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Demo PlayStation VR at Select Best Buy Stores (Every weekend through December)

Soi-Fong

Member
I heard a demo of pink eye is also included in this. Anyone know if that's true?

If you actually went to one of these demos, you'll realize that the headset is wiped top to bottom with actual cleansing wipes for about a minutes after each person is done.

If you tried this out you'll also realize that unlike the Rift and the Vive, it's nigh impossible for the headset lenses to touch your eyes. With my glasses the lenses were nowhere near even my frames.
 

DarkWish

Member
Best Buy in Sterling, VA had it and I got to try it for the first time. It was pretty cool! Headset is very comfortable and after a while I just forgot I was wearing anything and forgot there were people around watching me. I saw some people play Battle Zone and Heist, but I tried Eve Valkyrie and it was awesome. Definitely felt immersed in the game. The guy that set it up said he'll be there for the PSVR demo every weekend until January, so I'll probably go back another time and try out some of the other games.
 

Skatterd

Member
If you actually went to one of these demos, you'll realize that the headset is wiped top to bottom with actual cleansing wipes for about a minutes after each person is done.

If you tried this out you'll also realize that unlike the Rift and the Vive, it's nigh impossible for the headset lenses to touch your eyes. With my glasses the lenses were nowhere near even my frames.

The guy at my demo didnt do that. One person passed it to the next.
At one point he also walked away to take a phone call.
 

Remf

Member
I wasn't able to make it to the BB location in Dunwoody, ga today so I'm going to try it out on Sunday.

What I need to do is to convince my wife to try it out as well since she thinks it would be a waste of money to buy and doesn't see the big deal about it. Lol, plus it would be funny as hell to see her freak out playing the shark cage demo.
 

Boogiepop

Member
Both more and less impressive than I thought it would be going in. Played the tank game, and the "close" stuff (the cockpit, including looking down at the controller and all that jazz) felt surprisingly immersive, and I actually did kind of forget I had the thing on by the end almost. On the other hand, when I was focusing on the main action, it didn't really "feel" that different from just looking at a TV to me. I could see it being neat with the right implementation and full sized games focused on it.

But it's a super expensive add-on not included with the system, so I'm not particularly sold on the idea that it'll get the kind of support I'd want for that cost. So yeah, neat and I see some potential, especially if the price goes down and it actually pulls in some serious support, but for now I'm not going to be picking one up personally.
 
D

Deleted member 22576

Unconfirmed Member
wat if I just walk into the Best Buy that's on that list they'll have one to demo



Bahhh just called and she said they were supposed to have it but didn't get it
 
I just finished trying PSVR at a Best Buy here in Phoenix. I Must say I'm thoroughly impressed! Before today my only VR experience has been my Galaxy Gear VR and a PSVR completely blows that away. Fortunately I got to try 2 demos back to back because there was no one in line at the time.

I First played Battle Zone. I Wanted to try this game first because I'm very prone to motion sickess in first person games. I threw up once a long time ago just watching my friends play Golden Eye on N64. While I'm super excited for VR I'm still not sure where my tolerance level will be. Despite the fast pace of Battle Zone I didn't get motion sick at all. I did feel weird the first time I sidestafed, drove backwards then spun in a circle. But at that point I was blasting so many targets any since of discomfort went away and I felt completely fine by the end of the demo.

The next demo I tried was the shark Cage. I wanted to try this one just as a change of pace from Battle Zone. And I wanted to compare it to the under sea demo on Galaxy Gear. Needless to say the PSVR demo felt like a generation ahead. This game also gave me the greatest sense of presence. I KNEW I was seating in a Best Buy playing a game, but some primitive part of my brain was completely fooled in to "feeling" like there was a big ass shark a foot away from my face. I just can't explain it. I was There and It was there with me! Trippy experience.

I was hoping to try Eve, but by the time my deep sea dive was over there were about 10 people in line.

Just a couple of things I noted:

The PSVR Headset was super comfortable. I had no problems with my glasses while I had the head set on. I was a bet worried because I have a pretty bad astigmatism.

The screen and resolution seem fine. I has no problems reading text.

The screen door effect was MUCH less noticeable then my Gear VR. The weird thing is I didn't notice the screen door effect at all during Battle Zone I could see it on the Deep demo. Although I stopped noticing it after a while.

