Sony PSVR value versus competing VR solutions *spawn

[pjbliverpool]

Also, Sony is the only one who has showcased the working demos of VR+4 player couch coop mix [godzilla in the city, cat vs mouses].

I'm not sure how much of a draw that functionality is going to be. It seems even less likely to be a popular choice than the WiiU's "1 person on the handheld, and the rest on the TV" option.

If they can successfully promote PSVR as a communal thing, they can gain an edge over PC VR solutions.

If we're talking about the mass market draw of communal applications in VR.... Facebook.

 

[Prophecy2k]

If we're talking about the mass market draw of communal applications in VR.... Facebook.

Are we really expecting this to have any real impact or meaning in the grand scheme of things?

I mean the same FB-owned OR headset requires a PC rocking GTX 970-level dedicated GPU and fast CPU, that 99.999999% of all FB users won't own.

Are you expecting FB to give away desktop PCs to its users so that they can experience VR? Or for them to come up with some sort of subsidised dedicated HW (essentially a VR console)?

If not then I'm not sure how OR being owned by FB is even relevant to how well the headset will do in the marketplace...

 

[pjbliverpool]

Some interesting comments in here about the rendering requirements for Oculus Rift:

https://www.oculus.com/en-us/blog/powering-the-rift/

It seems the rendering requirement is higher than the 2160x1200x 90 fps due to the distortion used at the default eye-target scale. In fact the system needs to render around 400m pixels per second.

I assume a similar requirement will exist for PSVR. Given the very high resolution and frame rate targets it certainly doesn't look like we'll be getting particularly pretty games in VR for the time being. At least not without absolutely monstrous hardware behind the headset.

 

[hughJ]

Its a rather big assumption to say that consoles will have an easier time or better experience because a living room has more space.

A coffee table can be shifted aside more easily than office desks, bed frames and dressers (which are usually already situated to maximize floor space anyways). Look at the survey results. Of the 3 common room types for the PC, the living room is the only room to actually see a net increase for being their VR room of choice relative to where the main gaming PC currently is. For people that can't dedicate a room to VR or are otherwise short on space, the living room is obviously the more flexible option. The scary thing (for Valve anyways) is that even after accounting for a possible relocation you've still got over 1/4 of the respondents stuck with 4 square meters or less. Imagine an application like Tilt Brush inside a 2x2 box where you need to physically walk around whatever it is you're painting/sculpting. Even 3x3 would be very limiting for that sort of application and that represents less than half of the respondents.

I'm not even sure if motion controls will be that important.

Large volume motion tracking and motion controllers is pretty important to Valve considering they've built their system to accommodate the feature and all of their private and public demos of the past couple years have focused on it. It's the single reason why they were able to claim that they've "solved" VR sickness after all. It may not be critical for VR's overall commercial success, but all of the most compelling content does/will involve standing up where one's actions are most readily mirrored to the game world. If it weren't for motion controllers (or HOTAS/wheel cockpit games which also provide the same effect) I probably wouldn't even bother with this generation of PC-VR as a consumer - seated gamepad VR is kind of gimmicky by comparison. Yeah, you get some mileage out of being a floating camera in a 3D space, but the height mismatch you feel from your character's POV and the lack of connection to your environment really limits that tangible sense of presence that makes VR go from being a novelty to being uncanny.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Are we really expecting this to have any real impact or meaning in the grand scheme of things?

I mean the same FB-owned OR headset requires a PC rocking GTX 970-level dedicated GPU and fast CPU, that 99.999999% of all FB users won't own.

Are you expecting FB to give away desktop PCs to its users so that they can experience VR? Or for them to come up with some sort of subsidised dedicated HW (essentially a VR console)?

If not then I'm not sure how OR being owned by FB is even relevant to how well the headset will do in the marketplace...

I'm certainly expecting FB to develop experiences for VR that have appeal to the mass market, and specifically to FB users. Surely that has potential to drive sales in a market that traditionally may not have been interested in VR?

If we're comparing which 'social' experiences are more likely to make people invest in a VR capable system (be it console or PC based) then I'd say whatever FB comes up with is likely to be at least as enticing as the ability to play n VR along with other people playing on the TV (an experience which is actually less social than just all playing on the TV which is available to everyone already).

Obviously the start up price will still be the main driving factor for people investing for the first time though.

 

[pjbliverpool]

A coffee table can be shifted aside more easily than office desks, bed frames and dressers (which are usually already situated to maximize floor space anyways). Look at the survey results. Of the 3 common room types for the PC, the living room is the only room to actually see a net increase for being their VR room of choice relative to where the main gaming PC currently is. For people that can't dedicate a room to VR or are otherwise short on space, the living room is obviously the more flexible option.

