Sony VR Headset/Project Morpheus/PlayStation VR

[Daozang]

maybe even a revival of puzzle adventure/mystery/crime solving

This I think is very feasible.
No sudden moves, only forward walking, no need for explosions that shake the camera or in the case of the new alien game, a monster that drags you to the ground etc.
Anything that does not force you out of control of the camera (your view) will be more successful for now.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I kind of think Indies will actually make some of the best VR games. There are a lot of genre games that wouldn't really translate well. All the first person games obviously could, but I'm wondering if some of them might be too fast and frantic for it to work well without giving people fits. I'd really love to try Battlefield with VR. Not sure I'd want to try something faster like COD or Titanfall, or an arena shooter style game.

 

[Scott_Arm]

...
That might be unfair. OR was a public campaign because it was publicly funded. Companies like Sony can't go waving their R&D in public in case of giving away ideas to the competition. Reportedly they've been working on this for 3 years, and I'm sure they've dabbled with the idea before. They may have got some ideas from OR, but that's the problem with revealing your unfinished ideas - you leave yourself wide open to copycat products, unless you have a watertight patent situation. Which is why Sony et al don't say what they're working on until they're ready to as based on their evaluation of the competition.

There's the possibility that even without OR, Sony would be releasing this VR project. They had the HMZ, they probably tried VR on PS3, found the experience compelling but felt the technical limits (PS3 hardware, headset cost) meant a product would have to wait, and carried on with prototyping until they found something that was viable.

There is of course the possibility that Sony had no ideas, saw OR, and copied it using their established R&D talent and financial power to rush through a clone, but that strikes me as far less probable. I'm reminded of Move and claims Sony copied Wii, whereupon old R&D videos of glowing ball tracking on PS2 disproved these. Sony didn't release Move until they were ready (quite possibly prompted by Wii's success), but they had it waiting in the wings. Perhaps they've had a VR prototype in the works for a while, and it took OR's public success to motivate management to actually release it - something that we've heard Sony can be reluctant to do with it's R&D creations.

It's true. I'm not accusing Sony of copying. I just think Occulus Rift did so much to get people excited about VR, and it's had so much good attention for a good idea, that it would be a shame if they got sunk by Sony and Microsoft before they even got their product to market. Cheering for the underdog, I guess. To be honest, I was hoping Sony and MS would just support Occulus Rift, but I understand why they like to be in control of their own destinies.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

If they release the add-on kit for £250-300 depending on the box content then I would be ordering right now!

Price-wise, it wouldn't have to be too expensive, depending on the optics. I've honestly no idea what they'll cost, so they're the unknown. The rest is a 1080p 5" display and production. There's no computery gubbins unlike a phone. £300 may be more likely for profit margins as there'll be early adopters willing to spend that. but for what it could sell at, costs ought to be able to be kept low.

Yeah... at the moment, I'm thinking racers, first person horror*, maybe even a revival of puzzle adventure/mystery/crime solving. Then there's on-rails games (House of the Dead?).

Poker/insert card game tournament (Too bad All-Stars kinda failed. An All-Stars Poker with Kratos across the table would be unnerving. )

Actually I wouldn't be surprised if the future is more VR experiences, like virtual holidays. No actual gameplay - just a scuba-dive or jungle walk in your living room. That'd really pee off core gamers just as mobile gaming does!

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I kind of think Indies will actually make some of the best VR games. There are a lot of genre games that wouldn't really translate well. All the first person games obviously could, but I'm wondering if some of them might be too fast and frantic for it to work well without giving people fits. I'd really love to try Battlefield with VR. Not sure I'd want to try something faster like COD or Titanfall, or an arena shooter style game.

That's true. Games would have to become realistic. I'd like that! Alternative, the human mind will adapt to super-fast games and then real-life will just become a lethargic drag...