All in All Sony absolutely nailed it. I'm keeping my pre-order from Amazon and changing to same day shipping. I'm officially hyped and will be there day one.
 
Damnit, I completely forgot that this was going on!

I was right next to a Best Buy that that was demoing it to and had an hour to spare, but I just wandered around the nearby mall instead, haha.
 

kyan_hexagon

Neo Member
Drove an hour to try it out today. Played Super Hyper Cube and Eve Valkyrie. Watched other people play the shark one and Battlezone. Really excited for October now.
 
Great impressions so far guys, glad we have a lot of believers, if you guys want remember to check out the other thread I have on all the PSVR games confirmed and day 1 launch titles here: Link
 
I'm feeling kind of mixed after having tried it out. I tried out the Shark demo and while the headset was comfortable and responsive, visually I was a bit let down. It wasn't so much the graphics though but the screen quality.

For starters, when I was still on the VR home screen, two things stood out to me. There seemed to be a bit of a rainbow effect going on and the text wasn't crisp; it was heavily aliased and looked very low res. So the first impression right off the bat was significantly worse than just looking at a TV. Everything just looked lower res in the interface.

Once I was in the shark demo, things looked a bit soft rather than crisp. Is there a focus knob? Everything was so soft looking. Then I noticed what reminded me of the problem visually with the Vita's OLED screen. Now I'm either seeing the same effects of the Vita or this was the screen door, but there was a grainy artifact going on. It didn't look like the usual screen door of the Oculus DK2. It looked more like this:

YdZMwdj.jpg

MNHzj.jpg

DSC01799.jpg~original


Original thread discussing the problem on Vita:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1212075

Finally, I didn't feel immersed with the presence in the demo. I was expecting to really feel immersed, but I didn't really feel there. I can't put my finger on why, as other VR demos I've tried on Oculus were fine, but something about this one didn't pull me in.

I'm still going to buy one, but the demo that I thought I'd show my wife as her first experience with modern VR made me second guess if I should show that to her at all.
 

Burglekutt

Member
I just played Eve and Battlezone. Both were really fun. I can not stress enough how watching someone else play these games on a screen does not even come close to putting on the headset and feeling like you're actually in that world.
 
I tried it last weekend, and I'm totally sold.

I played Eve, like many others, and such an immerseive experience. I made me think of Star Fox, and Star Wars right away.

Most impressed with how glasses work with this, and those like me with astigmatism. It wasn't quite "right", but I could've made it better with more adjustment mid game. I love the look of the unit. Didn't pre-order, but I'll try and hunt one down during the holiday season. Good work, Sony.
 

pip77

Member
I tried out Playstation VR at my local Best Buy.

The headset is very comfortable with my glasses on, which is a plus.

The Eve Valkyrie demo lasted about 8 minutes. The graphics were good. When it first started, I got dizzy for about 10 seconds. When you're flying and look around the cockpit, it really feels like you are in there. I was pleasantly surprised how much fun I had with it.

When developers start to configure a COD/Battlefield/Tom Clancy type of game for PSVR, I can imagine how much fun it would be. I can see myself grabbing a PSVR this time next year especially if there a tons of games available.
 

Burglekutt

Member
why are they demoing this when it's sold out :(

The rep at the one I went to was saying that, while he loved the psvr, he wasn't thrilled that he would be demoing it to a lot of people that wouldn't be able to get their hands on one for a while after launch but sony wanted to build the hype.
 
Got to try Eve Valkyrie and Battle zone this time. Holy shit I'm sold.

Awesome.

I First played Battle Zone. I Wanted to try this game first because I'm very prone to motion sickess in first person games. I threw up once a long time ago just watching my friends play Golden Eye on N64. While I'm super excited for VR I'm still not sure where my tolerance level will be. Despite the fast pace of Battle Zone I didn't get motion sick at all. I did feel weird the first time I sidestafed, drove backwards then spun in a circle. But at that point I was blasting so many targets any since of discomfort went away and I felt completely fine by the end of the demo.

Cool, while it may obviously vary person to person that's the kind of thing I was looking for with stuff like Battlezone as I've had the same with not all but quite a few first person games on regular screens so the more games that can do this for me without issue in VR the better.
 
I showed up too late at my BB but they said they'll be back tomorrow.

Seeing how they had it set up, is it not a good idea to bring a six year old? Is there an age limit even? Not sure how it'll work with a line of people watching you play.
 
