Betta Lines
Member
TLG wouldn't be particularly suitable for VR, being third-person. All that animation work wasted if you make it first-person.
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Sony to integrate "New PlayStation Technologies" in popular game engines (VR?)
- Thread starter S¡mon
- Start date
Of course not, but to get to mass market prices, they need to create the user base to sustain support for the years it'll take.
It's just a question of producing games with VR in mind. The PS4 can easily met Valve's requirements for robust presence, if the game is designed for VR.
In fact, given the early impressions, a lot of what is most demanding has found to look bad in VR, it appears to be best to have flat shading with the geometry and lighting doing the heavy lifting.
DarkJedi24
Member
I'd be interested to see if the headset itself has some kind of on board processing capabilities that could help offload some of the strain. Would definitely increase the price of the unit, but perhaps the ends would justify the means... again just spit-balling here.
TheKastorian
Member
Karak
Member
Best bet is to assume that they won't have anywhere near the fidelity of a normal game. They just won't. But artistic style is SUPER important and we have lots of examples of games that don't look insane technically but look awesome graphically anyway. It will be interesting to see whatever it is.
Sony shipped a VR unit while Palmer Luckey was still in short shorts.
I agree it won't be the systems focus though, I can't imagine anyone thinks otherwise.
This could easily be PS Now hooks for middleware/game engines. We know for sure that they are planning a consumer launch this year. They have a lot of work to do there.
I would be very surprised to hear anything concrete about the VR tech other than basic specs and that they are still working on the APIs.
I would be very surprised to hear anything concrete about the VR tech other than basic specs and that they are still working on the APIs.
VanCityGamer
Member
Find it kind of strange that they wouldn't stream the reveal of a massive new product like a VR headset. Maybe that's not what's going to be discussed?
They are probably not prepared to confirm speccs yet. This seems like a "gauge the market" kind of thing rather than an announcement
serversurfer
Member
Similarly, I'll be very surprised if Rift becomes the primary focus of the Windows platform.
Indeed.Similarly, I'll be very surprised if Rift becomes the primary focus of the Windows platform.
We need VR to be it's own separate thing, PS4 VR should be like a sub-platform, used when an experience is really beneficial, not becoming like 3D, randomly supported with no thought to its use or impact.
I think the PC will actually do that better, because I think the build up will be much slower, so the support expectations will be smaller.
viveks86
Member
^This
Shu was referring to Wednesday, not Tuesday. Nobody wants to talk about Tuesday.
wanderingprostheyltite
Member
Does this statement mean anything? No it doesn't. VR tech existed long before both parties took a stab at it, and giving Sony credit for "first" for something done awhile back that never took off isn't giving them much of an edge. Agreed the tech is much better now but you've gotta admit their timing seems suspicious in light of Oculus having a year and a half of exposure prior to them dropping this in our laps now. Granted they may have been experimenting with it before Oculus but imo it is very much a "me too" situation considering the amount of press Oculus has garnered. It just seems too convenient for them to have been working on this pre-Oculus press, but we'll probably never know. That said I hope Sony gets the latency right for this. If they can achieve Valve prototype levels of 95 hz I'll be very impressed indeed.
Nightengale
Member
It at least means that.Sony's existing resources have the experience, know-how and assets to build a VR.
Even if their design ends up being just an Oculus ripoff, it wasn't something that they had to start from scratch, especially since they've already got technologies to solve other challenges like position tracking and gestures.
Even if their design ends up being just an Oculus ripoff, it wasn't something that they had to start from scratch, especially since they've already got technologies to solve other challenges like position tracking and gestures.
wanderingprostheyltite
Member
No doubt. I expect their tracking solution to be very good due to the Move guy working on it, and I'm very interested to see how they tackle the problem of the screen door effect. Even at 1080p the oculus crystal cove still has a very noticeable screen door. If Sony can find a way to mitigate that to almost nothing that'd be reason enough for me to buy in. Really hoping for some detailed demo impressions from GDC. Hopefully there's no NDA involved for those attending.
From the sources reporting on this, the PS4 VR set rivals Oculus and Valves unit. And it took them how many years to get there? And what makes you think oculus would be any more supported on PS4 than Sony's own device?
Also, we have reason to believe that talks happened between Sony and Oculus, with no sides coming to an agreement.
No, I don't 'admit' it seems suspicious. That's like saying it's suspicious Sony launched a new console so soon after Nintendo, we hadn't heard anything about this PS4 thing a little over a year ago, they must have me too'd the idea of making another console.
They've already made a VR headset, they were already the leading HMD manufacturer, they'd already worked on motion tracked gaming, there is nothing to suggest this wasn't always going to happen. The difference is now they actually have the performance and indie pipelines to make it more than a fancy novelty.
Of course it means something. Oculus is still very much super enthusiast status. The general public probably knows next to nothing about it. If Sony gets a good product out before the rift, they officially take the mind share that VR gaming in the HD age started with them.