It's true. I'm not accusing Sony of copying. I just think Occulus Rift did so much to get people excited about VR, and it's had so much good attention for a good idea, that it would be a shame if they got sunk by Sony and Microsoft before they even got their product to market. Cheering for the underdog, I guess. To be honest, I was hoping Sony and MS would just support Occulus Rift, but I understand why they like to be in control of their own destinies.

At this point, perhaps OR would be supported? If they both use HDMI in and SBS stereo, there's no particular reason not to. Just that Sony's official system will have full head tracking and OR's may not. Maybe Sony are licensing OR tech? Wasn't there a rumour of discussion between OVR and the console companies?

 

[AlNom]

Actually I wouldn't be surprised if the future is more VR experiences, like virtual holidays. No actual gameplay - just a scuba-dive or jungle walk in your living room. That'd really pee off core gamers just as mobile gaming does!

mmm... Google Earth VR Edition also with better 3D modelling.

[strike]Macrotransaction vacations, eh? <insert Moé> [/strike] Oh dear. Not like any developer would be reading this for ideas... or even need to.



GPGPGPGPGPGPU VR Music Visualizer would be pretty trippy.

 

[patsu]

Most games won't work, if simply converted to VR.
The people at Oculus seem to think that a game, in order to work, needs to be developed specifically for a VR experience.
The limitations with what you can do, are a lot, and anything else will pretty much result in a nausea inducing experience.

For now, I think Uncharted 3 is out. That drugged scene will cause me to throw up all over my own living room.

I suspect we will see another wave of controller innovations and attachments.

 

[DieH@rd]

Here's the competition:

preorders start today, shipment july, 350$, 60-72-75Hz support

 

[Scott_Arm]

This could be the big comeback for flight sims.

 

[-tkf-]

Carmack tweets

A bit unusual for him to react in this way, or maybe i am losing track, usually he would embrace something like this. His now has the Console world to support his work, instead of just the small PC niece he will see support from big players. He should be more than happy..

Lower resolution is an option that can be used to offset the required extra rendering?
And would the KZ interlacing trick work? One thing is certain, some games should be pretty obvious candidates, like driving games, i am excited about this.

 

[Scott_Arm]

A bit unusual for him to react in this way, or maybe i am losing track, usually he would embrace something like this. His now has the Console world to support his work, instead of just the small PC niece he will see support from big players. He should be more than happy..

Lower resolution is an option that can be used to offset the required extra rendering?
And would the KZ interlacing trick work? One thing is certain, some games should be pretty obvious candidates, like driving games, i am excited about this.

I'm not totally sure, but I think this is one situation where you really don't want to upscale. I haven't tried Occulus, but I've heard aliasing was a huge turnoff. Unless you can have really good AA to cover up any sub-1080p aliasing.

I'd gladly trade some fancy graphics for a VR experience.

 

[zed]

Well it looks like I'm finally going to buy a console (my last was the Atari 2600) as I've always said here on b3d for years vr would be the thing for me to take the plunge. Tried it back in 1993. loved it. Ye haw. I'm riding the bomb down. Wtf wasn't this sooner. I've been waiting s so long

 

[Daozang]

Here's the competition:

preorders start today, shipment july, 350$, 60-72-75Hz support

My fears became reality...
Now I have to push my self really hard not to buy DK2!

But really, this is good for the industry!
We have two companies that invest in this, and that can only bring more, and ultimately benefit the experience!

 

[zed]

Wrt aa etc
Mate I tried vr back in 93. it was just flat shaded polygons and it was so cool. I think whatever they have is gonna be better.
Wrt the business side I don't think it's gonna be a success.
Vr is not something you can use for hours at a time.
Though perhaps they have fixed this now.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

They did it, they actually came through with a dream as old as the 80s where i saw my first VR headset and thought, noway

Well, we have a promise. Let's see if Sony and game developers can deliver on that promise.

