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At this stage, you probably fall into one of two camps. Either you’re sick of all things virtual reality-related, as between Sony’s Morpheus-turned-PlayStation VR, Valve’s Vive headset and the original Oculus Rift, it’s just a ‘wait and see’-type deal. Or two, you’re cautiously optimistic, but having not played anything using a VR set yourself, it’s pretty impossible to board the hype train with any confidence.
Well, Sony feel you, and to remedy that somewhat, they’ve got out ahead of the competition to lay down some concrete details on what to expect from their most innovative piece of hardware in decades.
From price points to launch line-ups, certain requirements that’ll mean you need to go out and buy more equipment before it’ll run, and everything in between, here are the most essential bits of information that every prospective buyer needs to know for the coming months.
9. Every PS4 Game Can Be Played In ‘Theatre Mode’
Ever read about how a cinema will let you plonk down a wad of cash and rent out a theatre for a party or get-together? That’s what ‘theatre mode’ aims to replicate… providing it’s a party of one.
It can be used with any game, and donning the headset then puts the game feed on a humungous virtual screen in front of you, the idea being that you’re sitting in a dark room, watching it on the biggest TV imaginable.
You’ll be free to turn your head to the side and get a sensation for the 3D space you and your game now exist in, but in terms of evolving that age-old ‘cinematic experience in your home’ tagline we see on every TV advert ever, this brings a whole new meaning to that statement.
8. It Requires The PS Move Camera & Controllers To Function
The Vive, Oculus Rift and Samsung HTC models have fallen back on a mixture of room sensors, phone gyroscope tie-ins and handheld controllers that are about as new as the headsets themselves, but Sony have spotted a marketing opportunity, and are finally aiming to make good on a certain Wii-like piece of tech they rolled out for the PS3.
Remember the PS Move? The awkward-looking elongated controllers with what looked like dollops of ice cream for sensors? Well, you’re going to need at least one of them as a controller for the PS VR. Not only that, but the PS Camera is required too (Sony’s Kinect-esque rival that was available at the PS4’s launch, for use with visual sign-ins and voice commands, although you need only ask Microsoft how well that ideology went).
Lastly you need a pair of headphones as the VR doesn’t output audio through its form factor, instead you can use your own for the best experience. Sony have announced bundle deals that include all of the above plus a ‘PlayStation VR Worlds’ minigame collection for $500 – and we’re yet to get a UK price – but if you’re going to get into this stuff, you can probably shop around and find pre-owned Move controllers and a PS cam for less than the additional $150, snapping up the VR headset on its own come launch.
7. The Price & Release Date
Here’s the biggest stickler, as after years of Sony touting the PS VR as more of a ‘platform’ than an accessory, they’ve priced it accordingly. Whilst you’ll need a PS4 and a few other peripherals to get it up and running, the price point for the headset and cables is a console-sized $400 (or £350 in the UK).
This is actually markedly cheaper than Valve’s Vive, which comes in at a whopping $799/£650, although that comes with various sensors to turn an entire room into one big motion-tracking ‘zone’ of interaction.
As for the release date it’ll be coming in October, plenty of time to soak up all the impressions and articles like this one to ensure you’re best equipped to lay down that sizeable sum of money.
6. The Launch Line-Up
So what can you actually play? Well, although many launch lineups tend to fall to the wayside in the longterm as developers get accustomed to software and hardware limitations, the very nature of wearing a VR headset and feeling all your senses get completely overcome should give legs to even the most mechanically simplistic experiences.
Included in the bundle deal and seen above are VR Luge, Dangerball, Into The Deep, Scavengers Odyssey and London Heist, the latter of which was initially a spin-off from The Getaway, and sees you defending a car from an onslaught of gangsters, before returning fire with a range of weapons. As for the rest, Scavenger’s Odyssey stands out as a fun sci-fi shooter with you thundering through spaceships in a mech suit, whilst VR Luge should bring out the whites of your eyes as you duck and dive through all sorts of tight spaces.
For the rest, various outlets are reporting on what is a launch game and what’s coming as part of Sony’s confirmed ’50 titles within two months after launch’ list. Here’s a quick rundown of some highlights:
- Until Dawn: Rush Of Blood (Launch game: An on-rails shooter spin-off from 2015’s cult horror success)
- 100ft Robot Golf (Launch game: A brilliantly stupid, arcady sports game where you smash buildings and other robots to get through a game of giant golf)
- Ace Combat 7 (The premiere fighter jet dogfighting series, now with full head-tracking and slicker than ever graphics)
- Playroom VR (Launch game: Another collection of minigames, using the PS camera’s tiny robotic characters)
- Battlezone (Launch game: Cel-shaded, sci-fi FPS with multiple upgrade trees and a ton of detail inside your ship)
- RIGS: Mechanised Combat League (Launch game: An arena-style shooter where everyone is in mech suits, blasting each other and scoring touchdowns)
- Tumble VR (Launch game: A simple-yet-hard game of stacking objects in various ways to score high points)
In addition, developers for other games like Tekken 7 and Gran Turismo have stated they’ll feature PS VR integration too, and although GT is clearly going to be a first-person mode, as for how you make a side-on fighting game work outside of bringing back Tekken 2’s wireframe mode, I have no idea. Suggestions in the comments!