There seems to be an assumption that the average console is in the living room. I'd imagine a fairly sizeable proportion of them are in a kids/teenagers bedroom.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are many more living room consoles out there than living room gaming PC's. But I don't think it's as clear cut as "consoles = living room, PC's = office"

 

[hughJ]

I assume a similar requirement will exist for PSVR.

It'll no doubt vary from game to game. I'm pretty sure that the guys from Epic said that their UE4 morpheus implementations weren't doing the oversampling that's by default requested by the Oculus SDK.

Also remember that it's not just oversampling the resolution to accommodate the lens distortion, but it's also oversampling in terms of the fov/frustum geometry in order to provide a buffer around the periphery for timewarp transforms. It's not all doom and gloom though as most users are still currently cranking up the supersampling over and above the Oculus defaults and we've still yet to see Nvidia's MRS implemented into the Oculus SDK which could cut the necessary pixel throughput down substantially.

Valve's talk at GDC sort of covered the same bases in the sense of scaring people about pixel throughput: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO7G38_pxU4&t=6m2s Keep in mind though that Valve/SteamVR didn't/doesn't actually do the timewarp that the Oculus SDK does, so his numbers in the talk might actually be on the conservative side.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I expect FB to go whether the VR market is. If there's 1 million VR headsets on PC and 10 million on PS4 (random hypotheticals), FB will want their virtual world on PS4 before someone else beats them to it and creates the de facto VR space.

 

[pjbliverpool]

I expect FB to go whether the VR market is. If there's 1 million VR headsets on PC and 10 million on PS4 (random hypotheticals), FB will want their virtual world on PS4 before someone else beats them to it and creates the de facto VR space.

True, the more people in a virtual FB the better I guess, it's be a bit crap if you could only interact in VR with other FB owners that had an OR. In that sense it may be most prevalent on mobile VR.

On the other hand, it would be a wise for FB to make an experience that could be run on lower end PC hardware unlike the games that are expecting 970 class GPU's. If it were to market OR Facebook VR as accessible to almost anyone with a modernish PC then it would considerably open the market up. I totally agree with the high end minimum requirements for OR gaming but other applications hopefully shouldn't need anything like that level of hardware. If you can draw people in to VR on the promise of a social experience (or virtual cinema, shopping, live action VR movies, CAD, tourism etc....) without needing high end gaming hardware, you can later try to sell them on the gaming aspect which requires a bigger investment.

 

[hughJ]

As long as the PS4 PSVR is tied to the console release cycle and lifespan there's really very little hope for that product to grow much beyond being a living room toy. In a couple years we'll have 3rd generation GearVR and nearing 2nd generation tethered PC VR and the jump from now to then will be similar to what we saw going from DK1 to CV1. PSVR has about as much chance at becoming some sort of lasting mecca or de facto standard for VR as xband modems did for the web and internet gaming.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

As long as the PS4 PSVR is tied to the console release cycle and lifespan there's really very little hope for that product to grow much beyond being a living room toy.

Why are Sony unable to improve upon the PSVR headset as time goes on, any more than the user can buy a better TV?

 

[cheapchips]

Why are Sony unable to improve upon the PSVR headset as time goes on, any more than the user can buy a better TV?

For games that are constrained to rendering at 1080p is there much point? I suppose that a higher res panel could reduce screen door even is rendering is still at 1080?

A high res screen would be great for movie playback though.

 

[hughJ]

Why are Sony unable to improve upon the PSVR headset as time goes on, any more than the user can buy a better TV?

PS4 is limited by HDMI 1.4 bandwidth which they're already bumping up against now to output 1080p 120Hz, and they also have to contend with the console marketplace where their customers expect extended product cycles to extract more value from their purchases. By comparison I don't think we're going to see Rift iteration cycles being any longer than 2 years and the day we see an early demonstration of the next prototype it's going to make this current crop look ancient. Actually, in terms of display resolution the CV1/Vive are even starting to feel dated now considering we first saw roughly spec equivalent prototypes over a year ago and we saw 1440p GearVR even before that.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

As long as the PS4 PSVR is tied to the console release cycle and lifespan there's really very little hope for that product to grow much beyond being a living room toy. In a couple years we'll have 3rd generation GearVR and nearing 2nd generation tethered PC VR and the jump from now to then will be similar to what we saw going from DK1 to CV1. PSVR has about as much chance at becoming some sort of lasting mecca or de facto standard for VR as xband modems did for the web and internet gaming.

