Most people with PS4's don't have the move or camera. It'll basically cost as much as a Rift, which has better specs anyways...
Except a Rift needs a high end computer, so unless you already have that, the cost of a camera is negligible compared to the gaming PC for the rift.
Even if you don't have a PS4 yet, the cost of entry is still much lower.
how does this thing get such great reviews by people who have used it? 18ms refresh, single 1080p display, powered by a console... on paper this thing looks like trash. I really need to get out more and check these out for myself some time to get a reference idea of what each provides.
I had the same concerns until I tried it in September. The 1080p display isn't a normal 1080p panel. It's a low persistance display with independant R G and B subpixels. What that effectively means is that it can create a sharper image because each individual pixel can create any color. You don't need to blend 2 or 3 together to make colors.
This doesn't increase the resolution, but it sure tricks your eyes into thinking that it is.
There's also the fact that PSVR is made by Sony, which has many other divisions. The same teams that make Sony's SLR camera lenses were put to work on designing the optics for the PSVR headset. It makes a much bigger difference than you might think.
as for console power, the PS4 is surprisingly capable, but the VR games for the console won't be up to the same fidilety levels as we'll see on Vive and Rift.
36 Million PS4 does not equal the count for VR developers, if only 100,000 VR headsets are sold by Sony, the developers market is only a max target of 100,000 for VR only games.
Everone getting into the VR industry right now understands that it needs to grow. Thats one of the reasons you'll see lower budget games for the first generation of VR exclusive games.
120 Hz display, but games can opt to run at 60 Hz? No thanks. That's guaranteed motion sickness with a VR headset. Sony should mandate that developers optimize it for no lower than 90 Hz.
games can be made to run at 60Hz but Sony has a method of doubling that to 120Hz. This hasn't been explained in great detail. It remains to be seen how well this works.
It is likely that AAA games that have optional VR support will make use of this feature, but I suspect most VR only games will be 90Hz. Most developers are working together as a community to come up with best practices, and 90 fps is widely accepted as one of those.
I don't see this price being a big deal IF they allow AAA developers to use this tech....Could you imagine God of War in VR? Uncharted? 2K18(already announced that 2kGames have something in the works!) GTA VI? There is potential here we as consumers and the industry have to allow this tech to work. And not to go on a rant, this may well bring 3D back into the forefront if done correctly.
There's nothing stopping AAA developers from embracing VR except market size. You won't see a 10 or 20 million dollar budget game for VR for some time because there will be a much smaller market to sell to to try to recover that money.
It will happen, but it will be slow. The first game will be racing games, like we're already seeing, but other genres will pick up.
The more VR succeeds as a whole, the better it will be for content on all platforms.
the price is too high for this accessory, how many % of PS4 owners are going to buy it to justify AAA games to come out ? lots of big ifs
and where's Microsoft Press on VR ? are they staying silent forever ?
The price isn't too high at all. It's right in line with what the other competing devices cost. The tech inside them is cutting edge, and any new tech will always cost money. This isn't a Kinect. It's much more than that, and thar hardware is much more complex and expensive to make.
My question is how much more powerful this external processing unit really will be. It looks to me like the PSVR (external procesisng unit) connects via USB to the PS4. USB 3.0 transfer speeds are really slow, little bandwidth for a processing unit. How exactly is this going to communicate with the processor and the other GPU in the PS4 quickly enough over the limited bandwidth of USB 3.0? USB 3.0 bandwidth is 640 megabytes per second. Normal DDR memory technology used in GPUs has a bandwidth far exceeding that. Of course, I'm no expert when it comes to this memory and bandwidth, so I may be overlooking something here.
Also, how will the CPU not bottleneck? Eh, I guess good optimization will do it. The real question now is if Nintendo is getting into the VR game also with the NX console.
60 games at release seems like a lot more content than we have on PC.
The external box doesn't actually add any processing power. We covered this in september when I interview Richard Marks from the Sony Magic Lab (where they designed the VR headset)
The PS4 does all the processing. It warps the image to work in VR and does all of the calculations. The breakout boxes function is to unwarp the image that is going out to the TV.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/sony-richard-marks-playstationvr-immersed,30269.html
I uses a single HDMI and single USB cable that runs from the headset. Those cables go the box which has an HDMI cable and a USB cable leading to the PS4 and another one that goes to the TV.
No, you don't need the move controllers. You need the move controllers if you want to play the tacky VR games. NO thanks. I'll just use my headset for games like Project Cars. Games don't need to be built soley for VR
Most games do need to be built solely for VR, actually. A game like Project Cars translates very well to VR and is easy to just slap on and forget about everything else. Almost no other examples like that exist.
hand controls make a huge difference, and there's a reason that they are available for all three major heradsets. When Oculus first launched the Rift kickstarter it intended to sell just the headset, but the more people were show VR, the more it became obvious that the first thing that most people try to do while in VR is use thier hands. There's somethign eerie about not having your hands in front of your eyes when your brain knows they are moving. Motion controlls fix that uneasy feeling that some people get.
One thing I would like to say, Motion controls are GARBAGE. Not because there is no tactile feedback of any kind, nor because they require a lot more effort than normal controls, but because most developers have precisely ZERO CLUES as to how to implement them properly. Yes some of them have, but for every Skyward Sword there are a legion of failed games.
You should completely subtract the motion controllers from the cost as the likelihood of a game that's good, that uses VR AND uses motion controls that don't suck is about as likely as you winning the lottery.
In VR that is completly the oposite.
Its not easy at all to program abstract controls in VR, and having tracked motion controls takes away a large part of the animation process of development.
The key with VR is motion controls allow you to have natural, intuitive actions inside the game. It makes it much easier to pick up on the controls, and more approachable by a much wider audience, because you don't need to memorize a button to do an action. You just reach out and do it.
Motion controls are paramount for a great VR experience. They aren't going away, they will only be supported more and more over the years.
eventually, tracked hands will be the only way to interact in VR.
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