I showed up too late at my BB but they said they'll be back tomorrow.

Seeing how they had it set up, is it not a good idea to bring a six year old? Is there an age limit even? Not sure how it'll work with a line of people watching you play.

There was a sign up that said you have to be 12 years of age to try it out.
 

Chille

Member
Oh ok. Thank you. My son will be disappointed he won't be able to try out "VCR" (lol) but better to find out now than while in line. Guess I'm flying solo.

Think it's mainly because they don't recommend any 3D style stuff to kids under a certain age, and as it's in a store got to inforce it more.
 
Dumb question for those who didn't get what all the fuss is about… Did you actually look around very much? I only ask because the first dude in our line played Battlezone, and kept his head locked directly forward almost the entire time. To the point where one of the guys behind us in line didn't realize the headset even had a display, because he thought the guy was "using the headset to watch the TV" in some way, like they were 3D glasses.

Anyway, the guy who didn't really look around didn't seem as impressed as the rest of us were, so it got me to thinking.


For starters, when I was still on the VR home screen, two things stood out to me. There seemed to be a bit of a rainbow effect going on and the text wasn't crisp; it was heavily aliased and looked very low res.
I'm going to say there's a very strong possibility the headset wasn't seated on your face properly. When I first put it on, I had similar issues, to the point where it was even hard to tell what I was looking at. I remembered we could adjust the display<->eye distance, so I started fiddling with that and while I was trying to decide which distance was ideal, I accidentally pushed the entire headset down lower on my face &#8212; brow to chin &#8212; and suddenly everything snapped in to focus and looked great after that.

So yeah, the sweet spot is a thing, and an important one, apparently.
 

Violater

Member
First of all while the headset felt somewhat comfortable, I tried setting the focus but never felt like I got it right.
There was also a considerable amount of light bleeding through the bottom of the eye piece which prevented a fully immersive experience.

On to the demo, I opted for the tank game after being told that best buy would not allow the heist to be played.
The graphics seemed very low res but the motion felt smooth enough to mask the sharp edges.
I hope that PSVR will be able to offer better graphics down the road, I may jump in 2-3 years after release as right now its a "watch and see".
 

Darknight

Member
I remember reading Sony is working on some new type of VR controller? Was I wrong or maybe it was the PS Shooter 2.0 thing with that MarsVR game?

Im busy tomorrow so Im not sure I can make it to my nearest BB :(
 
First of all while the headset felt somewhat comfortable, I tried setting the focus but never felt like I got it right.
There was also a considerable amount of light bleeding through the bottom of the eye piece which prevented a fully immersive experience.

On to the demo, I opted for the tank game after being told that best buy would not allow the heist to be played.
The graphics seemed very low res but the motion felt smooth enough to mask the sharp edges.
I hope that PSVR will be able to offer better graphics down the road, I may jump in 2-3 years after release as right now its a "watch and see".

The Neo should help with that, at the very least. Same experiences, with better graphics and/or a better framerate.
 

DOWN

Banned
Had a great time with the demo.
why are they demoing this when it's sold out :(
They need to keep existing pre-orders for people who ordered to be safe but are very skeptical. Also they are likely to open more orders as the year goes on.
 
I remember reading Sony is working on some new type of VR controller? Was I wrong or maybe it was the PS Shooter 2.0 thing with that MarsVR game?
Farpoint Edit: &#8230; is the game it'll likely come with. It's actually called the PlayStation VR Aim Controller.

Im busy tomorrow so Im not sure I can make it to my nearest BB :(
It's pretty sweet.

Probably going to check my local BB out either this weekend or next. Any standout demos that I should prioritize?
Valkyrie is really good, and the action encourages you to look around and soak in the entire environment. Battlezone also (looked) good, but it seems easier to let that one devolve in to a more passive experience. Super Hyper Cube looked pretty good for encouraging head movement, as you need to peek around the current block to see what shape the next hole is. I played Headmaster too, and obviously that's pretty good for immersion and "getting involved."