Improved headsets on PC will come with improved rendering costs and you'll still be running content on the old headsets, which'll be passed down by upgraders. So no, PSVR won't be obsoleted in a couple of years. As long as the experience is good enough, like a PS2 five years after launch when its hardware was totally eclipsed by PC, people will still value it. It's more likely VR devs will target PSVR as the lowest common denominator and not invest much in PC VR beyond that, unless PC VR can provide a suitably strong independent install base.

Really, it's no difference to PC versus console. PS4 is already eclipsed by PC, yet games are typically multiplat and don't push PC ot the point PS4 looks old and ropey and no-one wants it any more.

 

[brunogm]

Also the new VR driven low latency render tech, tweaks and hacks are already useful:
PSVR reprojection, showed in KZSF;
Valve early vsync calls trick;
...

 

[brunogm]

With these a modest hardware will bring good enough quality.

For example a 50hz game reprojected to 100hz.

 

[hughJ]

They'll be obsoleted so long as people get a chance to see what they're missing. They may still be able to play with their old hardware, but so did Atari 2600 owners even after their neighbors got an NES. Once you had tried the DK2, it was very hard to go back to the DK1. Once you have tried CB/CV1/Vive, it's hard to be satisfied with DK2. That's not a "that game isn't fun anymore" realization but rather a "what I thought was VR wasn't actually VR" realization. I would predict that trend is going to continue for quite a while yet - VR really is just that early in its maturation where those iterative doublings and added elements actually amount to something beyond the old graphics vs gameplay argument. We're talking about hardware right now that is only arguably adequate for a broadly marketed commercial product, where games struggle with rendering readable text and company reps still have to function as technology apologists to explain that the "blurry" screen isn't because the HMD is broken.

I guess my point isn't so much that PS4 will be outdated by the PC (that's inevitable and goes without saying), but rather that the PS4 was (in hindsight) poorly timed/positioned for the introduction of VR and Sony has been put in a position where they have no choice but to plant a flag and commit to a long term HMD spec before the platform is genuinely ready. If Oculus and Valve were forced to choose one generation of VR HMD to commit to for a period of ~5 years I really don't think it would be this one.

 

[Prophecy2k]

I'm not understanding where this thinking that VR headsets need to be on an annualized upgrade cycle in order to become successful with the mainstream consumer. It's nonesense as far as I'm concerned.

As long as the initial consumer versions can eliminate the major issues that make the device practically unusable (i.e. things that cause physical nausea), then the mainstream isn't gonna care that the new $400 headset they just bought has been obsoleted by a newer version with a slightly higher resolution 12 months later. Nobody is gonna spend that much on a headset and upgrade in such a short space of time. Likewise , whether the headset update annually or not, it doesn't matter to potential new consumers buying into the technology.

If we're talking about the maintstream, the biggest and primary factor in ensuring mainstream success is the price of entry. Currently none of the three headsets are looking likely to launch at a mass market price. In the other hand, Sony is in a unique position to be able to offer a headset at a loss, break even or lower margin price than the others. Primarily because they can recover more revenue on software and peripheral sales (e.g. PS Move controllers). Additionally, being able to have control over their entire product supply chain means that they are better positioned to be able to build the PSVR headset for cheaper, whilst possibly even being able to cost reduce the unit down the line.

For these reasons alone I'd be more inclined to believe PSVR will be the most successful VR headset out of the three. Particuarly beacuse they're also the only player operating in a market with no real competitors for their VR product.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

They'll be obsoleted so long as people get a chance to see what they're missing.

How many people will be experiencing the latest VR experience? And how much better will that be considering it'll also cost more? I point again to PC versus current gen consoles. The improvement isn't worth the added cost of changing, unlike the transition from Atari to NES which was a generational shift. When VR has a generational shift, so next console gen including whatever MS and Nintendo and whoever else offers, then people with PSVR will feel like they're missing out. Until then it'll be exactly the same as buying a console. It's fabulous at launch and good enough for five+ years after that, with people still buying outdated but cheap hardware.

 

[MrSpiggott]

I think I'd rather stay with PSVR level graphics at the minute. Accurate 3D positioning, but obviously not reality.

Probably most of us here have not been attacked by lions, chased by bears or in any way felt in sudden fear of our lives. But now, with a powerful PC, rendering realistic graphics, we're going to be confronted with all sorts of horrors that are going to pass the reality test. Our brains are going to be pumping all sorts of flight of fight chemicals into our bodies.
Are there going to be long term health implications? Are high end PC gamers going to start dropping dead from undiagnosed heart conditions?

And what about our flinch relex? If we start ignoring objects flying towards us in VR will that muscle memory be carried forward into the real world?