5. Only One PS VR Per Console – No Multi-Headset Multiplayer
They’ve got to start somewhere, right?
Sadly, if you were looking forward to having you and your mates don headsets and jet off into outer space from your living room, it’ll have to wait. For now, one PS4 can only handle one VR headset, so multiplayer is reconciled to letting one person put the headset on, with everyone else then using regular pads as normal.
Obviously this is going to be a little strange, disappearing off into a world of graphics and audio whilst your friends play around you – doubly so if there are just two of you in the room – but it remains to be seen how we’ll all take to VR as a social construct in the first place, let alone making concessions for it in a multiplayer context.
4. It’s Not Wireless, And Requires Another Power Socket
Although it can be very easy to assume that with all this new-age innovation, everything post the PS3/Xbox 360 went wireless, but due to the sheer amount of processing and calculations the VR needs to do at any given time, there’s going to be a lengthy cable sticking out the back of your head, Matrix-style, while you play.
For the vast majority of games this won’t be a huge issue as you can play sat down, but for all of you out there who like to keep a clutter-free environment – and let’s be honest, f*ck wires and cables – it’s worth knowing that you need to make room for the PS VR’s synthetic entrails across your floor regardless.
The way it’s setup for this first model is a cable going from your headset to a small box that does a bunch of external computations (and looks like a mini-PS4), before connecting to the console itself. This separate box requires its own power supply, but located on the cable are controls for power and volume, so it won’t always be powered on if you’re just using your PS4 as normal.
3. It Doesn’t Completely Take Up Your Vision
Thankfully, although Microsoft’s initially-phenomenal Hololens headset actually boils down to a much smaller ‘viewing window’ where the magic happens in the middle of where you’re looking, the PS VR will engulf the vast majority of it.
However, don’t think – as it’s often tempting to – that slipping on the PS VR is like booting into an entirely different world where your peripheral vision is also taken care of, because that’s where the black, rubbery outline of the headset remains. Other VR headsets may seek to provide wraparound screens in the future, but for now, Sony are focussing on providing footage right in front of you, rather than to all sides.
Thankfully, those who have tried it say it feels relatively natural to turn your head towards something you’re focussing on anyway, and like getting lost in a good movie or game and letting the world fall away around you, it shouldn’t be a problem.
2. You Can Watch Movies In A Virtual Theatre – Even 3D Releases
As if incessant chatter, latecomers, loud food munchers and a sea of mobile phone screen lights hadn’t put you off going to the cinema enough already, virtual reality across the board is going to offer the ability to boot up any movie inside the aforementioned theatre mode.
It’s interesting to note that on PS4, the VR also works with your console’s dashboard, and although it doesn’t translate physical movement to scrolling actions, browsing the PlayStation Store or thumbing through your game catalogue up close mimics the utilisation of VR we’re going to see from major retailers and their products going forward.
As for 3D, Hollywood’s last-ditch attempt to offer something you can’t get anywhere else… now you can. The PS VR was built to handle stereoscopic 3D output for games and/or blu-rays, so anything with that inbuilt functionality you’ve previously missed out on will easily make the transition.
1. Is It Dangerous?
Every time the gaming industry makes a considerable leap up in technology or rendering abilities, we get the standard ‘But does it influence the kids to do bad things?’ rhetoric. You can bet your bottom dollar that this argument is going to pop up again once little Timmy can physically make stabbing motions with his hands that mimic on-screen murders, but for now, the very reason VR has taken so long to get onto shelves, is down to primarily ensuring that wearing this sort of kit doesn’t have any harmful physical effects.
It is all pause for thought though, as we literally don’t live in a world where virtual reality technology is the norm, thus there aren’t any longterm studies available or even underway. In a recent interview with The Guardian, optometry professor Matty Banks noted that, in regards to eye-strain, everything he had seen “suggests it is all short-term and you readjust after you take that headset off [but] I think it would be unwise for us to say there is no problem”, whilst fellow academic Sarah Sharples adds that ‘effects’ aren’t necessarily ‘problems’; “The key point is: there are effects, but are they detrimental?”
All you need to know going in, is like getting lost in anything from a TV show binge to a movie marathon, gaming session or day of sports, it’s up to you to regulate your intake accordingly, even if VR is a much more immediate and potentially gratifying sensory overload.
Where do you stand on virtual reality? Too crazy to comprehend, excited, or somewhere in the middle? Let us know in the comments!
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