Sony’s Virtual Reality headset reveal was a bit strange, a bit brave, and a bit incredible. Sony’s “next innovation” – a virtual reality headset for the PS4 by the name of Project Morpheus came almost from nowhere in a talk at GDC. No stream, but an Apple-esque reveal behind closed doors. We’ve heard rumblings of this for years, but didn’t expect such a final looking prototype – and it is still a prototype – this soon.
According to The Verge, who liveblogged the event, Yoshida showed a slide titled Virtual Reality before stating: “VR has been a dream of many gamers since the computer was invented. Many of us at PlayStation have dreamed of VR and what it could mean to the gaming community.”
This is something that they’ve clearly been experimenting with since PlayStation Move, taping some familiar looking orbs to their own 3D viewer headsets to get started. It sounds like a simple and neat solution, and something genuinely exciting. While it didn’t provide the immersion they wanted, it was a good beginning for their headset which they could refine over several years.
And now, that headset has been revealed as Project Morpheus, a VR system for use with the PS4. It’s a really sleek looking piece of equipment, with lights shining brightly for tracking by the PS Camera. This is part of why you’ve got that lightbar on the PS4. It’s definitely a prototype, but according to Yoshida, it’s “a good representation of how PlayStation will deliver VR.”
The reason they’ve unveiled it at GDC is that they’re still looking for developer feedback and for people to get on board. Yoshida also mentioned Oculus’ and Valve’s own systems, saying that it “shows how all of us as an industry can rally around a new medium like VR to push gaming forward.”
They’re even teaming up with NASA, which should make people with PS4s at home feel as though they’re with them when they discover new places. It sounds amazing, and will link in with Curiosity on Mars. We’re going to explore Mars. Or perhaps even the moon – NASA’s own Project Morpheus is a vertical landing test vehicle.
Richard Marks, from Sony’s Magic Lab, even teases that VR will be used for things you won’t expect. Who knows what that could mean exactly, but the NASA connection could provide a hint. It perhaps means that Sony are ready to move beyond games. Games have already been done by the name-checked Oculus, but what Sony’s wider plans are is still a mystery.
Sight, sound, tracking, control, ease of use, content. These are the main focuses when developing this VR kit.
Optics are key for sight, and they’ll be merging this with real world similarities in the sound to create the best experience possible. With the PS4’s enhanced graphical prowess, this seems doable. Beyond that, it’s all about the gameplay functionality – which the PS4 is already pushing with the DualShock 4’s inputs.
But it’s really PlayStation Move and the PS Camera which provide the basis for the tracking here. “Interaction is what makes games games. PS Move is already a really good VR controller,” said Richard Marks, continuing, “we’re really happy with our positioning in control here.” As for ease of use, you’ll be able to practically plug and play, one of their primary aims alongside comfort.
But content plays a huge part too. They have partners already, including game companies such a Crytek and Epic Games, engine creators with Havok and Unity, and then even Autodesk and software companies beyond that. They’re at a place where they can afford to make these connections, and what strong connections they are.
This is a new medium. It’s something still in its infancy, but their focus is on giving you the feeling of presence within games rather than literal design. Some game designs just won’t work, and Sony are planning to work around that in order to create the best experience. It’s all about framerate, calibration, rendering and 3D audio here, to increase the sense of immersion within the game. Everything has to be engineered to trick the brain into believing what it is seeing, which means that VR has to cater to your other sense as well.
Something that comes to mind is the fact that VR is most obviously applicable to first person games. These have expanded from shooter games into more and more genres recently, with some Oculus games already showing a brilliant sense of presence. We’ll still see third person or other views, but creating these with sense of presence will be a challenge – like an out-of-body experience. It will be an interesting thing that I’m sure we’ll see tackled in many ways over the next few years.
Project Morpheus feels like a culmination of everything Sony have been experimenting with through the last generation. PlayStation Move, 3D visuals, their head-mounted viewers and beyond. To bring these together in such a well-realised manner is extremely impressive, and truly feels like a good move for Sony.
And the name? It’s derived from the same place as the character in The Matrix, since Morpheus is the God of dreams and the headset presents the prospect of a dream-like reality. 1080p, 90 degree field of view, 60fps and a whole lot more in terms of immersion. This is ultimately the future of play, and I can’t wait to see where it takes us next.
Images source: Geoff Keighley
gazzagb
This has the potential to be amazing, and I’m especially excited to see what they’ve done with NASA.
But, as there’s have said here, Sony’s support for their secondary hardware (e.g Move) historically hasn’t been great, which I think will put off a lot of first adopters who will wait to see what support it gets, and more importantly, how it fairs up to the competition.
Kevatron400
We’ll still see third person or other views, but creating these with sense of presence will be a challenge – like an outer body experience.
Is this one of those times where I’ve been saying something wrong my whole life? I always thought it was out-of-body experience…
Blair Inglis
I swear I wrote that…
bunimomike
Nah… it’s “outer-body”… like a fat suit. :P
The Von Braun
Incoming rant? lets test the waters here.
