Sony VR Headset/Project Morpheus/PlayStation VR

[Jwm]

Does it have a way of letting you see the environment around you? Would be nice if they added a cam so you could switch to RL mode find that dropped controller or pizza.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

As it uses the camera, they could show video of you watching yourself in a virtual reality out-of-body experience. Would probably make an Octodad type game in itself!

 

[MrFox]

Optics is the same. Sony just used LED screen that completely eliminates gaps between pixels [no pixel door effect]. They will most likely switch to some other screen to eliminate blur.

As for splitter, it outputs uninterrupted video feed to headset and takes one part of the screen and stretches it with a fixed function. I don't think that it will be expensive.

Yeah, I hope they'll switched to OLED for release, at least they said they are "considering it", fingers crossed. I'd much prefer OLED.

It's possible optics might be the same, we have little info... but from the interviews they seem to have a longer and adjustable vertex distance (the space between the optics and the eye) and there are hints that they might have a different projection which would require a smaller correction (because journalists had an impression of higher resolution even though the panels are the same res). Some said Morpheus had focus issues though.

I wish there were patents we could look at to figure out what they did

 

[Scott_Arm]

I actually think $300 would be a pretty acceptable launch price for a VR peripheral. If the experience is good, people will definitely pay for it. You can't cheap out on the components. The experience has to be top notch, and then word of mouth and press will do the rest. Let the people who are really excited pay a premium, and have the prices come down naturally.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I concur. The experience, done well, is definitely worth it. VR is basically the real next-gen, the first real progress in console gaming since 3D.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I concur. The experience, done well, is definitely worth it. VR is basically the real next-gen, the first real progress in console gaming since 3D.

I'm still not totally sure that's how I want to game, primarily, but I would pay $300 for a good VR headset, no problem.

 

[MrFox]

The module also has a frame rate interpolation chip (I guess it's their Motion Flow algorithm) that converts 60Hz input to 120Hz, this can't be a negligible amount of silicon.

 

[ERP]

The optics are custom made, but they are one of those components that are expensive to design and prototype, but if they don't use glass optics, they are cheap to mass produce.
Having said that I don't think the device will be cheap, I'm sure they'll price it to be competitive with the other headsets which will probably have shipped by the time it's released.

I understand there are several other similar devices being developed for the PC, Razor apparently has one in development.

 

[MrFox]

Thanks, I guess it's only a PMMA molded piece then. Glass would weigh a ton.

There was an interview where Sony said it's not a coincidence that VR devices are coming out from multiple companies at the same time. They said all the parts needed were only available recently, and previously they needed expensive military grade components. They must be talking about the 1000Hz ring gyros and accelerometers, and the 1080p cellphone type display which first came out in 2012.

EDIT: found it. He was talking about the display.
www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/project-morpheus-sony-interview-gdc-2014/

“This is similar to what we saw with motion control, where you get some big market like cellphones bringing down the cost of something like motions sensors significantly,” Mikhailov says. “So basically, you have this cross-section right now where display panels have gotten small, high-resolution, and affordable, whereas before to get such a panel you’d need to go to military-grade VR simulations. Now you can buy them for a reasonable price. So at this point we can actually make a good quality VR system that is still affordable for people to purchase.”
“It just seemed like the right time. That’s why you’re seeing a lot of this kind of advancement happening very rapidly.”

oh I missed this little piece of drama. Shots fired.

We’ve been doing VR for this project for about three years, so we definitely started before Oculus was even funded

 

[Deleted member 11852]

They said all the parts needed were only available recently, and previously they needed expensive military grade components. They must be talking about the 1000Hz ring gyros and accelerometers, and the 1080p cellphone type display which first came out in 2012.

Gyros used in military (aerospace, typically missile) applications have in excess of a 500 degree resolution per second, a bias (1g environment) exceeding (less than) 40 degrees per hour and and angle random walk of 0.2 degrees per square root hour.

So it's probably the accelerometers. I've never had write software to integrate with those.

 

[3dilettante]

As it uses the camera, they could show video of you watching yourself in a virtual reality out-of-body experience. Would probably make an Octodad type game in itself!

Or make the pause menu of a horror game just the video of you with a monster composited in behind you.

 

[Aeoniss]

The module also has a frame rate interpolation chip (I guess it's their Motion Flow algorithm) that converts 60Hz input to 120Hz, this can't be a negligible amount of silicon.

Can you elaborate on this?

So what you're saying is that the PS4 wouldn't have to render at 120fps natively, but just 60fps?