Even still, this whole notion of who started what is petty and worthless. VR is said by many leading visionaries in gaming as the next frontier. Most big players are expected to have some form of product supporting it in the near future. Every enthusiast knew that Sony/Pany were the leaders of the blu ray push, now everyone and their mom supports it. How much good did it do them?
We know for sure that SCE was working on VR prototypes pre-Oculus press. They said as much in interviews during the PS3 stereo3D era.
Now whether interest in Oculus surprised Sony and encouraged them to accelerate that research into commercialisation sooner than they might have otherwise done is another matter. That would be unsurprising.
(Though it should be said that back in 2011, the same Sony people I'm referring to above did predict the imminent return of VR)
StoppedInTracks
Member
Sony created and released the HMD display before.
Products like a VR headset aren't 'just created' in a few months. Oculus has decided to show us their prototypes, their progress, etc. - something big companies, like Sony and Apple, usually don't do.
For all we know, development on Sony's VR headset may have started long before Oculus Rift development started.
The only difference is, again, Oculus is continuously showing their progress - other companies usually don't do that.
VR DriveClub and GT7 confirmed?"Driving the Future..." you say?
PodcastFips
Member
Why wouldn't they keep it under wraps until E3? I mean this is probably something major. GDC isn't that major.
They need to introduce a broader community of developers to the system. It's hard to do that privately without leaks - easier to just go open about it.
Plus I think a basically year-long 'hype cycle' worked pretty well for them last year with new hardware.
Wasn't the Move announced at a GDC?
GDC is definitely major for something like this. Dev support is a must and they should be the first to get full hands on.
thetester77
Member
Hardware is important but it will live or die by 2 things:
Price must be no more than £199/$299 to have a shot at it.
Games - I was thinking of a great sports type game that could give the feeling of 'presence' without much movement... then it came to me....Skiing.
Now Skiiing might not sound too exciting but if you combine the Head tracking from VR along with Body tracking from Playstation camera Skiing could be pretty awesome as your feet would stay stationary anyway.
Then I started thinking - Tony Hawks, Shawn White Snowboarding, SSX - these could be really good.
Add in Driveclub & Star Wars Lightsaber game, and a FPS like SOCOM with voice commands, Head and body tracking, move for gun - BOOM!!! I'm in
- Price
- Games
Price must be no more than £199/$299 to have a shot at it.
Games - I was thinking of a great sports type game that could give the feeling of 'presence' without much movement... then it came to me....Skiing.
Now Skiiing might not sound too exciting but if you combine the Head tracking from VR along with Body tracking from Playstation camera Skiing could be pretty awesome as your feet would stay stationary anyway.
Then I started thinking - Tony Hawks, Shawn White Snowboarding, SSX - these could be really good.
Add in Driveclub & Star Wars Lightsaber game, and a FPS like SOCOM with voice commands, Head and body tracking, move for gun - BOOM!!! I'm in
PodcastFips
Member
Oh, you're right. Nevermind then.
I would be willing to pay £250-300 for it. I'd rather them go for higher quality materials than cheap ones any day.
Triggerhappytel
Member
Honestly, I wouldn't expect that. What was the last Sony hardware that had official PC support? Has there ever been any? Keeping it exclusive to the PS4 makes it a selling point for the console, and that's all they're concerned about at the moment.
That being said, if the whole PlayStation Network infrastructure is going to be rolling out on a bunch of supported devices (Sony or otherwise) maybe the PS Rift will support that hardware too. It does make sense if they're serious about it succeeding, although they will lose the aspect of it being an exclusive bullet point for the PS4.
PlayStation Now will never be capable of VR, that's one of the reasons to do it. It gives purpose to a PS5.
Not going to say this will be suggestive of anything with PC compatibility but to answer the question, doesn't the DS4 work as a generic Directinput controller? Also, Sony were nice enough to allow their Playstation branded headsets to work with PC.
thetester77
Member
I know what you mean, but the fact that your feet (if you look down in VR) are below you and not moving will help with the 'feeling' of it being real
But you're right most sports are not a good fit due to the physical nature.
But I can imagine the like of a Ski jump being pretty cool
thetester77
Member
I would too - but would enough people pay £300 for it to make it viable for 3rd parties to support it??
Was first announced at E3 2009 actually. The prototype + tech demos thing.
At GDC 2010 Sony revealed official name, games and stuff.
They basically did the opposite of what you'd expect.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN7dOqoobME (<--- Handy PlayStation Move Facebook Lookback
)But then there's that rumour of wireless support...
And the suggestion of software that's integrating HMD + Move + other camera-y things.Skiing or snowboarding could actually be kind of ideal for the above kind of setup because it while it would obviously benefit from being able to stand up and engage in body motion, it wouldn't involve actual traversal. Just body leans and the like.
But still, that wireless stuff may not come off. I'd still be fairly surprised if it was in there.
BruiserBear
Banned
We can only hope!
Which might very well be a good thing. If Sony's VR proposition comes with a severe limitation of freedom of movement (compare to Move stuff on TV) they might be forced to promote it as an hardcore gamers' device, showing flight/space sims, horror games etc. instead of, you know, waggling stuff people immediately label as casual crap.