As a seasoned gamer, i’ve lived through Sega showing off it’s VR headset for the MegaDrive, shown after it was canned and humble MD was never going to be able to do proper VR, then as a Jaguar owner, there was Atari’s crack at going for it and specs wise, the headset alone was impressive, light enough, had all the head tracking gubbins you needed etc, but doubts that even the ’64 bit’ Jaguar could really do decent enough 3D worlds for Home VR (no hardware texture-mapping for example) and this was merely Atari experimenting and it’d be key part of Jaguar MK 2 instead, yadda Yadda.
So the ‘carrot’ as it were of Home VR has been dangled in front of y face numerous times before and that’s ignoring the various PC headsets that have appeared over the years.
So enter stage left, Sony with their crack at it, now Sony, i have to admit, can put together superb TECH DEMO’S of hardware for Playstation:The PS3-to-PSP link up, PSP being used as rear view mirror in PS3 F1 racing game, Move shown to EDGE on visit to R+D labs at Sony, along with Eye Toy during PS2 era, yet we only saw Move appear on PS3 and then there was the 3D TV Killzone tech demo, 2 players, 1 TV etc, lot said about PS3-Vita link-up in Dust 514 etc, but what could was it, when it featured in a game that had so many flaws to start with?.
All fantastic on paper, (as were things like the Wii U gamepad tech demo’s, potential for Sega’s VMU etc etc).Yet was the potential of Eye Toy really tapped into? ditto for Move?…errr, NO, squandered is a better word as that’s just what happened.
So now Sony want’s to convince both the industry and consumer to invest (more) money in it’s Home VR set up.I see a mountain to be climbed here.
The potential is massive for the system (ask anyone who’s played Jaguar Missile Command at a Retro show, via 1 of the few VR headsets out there, it’s one hellva exp., but without the games to support it (and by that i mean more than tacked on VR features to games either at launch or patched in at a later date), it’s just going to join ranks of:
Move, Eyetoy, Kinect, Nes Power Glove etc etc.Sony needs to start developing games that showcase what makes VR so different from the std PS4 set-up, now, roll them out when device launches and continue to keep them coming, but given how poorly they’ve supported the Vita, i just cannot see that happening.
Sony, great tech is not enough, it’s like building a luxury swimming pool, inviting folks round for a dip, but not filling it anywhere near full, just wetting the bottom few inches as it were.
Gaztee
Yay! Somebody here played with my old Jag VR :) I have to say for the the most worrying thing about this Sony headset is that it only allows 90 degrees of movement. The old Jag VR had 120 degrees of movement & that AT&T times didn’t feel like enough. The VR version of missile command was made to take advantage of this by having you move between 3 bases 120 degrees apart. When watching people play the game most people went beyond that limitation. I certainly see that as a big problem if you were playing an open world game.
I look forward to seeing this head set in practice & I’m pretty sure it won’t be as cumbersome as the old Jag VR system is.
Severn2j
Nice rant, but you completely fail to mention the Occulus Rift, which is in such high demand that even the dev units have sold out to the point where they are having trouble sourcing enough parts to make more. That looks like its going to be a huge success, and if so, then Sony will have a great deal of games for their device, just by porting them from the PC.
I do agree with you however, about the history of introducing new devices into the console space. That is going to be Sony’s biggest problem in my mind and one I dont think the Rift has, as the PC market has generally been more accepting of “interesting” hardware (check out the raft of flight-sticks on the market for example).
I think if it can be used as a standard display device as well (as someone mentioned earlier) so that it can be used with any game or movie, then that will go a long way to making it viable.
bunimomike
I know many, many gamers and only one of them will buy a Rift from the off. Everyone else either knows about it or hasn’t even heard about them. Also, don’t underestimate a small minority of a community clamouring for something and making it appear to be the next big thing.
There’s just no getting passed the problem of us wearing something.
The Von Braun
Did’nt mention the O.Rift as i’ve not really been following it as per say, where as the MD/Jaguar VR headsets at the time i took a great deal of interest in.
I also forgot to mention Hasbro:who sunk millions into developing a Home VR system years ago, before abandoning the entire project and Nolan Bushnell who’d annouced he was going to bring Home VR to the masses (this after backing the Amiga CDTV) and nothing ever appeared.
You made 2 points far better than i ever could:1)Vast gulf between console and PC markets, where PC owners are far more willing to try something new it seems, console owners far more wary, but then those of us ‘burnt’ by MCD, 32X, Kinect, Move etc are going to play the wait and see game and 2)It should in prinnciple be a ‘simple’ enough case of porting PC VR games to Sony’s headset.
NotSmartEnough
I’m surprised by all the negativity (maybe I’m naive), but this is a genuinely exciting development that could reinvigorate a pastime that’s getting stale. There’s only so much more we can do with the FPS genre; yearly incremental updates of existing franchises can only go on for so long. If VR catches the imagination of indie devs then we could be in for some truly novel experiences.
Yes, Sony didn’t support Move properly; what are you going to do? Refuse to buy anything Sony again? Your choice, but I don’t think it’s a rational one.