If you wanna play The Heist though &#8212; which is the only wand-enabled demo &#8212; you gotta go to Gamestop, because Best Buy decided it was a little too violent to demo in their family-friendly stores. So I'm gonna hunt that one down soon, as I've yet to try Move and VR together, which should be pretty amazing. It actually sounded like it was the favorite demo for the 40-something mom who was running the kiosk. (She was supposed to make sure everything worked before the demos, so her solution was to let her 12-year-old son and his friends play with it all week. So, yeah, not a big gamer. lol)

Oh, after watching another guy play around with his virtual DS4 in Battlezone, not having the same thing in Valkyrie was a surprisingly huge letdown. Even the fake controls they drew didn't respond to my input in any way. &#65533;&#65533;
 
Holy crap when they first announced it there was no best buy at least 1 hour away from me doing this.
Just checked again and the Best Buy 3 minutes from me is doing it.

Anyone have an idea of how long of a line to expect or how early one should go?
 

dyergram

Member
Drove 88 miles from Naples to Miami today not just for vr but I still went out my way. Got to best by at 650 it was supposed to be there until 830 and was told the guy had left early. Fucking gutted :(
 
Holy crap when they first announced it there was no best buy at least 1 hour away from me doing this.
Just checked again and the Best Buy 3 minutes from me is doing it.

Anyone have an idea of how long of a line to expect or how early one should go?
It sorta just depends, but I expect they'll get busier as word gets around. If you show up early and it's relatively slow, they'll probably let you try it a couple of times though.


Drove 88 miles from Naples to Miami today not just for vr but I still went out my way. Got to best by at 650 it was supposed to be there until 830 and was told the guy had left early. Fucking gutted :(
The fuck? Sounds like Sony need to do a little more screening and training here. The woman that's running our demos seems nice enough, but she's certainly no font of gaming and tech knowledge, and it sounds like other cities got stuck with some real slackers… =/
 

dyergram

Member
It sorta just depends, but I expect they'll get busier as word gets around. If you show up early and it's relatively slow, they'll probably let you try it a couple of times though.



The fuck? Sounds like Sony need to do a little more screening and training here. The woman that's running our demos seems nice enough, but she's certainly no font of gaming and tech knowledge, and it sounds like other cities got stuck with some real slackers… =/
The guy I spoke to wasn't the brightest as well. He would of totally sold it me if it the dude had left it there lol.
 
Drove about 40 minutes to the closest Best Buy with a demo unit in Gastonia, NC(Gastonia is apart of the Charlotte metro). I went with a friend who I got to try it as well and when we got there their was no one around. The rep said their hasn't been many people the whole day. I tried two demos, Battlezone and Into the Sea(I think that's what it's called).

First off this was my very first time trying VR. When I finally put on the headset to try Battlezone, my very first thought was "That's it". But the longer I had the headset on and spent time looking around I was more impressed. The visuals and image quality was pretty underwhelming at first, but that no longer mattered to me once I was immersed in the world. I found myself looking around and trying to touch my surrounding despite the fact that I knew I couldn't. When playing it I had no issues at all until I had to deal with the flying machines. Wen I started looking up to shoot at them I started getting motion sickness. I honestly just wanted to take the headset off but I didn't want to look like a wuss and kept trucking lol. I found the Tank game kind of fun, but in the end I didn't think VR really made a huge difference in playing that kind of game.

Next I played Into the Sea because it was a completely different change of pace. This may have just been a demo to show off VR, but it was the better "Experience" between the two. And I guess I shouldn't be surprised because that is the point of this demo. Turning around constantly to see the manta ray and jelly fish around me was pretty cool. And when the shark started swimming around me and then started destroying my cage, I found myself getting kind of scared. I knew it couldn't hurt me but I couldn't help it but feel a bit of fear and a little jumpy. Which was a fantastic feeling.

Before today I went in with high expectations for VR. I've been hyping it up in my mind for a while. I came away pretty impressed by what I tried. I may not get this headset or one of the PC headsets this year but this experience reaffirms my plans on getting one of them by at least next year. I can't wait to see what kind of games and experienced devs can come up with in the future. I plan on going back again. I want to try some of the other games that I didn't try befoer and I want to take my wife and a few of my friends with me to see what they think. I just think it would be pretty neat to see their reaction since they know nothing about this nor do they care about it before trying it.
 
Was able to try it at my local Best Buy…the Sony rep at our store was pretty knowledgable and was really helpful with everyone's questions. I asked which game had been played the most and he actually had an app that was keeping track of how many plays each demo got, Eve had the most a 20 followed by the Shark Tank demo at 8.

