DKII, and it really is an amazing, immersive experience - but that (relatively!) low resolution does cause huge issues when it comes to any detail, specifically Text. If you play Elite Dangerous for example on the DKII, it is a stunning experience BUT you do have to know your way around the game first to really make it playable. Reading the HUD is hard work requiring a lot of zooming in/leaning in to be able to read. You have to train your brain to ignore the blocky pixilated mess that is in front of you and see the real game behind it It has a similar effect in games like Half Life 2, although as there is less reading it's not quite as much of an issue. Dead Space 3 however does present a problem - so again you need to train yourself to understand the colours/patterns rather than the words themselves.

A 1080p VR screen is fine for development purposes, or for gen 1 tech that doesn't hit mass market ( e.g. the Rift DK2 or the Gear VR) but it's hardly consumer ready. I predict an epic fail along a similar path that the Move took. Bargain bin before long unless they solve the resolution headache.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Price is subjective.

I already had a PC up to the job and don't own a PS4.

So PS4+PSVR would probably cost me more than the Rift.

As far as specs go, the PSVR will be 1080p, (ie Oculus DK2) and the extra processing box is interpolating frames from the 60fps of the PS4 to 120fps for PSVR while running a timewarp effect to reduce latency on head movements.

Sony must be sweating - they have one huge problem here, regardless of the price - that 1080p resolution, which is the same as you get in a DKII at the moment.

It's great fun playing games or watching videos etc on the DKII, and it really is an amazing, immersive experience - but that (relatively!) low resolution does cause huge issues when it comes to any detail, specifically Text. If you play Elite Dangerous for example on the DKII, it is a stunning experience BUT you do have to know your way around the game first to really make it playable. Reading the HUD is hard work requiring a lot of zooming in/leaning in to be able to read. You have to train your brain to ignore the blocky pixilated mess that is in front of you and see the real game behind it It has a similar effect in games like Half Life 2, although as there is less reading it's not quite as much of an issue. Dead Space 3 however does present a problem - so again you need to train yourself to understand the colours/patterns rather than the words themselves.

A 1080p VR screen is fine for development purposes, or for gen 1 tech that doesn't hit mass market ( e.g. the Rift DK2 or the Gear VR) but it's hardly consumer ready. I predict an epic fail along a similar path that the Move took. Bargain bin before long unless they solve the resolution headache.

Tens of millions of people own a PS4 and in the end the PC version is overpriced and overhyped - all the people I knew who were interested in the Rift (after using the dev version two mates owned) and Vive just have lost in VR after hearing the new adjusted price. That also assumes loads of people have a decent enough card too or even a PC up to scratch.

In the end if the PS4 VR setup costs much less,I can see it doing far better than the Vive or Rift.

Its not Sony who has the big problem,but the Rift and the Vive,they might get all the fanbois to buy one but in the end it is going to be a very hard to sell for 99% of people at £500 to £700 ,plus £200 to £300 for a graphics cards and VR will remain a niche like 3D did.

The PS4 VR setup will OTH have the chance to make VR not a niche.

Plus people will know like the console it will be supported for the lifespan of it. The moment a new OR or Rift comes out in two years,the current ones will be second rung status so they can sell new ones.

Plus the PC version has greater E-PEEN specs?? So what?? A decent PC can run games better than consoles and at higher res - but looking at how many people have both consoles or don't own a decent card,it swamps those with those better cards.

I have never spent more than £150 on a card since I started building PCs over a decade ago.

[Spud1]

I get what you are saying Cat, but the difference between a DK2 and a CV rift is absolutely huge - its not like the jump from say 640x480 to 1080x1920, a better comparison would be comparing a VHS tape with scanline issues to a 4K UHD Blu Ray. If the PS4VR is only using a 1080p screen for it and they don't have a magical way to hide the fact you can see the individual pixels (they might!) then the difference is highly likely to be just as stark.

We won't find out until it's launched and we can do some side by side comparisons I guess. VR is a very hard sell at £500 for the headset and then another £300 for a suitable graphics card, no denying that, but I am not at all convinced that such a low resolution (for VR) option will do the job.

To get VR mainstream you need a device with the quality of the Rift but the (expected) affordability of the PS4VR. I just hope that it's not so bad that it kills VR before it has really gotten going, as happened with 3D.