If this is true, than the graphical cutbacks would be far smaller.

I pray that this makes it into the retail unit.

 

[Scott_Arm]

The module also has a frame rate interpolation chip (I guess it's their Motion Flow algorithm) that converts 60Hz input to 120Hz, this can't be a negligible amount of silicon.

Wouldn't the artifacts be really horrible for VR? I'd think IQ would be a much bigger issue with a VR headset, and frame interpolation like they do on TVs would have much worse artifacts than upscaling. I guess it's artifacts vs aliasing.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Can you elaborate on this?

So what you're saying is that the PS4 wouldn't have to render at 120fps natively, but just 60fps?

If this is true, than the graphical cutbacks would be far smaller.

I pray that this makes it into the retail unit.

Pretty much all kinds of tvs do some kind of frame interpolation now. Sony is Motion Flow and Samsung is ClearMotion etc. If you want the best image quality, and you want to lower input lag, it's one of the first things you'll turn off. I have my doubts that it's a good solution for a vr headset.

 

[djskribbles]

Not sure how well frame interpolation would work with VR. But I know with TVs, it has been around for a long time and has come a long way. If done well, there are very minor (if not unnoticeable) artifacts. The problem most people have with frame interpolation is that it ruins the 'film' look and makes it look like video. And also increased input lag as Scott mentioned.

What it does is it estimates motion between real frames and inserts created frames, giving a pseudo increased framerate.

 

[DieH@rd]

Maybe the VR API that they are using can output data to interpolation chip, providing him with the motion vector of the camera. That way scaler can "nudge" every "fake" frame that it creates in the position of the motion so that final result is "smoother" image. After-all, HMD is focused on small part of the screen, there is more enough space for "nudging". Scaler can also remember the data from the past few frames, and if for example if image is "zooming in" [for example player is walking and looking straight ahead without head motion], it can anticipate how the next "fake" frame needs to be showcased to the user even if it doesent receives any meaningful camera motion data.

Who knows how would our brain accept that kind of cheat.

edit - when I think about it, API camera data is not necessary, just a buffer of previous frames would be enough if the latency of the creation of brand new fake image is low.

 

[MrFox]

Wouldn't the artifacts be really horrible for VR? I'd think IQ would be a much bigger issue with a VR headset, and frame interpolation like they do on TVs would have much worse artifacts than upscaling. I guess it's artifacts vs aliasing.

Artifacts from FRC shouldn't be an issue at this frame rate, I played all the Ratchet Collection, and the Sly Colleciton at 120fps. Sony's Motion Flow is very good when the frame rate is stable at 60, it doubles the perceived resolution when panning. It's a significant improvement to have it on. Artifacts are present only when there are frame drops, otherwise it's some blurring of edges from overlapping parallax objects, you really have to know what to look for. Perceptually it's invisible, as opposed to aliasing which is very annoying.

I think LCD's horrible non-linear switching response should cause a lot more artifacts. That's quite an advantage to Occulus right now.

Latency could be a problem, but Richard Marks said they interpolate the current frame and previous frame... so it's only somewhere between 8ms and 16ms additional lag compared to plain 60fps. My guess is that they don't have to recalculate the motion vectors from the images, maybe the engine can already give it to them. They can skip the multi-frame delay necessary in the current Motion Flow implementation (about 45ms).

For latency, they seem to have a predictive system in the Low frequency domain (given to the game engine), and a quick internal correction for high frequency components that's handled entirely outside of the game engine's render pipeline. This could very well be the killer feature that solves most latency issues.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1835874&postcount=196

 

[blakjedi]

i couldnt use this more 15 minutes tops...

 

[patsu]

DigitalFoundry have a play with Morpheus and they like it.



I've been sold on VR for a while and I'm so looking forward to getting this thing. Unless something goes horribly wrong, which seems unlikely given all of the coverage has been overwhelmingly positive (ditto recent Occulus units), this is a day one purchase for me.

VR for me, is nextgen. It's now obvious PlayStation 4 was built with this in mind.

Nice ! E3 is June 10-12. Will tune in to see if Sony reveal this thing officially.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Nice ! E3 is June 10-12. Will tune in to see if Sony reveal this thing officially.

Yeah, I think we'll see Morpheus at E3. Mind you, Sony are already pretty public on it, they uploaded their hour-long GDC presentation/unveilling on their PlayStation YouTube channel. It was an very interesting viewing and definitely worth a watch if you've not seen it So many problems to implementing VR tech and they've got them all covered!