As for the PSVR itself, this was the first time for me to try any sort of VR and for the most part I'm pretty impressed. The headset was super light, felt great and provided a pretty good field of view. I didn't have any problems with light leak on the underside. After playing for a few minutes I completely forgot I was even wearing it. I tried the Eve demo…at first I was put off by the lower resolution (I wasn't sure if I had to headset on perfectly as I wear glasses, it was kinda reminding me of not hitting the sweet spot completely on 3DS), but once you actually started flying around I didn't notice it at all and was completely immersed in the game. Framerate was great and everything was super responsive, didn't notice any sort of delay.

Didn't feel dizzy or nauseous at all while playing…took a few seconds to get my bearings once I took the headset off though. There's another location near me doing another demo tomorrow…tempted to try out the tank game as something non-photorealistic might be better suited to VR.
 

LordofPwn

Member
My best buy cancelled their events...

Playstation site said they would have it a couple days ago, today the Playstation site didn't have them listed, looked at best buy's site and they had it listed for today. Got there and they said they cancelled it... Sad day...
 

Boss Man

Member
I went to the Best Buy down the road last weekend and tried Battlezone, it was my first time in VR and I thought it was really cool. Looking behind myself and still seeing video game was definitely a new experience. Overall, I think that the lack of graphical fidelity (in this game, at least) detracted a lot from the experience. It's like, "Wow I am surrounded by the video game...I am really inside of it, and also it is nothing but blocks and it's 1999."

I saw a woman anxiously biting her nails at the underwater tech demo thing, and once the shark ripped off a piece of the cage she actually took the headset off. I guess that's the demo I should have tried lol, but I wanted to play a game.

Oh, and I thought the demos were too long. I timed it at like an 8 minute turnaround, which is a while for something like this. They could have lasted less than half of that and it would have just meant that I may have been able to see another demo instead of waiting an hour for one.
 

majik13

Member
I'm feeling kind of mixed after having tried it out. I tried out the Shark demo and while the headset was comfortable and responsive, visually I was a bit let down. It wasn't so much the graphics though but the screen quality.

For starters, when I was still on the VR home screen, two things stood out to me. There seemed to be a bit of a rainbow effect going on and the text wasn't crisp; it was heavily aliased and looked very low res. So the first impression right off the bat was significantly worse than just looking at a TV. Everything just looked lower res in the interface.

Once I was in the shark demo, things looked a bit soft rather than crisp. Is there a focus knob? Everything was so soft looking. Then I noticed what reminded me of the problem visually with the Vita's OLED screen. Now I'm either seeing the same effects of the Vita or this was the screen door, but there was a grainy artifact going on. It didn't look like the usual screen door of the Oculus DK2. It looked more like this:



Finally, I didn't feel immersed with the presence in the demo. I was expecting to really feel immersed, but I didn't really feel there. I can't put my finger on why, as other VR demos I've tried on Oculus were fine, but something about this one didn't pull me in.

I'm still going to buy one, but the demo that I thought I'd show my wife as her first experience with modern VR made me second guess if I should show that to her at all.

Sounds like maybe the headset wasnt adjusted correctly on your head. Ive used PSVR a few times. And I think have had similiar experience as you once or twice. But you need to make sure your eyes line up with the center of the lenses(adjust the headset up and down) and that you have the screen at the right distance from your eyes(using the button/sliding mechanism under the lens compartment).

PSVR screens has a higher pixel density count at the center of the lenses and less on the outer reagions. So high constrats stuff, if you turn eyes to the edge of the screen can look a bit pixelated and sometimes with chromatic abberattions. Maybe also worse if you eyes arent lined up to the center of the screen. Anyways Ive only really noticed it when looking at hi-con stationary text in the system UI at the edges of the screen.

There is a whole adjustment setup and screens when you first turn on PSVR that sort of walk you through this. But Im guessing thats not happening at these demos.

Or maybe it was a deffective screen. Whi knows.
 

HyGogg

Banned
Tried this out. The lower resolution compared to the Rift is pretty noticeable, but despite that, there's basically zero screen door/subpixels, so colors look really good.

I have my doubts about the tracking based on the controller tracking in Battlezone. It seemed laggy and inadequate to give real hand presence.

Other than that, it was pretty impressive overall. Not trading in my Rift, but it's good to see Sony is putting out a solid entry-level headset.
 
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