The Von Braun
@Notsmartenough:You’ll have to excuse my cynical approach here, but as i say it’s not for myself, the 1st time Home VR has been annouced as the next big thing, far from it, had it annouced for 2 consoles, seen it released on PC, had Hasbro, Nolan Bushnell etc annouce they’d be bringing stand-alone home systems out etc etc.
To myself, it’s just the industry repeating itself:Motion Control was attempted, dropped, then re-introduced years later when tech.had improved-i’m still waiting for the Killer-Apps.3D was tried (Vectrex, Tomy 3DTronics, MS Glasses etc), dropped, re-introduced and now seems to have been dropped again (3DS now has a 2DS etc).All had huge potential, yet it just was’nt pushed anywhere near enough to make it viable.
Plus, if like myself you’d bought a Mega CD for £270 expecting developers to really tap into the sprite /background scaling abilites and instead were served up FMV dross as the staple meal and then spent £229 on an Atari Jaguar, hoping to see a lot of 3D games, getting served up 256 colour MD ports far too often, you’d be wary of jumping into new tech too soon.
I passed on a Move controller for PS3, mate bought one, i ended up lending him all the games i had that supported Move as he was getting that bored with it, it now gathers dust, Sony did so little with PS3 Eye Toy before Move it was unreal.I own a PSP and watched Sony starve it of software, would love a Vita, but just where are these games that do the link-up to PS3/PS4? Dust 514 turned out to be average at best, as for annoucing titles like Vita Bioshock, contract never signed was it?.
I’m not negative about the vast potential and your damn right, the industry needs to move on beyond staple diet of more FPS running in higher resolution (and lets make money selling DLC from day 1 )and this could indeed be the kick up the arse it needs, but….
Years ago Sony experimenting with a form of contact lens with a laser beaming images too it, pretty far out conceptual tech, now we see this, as i said before Edge were shown Move in Sony’s R+D labs same time they saw Eye Toy being tried on PS2.I cannot fault Sony’s R+D dept, it’s just they let the potential fizzle out each time.
Morph.needs the combination of Sony’s R+D deptartment, backed to the hilt by Sony’s in-house teams (which seem to be closing, laying off staff at a worryingly high rate at times), with exclusive games, not tech.demos, that really showcase the hardware.
Bear in mind you cannot really ‘sell’ VR on static screens, it’s something consumer really has to exp., so Sony’s marketing team have a mountain to climb here, no matter how good the hardware/price and games turn out to be.
Plus you wait, 1 person says they felt ill after using, gutter press will be all over it like a rash, just as they were when 3DS came out…..
xdarkmagician
VR is a pipe dream. True VR is an illusion, created by hollywood. Putting on a helmet or headset isn’t immersion, you never get a long enough suspension of disbelief to successfully transport to VR. The only way to achieve a consistent level of immersion is to hijack the brain. Until people can plug into the Matrix via a cable wired directly into the brain, VR is just sitting really close to the TV no matter how you want to codename it. And its the reason every VR system has failed. I’m not saying the current VR headsets are guaranteed to follow suit, but they don’t do anything different from the VR headsets from yesterday, they’re the same in concept, except the resolution is better today.
IMO- Sony is making a mistake, Oculus is probably going to be the most successful VR headset in the history of VR and that’s honestly not saying much. Sony can only sell a fraction of headsets to the percentage of PS4 owners, it’s basically like marketing a game, not everyone is going to buy it. Plus Sony has basically abandon 3D, now Sony is pushing 4K, and while 4K is more about the entertainment industry at a whole, there are people who jumped onto 3D Blu-ray because they had a PS3, and now they now need to replace that still working 1080p 3D TV they bought with a new 4K TV to go with the new PS4. The point being is that your average person/gamer/family is going to have to decide PS4 VR headset for 1 person or a 4K TV that everybody can use. Sony, and Nintendo and MS for that matter, would be better off if they would have just sold licensing to Oculus and let one company develop VR headsets and if VR headsets become popular then release the official Playstation headsets. Trying to launch a console that requires multiple displays is stupid, don’t make people buy a new TV and some additional headset to compliment your new console. It took a while for HD TVs to become popular, even longer for 3D TVs, even people with a 3D Blu-ray player in the PS3 they already owned didn’t automatically jump to a 3D TV, but now they expect these same people who have proven twice that they don’t buy a new TV with every new gaming console to buy both a 4K TV and VR headset. I just don’t think any console manufacturer getting into the VR headset business understands the amount of work needed to make VR work, at least the PC markets will have modding communities to help out with the software. Sony and MS are going to have to pump alot of time and money into VR and neither have a great record of support. The PS4 doesn’t even play CDs, seriously CDs, the technology of the late 80’s. If Sony can’t support old technology can you honestly trust them to support experimental VR tech.
I think because of peoples lack of faith in VR, any VR venture is incredibly risky. I can appreciate companies trying to bring innovation to gaming, but this isn’t 2 years after the Wii launch where Nintendo was making millions of dollars from something no one else had. Let some company actually create a market before everybody else tries to flood it.