I'm very interested in this but, as always, the price, execution and game support will hugely determine its commercial fate. Personally I would drop a few hundred quid on this if I could play a nextgen Motorstorm, the new Elite or Mirror's Edge 2 if it's approaching the level of awesome that I've read skeptics describe Occulus Rift, having first used it the first time

 

[London Geezer]

"This is a guy who builds spaceships." -- Mark Cerny

Wipeout would be insane though, no matter how much they improve the graphics. Why use drugs when you can do Zone Levels in VR.

Oh lord. Just thinking about Wipeout+VR made me go light headed for a fraction of a second.......

 

[3dilettante]

The Killzone MP rendering choices look like they aligned with this (maybe because of similar performance demands or early testing??), which in retrospect may have been informed by the constraints and choices made for the engine for KZ3's stereoscopic mode.
While reprojection between two frames for 60 FPS wouldn't be temporal, the engine could be structured so that the renderer just sees it as a choice in which buffer it reads from.

I think the data could be segregated into tiers. Given the complexity of materials these days and environmental inputs, there would be data references and calculations that are not affected by the left/right offset, those that are not significantly affected, and then those that might need to be done per-frame. Even the latter case might be interesting if the calculations or reads have a relationship that allows them to be recalculated based on the known relative position of the cameras. A merging of the phases might allow for better cache and fixed-function utilization.

We'd have a phase composed of all the work that could be done once per frame pair, and possibly a further subdivision for data that might be usable for some kind of temporal reprojection to reduce the work for the next frame pair.
Then there'd be data that the engine might be able to reproject from one eye to the other.
Then there'd be the highly variable stuff in a third phase, although if there are tweaks to the architecture like Sony's desire to use compute as an input to the front end, some of the submission work could be reused or recalculated on the fly.

The area I'm curious about is primitive setup and fragment coverage, particularly if tessellation gets involved. The details for whether the setup pipeline can be used to provide fragment data for two different viewports at the same time, or the other frame can be extrapolated from the results escape me.
GCN's behavior under tessellation is the one area where hitting the stereoscopic 2x worst-case would be a good result.

 

[Cjail]

Geoff Keighley: Developers who have used Project Morpheus tell me the fidelity of the image and experience is superior to Oculus Rift.

 

[Nesh]

Oh lord. Just thinking about Wipeout+VR made me go light headed for a fraction of a second.......

 

[patsu]

The Killzone MP rendering choices look like they aligned with this (maybe because of similar performance demands or early testing??), which in retrospect may have been informed by the constraints and choices made for the engine for KZ3's stereoscopic mode.
While reprojection between two frames for 60 FPS wouldn't be temporal, the engine could be structured so that the renderer just sees it as a choice in which buffer it reads from.

I think the data could be segregated into tiers. Given the complexity of materials these days and environmental inputs, there would be data references and calculations that are not affected by the left/right offset, those that are not significantly affected, and then those that might need to be done per-frame. Even the latter case might be interesting if the calculations or reads have a relationship that allows them to be recalculated based on the known relative position of the cameras. A merging of the phases might allow for better cache and fixed-function utilization.

We'd have a phase composed of all the work that could be done once per frame pair, and possibly a further subdivision for data that might be usable for some kind of temporal reprojection to reduce the work for the next frame pair.
Then there'd be data that the engine might be able to reproject from one eye to the other.
Then there'd be the highly variable stuff in a third phase, although if there are tweaks to the architecture like Sony's desire to use compute as an input to the front end, some of the submission work could be reused or recalculated on the fly.

The area I'm curious about is primitive setup and fragment coverage, particularly if tessellation gets involved. The details for whether the setup pipeline can be used to provide fragment data for two different viewports at the same time, or the other frame can be extrapolated from the results escape me.
GCN's behavior under tessellation is the one area where hitting the stereoscopic 2x worst-case would be a good result.

What about the PS4 inFamous ? Is there room for VR based on what we know so far ?

I'd be mad if Dark Souls 2 is not VR capable by the time they release the PS4 version. Same for DriveClub actually.