Sony VR Headset/Project Morpheus/PlayStation VR

They tried with 3D TVs and although I enjoy the odd 3D Bluray movie, everyone will agree that 3D movies and games haven't really set the world on fire.

VR's best hope is to be slightly less niche than it already is.

 

Digital Foundry - Spec Analysis: Project Morpheus

Excellent overview of Morpheus and current VR world. Sony definetley have great basic hw/sw/input package to provide excellent VR. Great read.

 

I disagree.
I don't think it has anything to do with 3d tv.
I admit I'm riding the hype train hard right now, but it seems that once you try it, the immersion is unparalleled.
The reason why people get sick because of VR is exactly because, one of their senses (vision) is convinced that they are somewhere they are not, when the rest of their senses contradict the brains interpretation of what they see.
That is why, it's a lot more comfortable being in a cockpit, (sitting on a chair in VR and in actual life) than sitting in a chair and playing Skyrim for example.

 

I'm not doubting the merits of the technology itself. I mean I love 3D TV so I'm really a GO VR!!! kind of guy. But realistically, to think that this will be anything more than a niche of a niche is being extremely optimistic.

 

Sony make their own OLED screens, as they make their tiny one used in the HMZ, but I don't know if they do any big applications. The screen situation in Japan is weird. They keep making and breaking consortiums. Last I remember, there was a Joint Japanese Display organisation of some sort. No idea if it's still going. Sony were going to make their own OLED panels but I'm pretty sure they shelved that operation.

 

They had a venture with Panasonic for OLED TVs, and I was waiting for them to really go to town with some next-gen TVs, but it all fell apart. Which is extremely sad.

 

Nice article!

"Moving from LCD to an OLED panel will help (and this is what Sony is planning)"
Oh? A scoop?

About the FOV, Anton suggested that it's not calculated the same way between the two companies, the optics being supposedly different, making a comparison difficult. I think it could be anywhere between a perfect square and a normal fisheye. I hope it's something mild like a stereographic projection, but I don't know if the optics would be too complicated/expensive.

I like that the hardware is doing all the correction, there's no overhead for it on the PS4 GPU/CPU, but again it could make the hardware more expensive.

 

That's a lot of pixels

 

880dpi. How ridiculous. Sorry, don't want to sound like one of those people who used to say we don't need 1080p back in the day. But really? 880dpi? Pointless.

 

Well I'm not sure this question is entirely valid in its premise...For starters you cannot match the total detail on a 1080p screen that you have on a 1440p screen from a distance, if you are close enough to the 1440p screen to see individual pixels. In a VR situation the screen looks huge, covering such a large area of your field of view that you actually can see individual pixels easily even at 1440p. I've read that this project Morpheus has a 90 degree field of view. That's similar to watching a 270" screen from 3 meters away.

This is how 270" would look compared to a 55" telly.
http://www.displaywars.com/270-inch-16x9-vs-55-inch-16x9

So that's what it would take from 3 meters away, but you need to have the same resolution as in the small screen close to your eyes if the perceived screen sizes are the same. If you want to have the same detail per area on a 1080p screen, the perceived screen size has to be smaller, basically a 1080p window in a 1440p wall.

 

Yes I was having difficulties actually formulating the question

 

That is crazy. My phone is 440dpi and that is more than enough to make the display seamless. Not a pixel or jaggy anywhere.

 

I've not seen much about those rumors, is it just an overlay? That doesn't seem like a big win over just putting things on the TV, and there are likely problems with consistency when splitting game outputs across two different devices when one is as variable as an unknown television and an unknown connection chain from the console to the TV.

Or maybe they realized the glare from the PS4 controller ruined it.

 

Not many reports or rumors on the AR-based OmniViewer. Allegedly tie in with the PS4 codename, Orbis.

There might be a related patent or two; I forgot.

May be misreported for all I know.

 

It is probably better this way in the long run so that I can use this thing with other CPUs/GPUs. Price is likely the forth most concern for many people since Sony solved the comfort issues. For first cuts, I assume Sony will push content like they always do, with first parties and indies.

 

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/EP2660645A1.pdf

Pretty clear to me they have some form of image stabilization in there (not just the game engine being predictive). But I don't speak the Patent-Gibberish language very well.

They split the motion data in HF and LF, then they seem to use the LF for the game engine, while the HF is sent to Image stabilisation processing, applied raw to the current frame buffer in the glasses. Maybe this could allow 30fps to be usable for some types of games.

If the rumors are true that they delayed DriveClub because of this device, I just don't see DriveClub delayed into 2015. So this could be here for xmas?

 

From a Richard Marks interview on 4gamer translated via Dualshockers. So there are 3 processors in this thing...

http://www.dualshockers.com/2014/03...nt-processors-could-still-get-an-oled-screen/

 

Who is the chief architect ?

 

So what's up with the PS4's existing audio solution? Surely it's more than capable of outputting 3D audio?

 

This part:

My take is that they still don't know if Morpheus will be exclusive to PS4 or if it can also be used for 3D Blurays or even PC connectivity.

The way it is now, if it connects to the PS4 for games, the TrueAudio solution will be used for positional audio (fmod and wwise). If it connects to a 3D Bluray player, the HDMI carries a digital 5.1 stream which the Morpheus' DSP downsamples to stereo.