For all the early promise of PlayStation VR 2, eighteen months on, it feels like Sony’s second crack at virtual reality gaming is already running out of steam. There’s next to no sign of first party support, leaving the console-based VR headset to rely on third parties. So how to build up a fresh head of steam? Well… how about filling your head with SteamVR thanks to a new PC adapter?
The PSVR2 PC Adapter is pretty much exactly what this headset needs to prevent it from becoming a gaming cul-de-sac if and when Sony decide to call it a day.
Setting up PSVR 2 on PC is relatively straightforward, with a few key caveats. Sony has pushed a PlayStation VR 2 app onto Steam to provide drivers, basic setup functionality and updates, and a direct tie into the go-to library for PC VR games. With that installed, you just put cables in the right spots on the breakout box, go through putting the headset on for the first time, connect the Sense controllers, and hop into SteamVR’s built-in hub.
Simple, right? Well… Sony has somehow managed to make it feel more difficult than it should be. For one thing, there’s no DisplayPort 1.4 cable included in the box, so you’ll have to bring your own, which is a bit of daft penny-pinching if you ask me. Conversely, I wish the USB cable was detachable as well.
Then there’s a whole palaver surrounding Bluetooth adapters and the Sense controllers. The minimum requirement here is for Bluetooth 4.0, but Sony has a minimal set of just four recommended Bluetooth 5.0 USB adapters, which crucially are not guaranteed to work – just a quick look at Reddit will tell you that people are not having a universally good time with these four.
This is actually a problem that’s potentially a bit blown out of proportion. USB Bluetooth adapters are tiny and have minimal antennae that are liable to interference, whether from 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi or the electronic noise of a USB 3 port – Sony’s help pages do suggest using a USB 2.0 port far away from USB 3.0, and to use an extension cable for this reason. What’s not stated on Sony’s compatible adapter page is that motherboards with Wi-Fi built in will typically also have Bluetooth in the same chipset and (so long as you connect them) better antennas than a USB adapter, and so are very likely to give a better experience. For what it’s worth, I’ve had no problems with an older Asus USB-BT400 adapter (not the recommended USB-BT500) placed close to my play space.
Of course, much like including a DisplayPort cable, Sony could have built a single-purpose Bluetooth chip into the adapter, given it a half-decent antenna, and made this all as seamless as possible for something like $5 more.
Once you get past any of these hurdles, though, the full breadth of PC VR gaming is open to you. Half-Life: Alyx is sure to be one of the first stops for PlayStation VR players, whose hopes for a PSVR2 port have gone completely unanswered in the past 18 months. I’ve never owned a PC VR headset, and stepping into the distinctive Half-Life setting for an introductory hour of VR has been fantastic – the basic interactivity of picking up a marker pen to draw on a window, the grimy pre-Half-Life 2 setting, it’s still a great showcase for what VR gaming is capable of, four years on from release.
Racing game fans also have an embarrassment of riches to choose from – there’s Dirt Rally and EA Sports WRC from Codemasters, F1 2022 and newer, Assetto Corsa, and more. As good as Gran Turismo 7 is in offering the full fat version of Polyphony’s racing game up for VR, there hasn’t seemed to be much interest from other developers to follow, after the early experiments on the first PSVR.
And speaking of the last generation headset, one of the biggest boons that this PC adapter offers is access to the full back catalogue of VR gaming. For whatever technical or business reasons, Sony didn’t offer a backward compatibility layer for the new headset, relying instead on cross-gen ports, and that means there’s a large number of great VR games trapped on the original PSVR for console players which can be found on PC – and since my PSVR unit suffers from a nasty case of tracking drift, these became games that I struggled to enjoy for more than half an hour.
Of course, this will mean buying these games again, but since they’re older titles now, they’ll often be found in sales. I’ve picked up Star Wars: Squadrons in the past for just a few quid – note, it completely ignores the Sense controllers, so you’ll need a gamepad, and there’s some strange technical quirks that limit frame rates – and I’ve put a pin on Hitman: World of Assassination to see when it falls into what I want to spend on it, since it was never updated for PSVR 2.
There’s a lot of appealing elements for using PSVR 2 on PC, but there are also some drawbacks compared to plugging it into PS5. Games on console can use full HDR, eye-tracking and headset rumble, while the Sense controllers can have haptic feedback instead of more basic rumble and adaptive triggers. Technically, I don’t think there’s much stopping Sony from expanding their drivers to enable these features for developers – HTC Vive added eye-tracking functionality in 2019, for example – but they haven’t for launch, at least.
There is a feeling that Sony are largely just tapping into the industry standard foundations that PSVR 2 was built upon. SteamVR already has support for finger sensing, so that works, and the PC adapter is seemingly equivalent to VirtualLink and USB-C Alt Mode adapters, which is what PSVR 2 uses for its single cable solution on PS5. In fact, PC gamers might well have native support built into their GPU, with reports that GeForce RTX 20 Series GPUs and Radeon 6000 and 7000 series GPUs with USB-C outputs built in work to power the headset – some of these ports and gaming laptops might not provide enough power, and Nvidia ditched USB-C for the 30 Series, so the adapter is still very relevant. It’s a shame that Sony hasn’t publicised this point, though.
And that ties in with my overarching sentiment for the PC adapter. This feels like Sony putting PSVR 2 on life support for their console business, especially given how company executives have spoken about its wider game development plans, and the cuts they’ve made to the overarching workforce. We’ll certainly see some third party support still, but that might also tail off if PS5 VR gaming doesn’t keep up with standalone headsets and PC VR’s audiences.
For all my grousing, having a PC adapter at all is a massive boon for anyone that’s hopped on board with PSVR 2 in the past year, and the problems with it are really just down to some unclear and muddled messaging from Sony. If a gaming PC is part of your life, then having a look to see if you’ve got a USB-C port on the GPU or picking up this relatively cheap adapter is a no-brainer. You get the full Steam and wider PC VR library, and the security that this offers to your investment, and outside of the PS5 exclusive Resident Evil VR modes and Gran Turismo 7, it’s easy to consider going all-in on PC VR.
As for VR curious PC gamers considering just such an investment, we just have to look at the alternatives. The Valve Index and HTC Vive platforms are significantly more expensive, while the comparatively priced HP Reverb G2 is a few years older and only goes up to 90Hz with its screen. Meta Quest headsets are significantly more flexible as they offer both standalone and connected use, but they don’t use USB-C alt modes for video, so can have compression artifacting to the image, which could counter the advantages of their pancake lenses. Compared to the alternatives, PSVR 2 is perhaps now the go-to PC VR headset, and especially if you can get it for a reduced price.
