I wrote about this 2 weeks ago now. I told you all that it was on PSVR on parole.
I will watch these more than ever now.
I will watch these more than ever now.
This is something I and others have been saying for a long time too, it'd fit in their AAA hybrid strategy and would be cheaper by a huge factor than build new AAA games. They could fill in some gaps, when there's less stuff releasing and they could also sell those PSVRemasters on flat screens, ideally they'd bring collections like KZ2+3, Resistance trilogy and Motorstorm trilogy to PS5/VR2.
Is it just me, or is this thread mostly optimistic, positive with almost no doom and gloom that VR is a niche and already dead? I remember a time when pretty much any thread about VR was full of such posts, lol, is this because of the Quest or just because I haven't read many VR threads lately?
It would be nice if all you had to do was set your height and IPD at a system level, and from then on all you do is centre the headset when you start a game.
VR will certainly get a big bump when PSVR2 launches and console VR will be relevant again in a big way. The hardware also seems really excellent.
That said I am a bit wary about the hybrid approach when it comes to software but that only tells very small part of the story. Indies, possible PCVR ports and PSVR1 remasters should mean that there will be plenty of VR focused games also. I just hope we get a healthy mix of both and/or that the hybrid games will have surprisingly well thought out VR versions.
I assume the software side will be much clearer come summer next year. Lil anxious until then but I'm hopin for the best.
The news only gets better! Can't wait to see how this turns out.
You need to read about galvanic vestibular stimulation - whether it can be done with haptics/vibration instead of electrical impulses in the mastoid bones, I don't know, but it breaks the disconnection between what your eyes see, and what your vestibular system senses. Of course it could also be used to put you on the vomit comet, so don't play anything made in Dreams VR until somebody else has had a go.
It can tell the position of your fingers even when not in physical contact with the controller.
A bunch of sensors that sense touch will be on the controller and if you lift a finger the lack of touch in that area will register that finger being up, etc. They will have varying sensors down the controller so as each length of your finger begins to grip the controller it'll read that and adjust in real time.
A resolution bump, SSD load times and cutting out the camera would do wonders for that game.
Ugh, those loading times...
Researchers Say Head-mounted Haptics Can Combat Smooth Locomotion Discomfort in VR
Researchers from the National Taiwan University, National Chengchi University, and Texas A&M University say that haptic feedback delivered to the head right from a VR headset can significantly reduce discomfort related to smooth locomotion in VR. Moving players artificially through large virtual...
www.roadtovr.com
It's a small early study from last year.
But it does seemingly show certain types of haptics can help.
That probably is still the best solution.
I think the general idea for haptics is to trick your ear into detecting movement. Sickness tends to happen when your eyes see an acceleration, but your ear does not detect any acceleration. You very gently vibrate your head, so that the ears do detect an acceleration to go with your eyes seeing acceleration.
I don't know if it will work, or if that's the exact intention, but it's an idea some have proposed.
I think it's gotten better over the last year or so. A lot more interest and optimism.
It doesn't feel like it was that long ago, when there only seemed to be a handful of people who cared about VR.
Interesting, now I'm curious to try this system myself. I don't feel any sickness in DCS (fighter jet sim) but games where I control a character on the ground make me sick very fast. Air Car also made me sick when I tried it recently.
Eye tracked dynamic foveated rendering is THE game changer.
If this is implemented correctly, VR games could have two to five times the graphic fidelity of flat screen games.
Hell, if the resolution of the displays is high enough even playing a game in VR on a projected flat screen in front of you could look better than playing on a physical display using this tech.
If this is implemented correctly, VR games could have two to five times the graphic fidelity of flat screen games.
Hell, if the resolution of the displays is high enough even playing a game in VR on a projected flat screen in front of you could look better than playing on a physical display using this tech.
It's a got a variety of features only found in the most expensive models or not at all with things like HDR.
There'll probably be a bit of a road to travel with eye-tracking and improving technology in the years to come, in terms of how small the area of attention can be made (and thus how much of a multiplier you can apply to performance). I'm not sure how far we'll get with 2022 eye tracking
I imagine the target is that it will at least be enough to allow flat-TV games run in VR without so much, or any, perceptible visual compromise (vs 60hz modes at least) - if the goal is to make hybrid games easy for developers. Even parity will be a big step - and for a lot of people, OLED+HDR might make it better than their TV . Geometry might still be an issue, but it could become less so with engines/pipelines that are dealing with geometry in a more per-pixel fashion (e.g. Nanite might be ideal for VR).
If 2022-tech can go beyond flat-TV quality, that'd be super exciting, but let's see if we get details on how much performance they're saving with the eye tracking here.
Incredible specs and should really push the medium forward. This will be pricey, but they'll probably be able to leverage massive economies of scale to push the final cost down. I think this should sell quite a bit more than PSVR1 since as the experience should be drastically better.
OP
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Another ''confirmation'' of sorts regarding the veracity of this info, ZhugeEX retweeted Nibel's post on the subject.
Analogous to VRS, there's always opportunities for improving rendering-performance by not having linear-resolution distribution over your screen.
In VR - that's a 'requirement' because of lens-distortion, and at least on PC, the majority of software simply brute-forces it by rendering everything much higher res, but that's just the most inefficient way of going about it. Point being - even with no eye-tracking it's 'very' helpful (on the order of 2x-3x improvement).
Parity's already been kind of possible on 'current-gen' hw - at least in terms of pixel-throughput. If you have a 'good' lens-matching optimized renderer, pixel-load is the same, or slightly lower than flat-screen requirement for 'screen optimal' IQ/clarity.
There's the caveat of higher-fps, but for the most popular VR devices, the barrier of entry has already been lowered to 60 or very close to it.
The real reason parity didn't happen is lack of decent hw-support for aforementioned lens-matching optimizations. PC had an absurdly low penetration of GPUs that accelerate anything, and those that did fragment into 3-4 different mutually incompatible implementation paths.
PSVR had support on PS4Pro, but base-model was stuck without any - while a lot of software did 'some' things there, it was a mixed bag at best, and very rarely approaching optimal setup.
Dedicated HMDs mostly had the worst featured GPU hw - until Quest. But while Quest titles do well with maximizing lens-matched optimizations, they have no 'flat-screen' alternatives - so it's a moot point ;)
It should be a slam dunk for GPU throughput, of course CPU/framerate/etc. will still remain a challenge, but just the fact all hw will have the needed features 'and' additional benefits from EyeTracking...
Tracking implementation has no impact on BC whatsoever (other than games likely performing/behaving 'better' due to more accurate tracking). Games are completely agnostic of 'how' tracking is performed.
Controller is a different issue - a few titles have 'very' explicit design choices around DS4 tracking, but in the grand-scheme, they aren't that many, so they could just list them as incompatible and remaster/update them over time. Rest of library should 'just work'.
Or they could sell some glowing stickers/attachments for DS4/Aim to allow PSVR2 to track them. I'd totally buy into that :P
We're still going to a ways off from having perfect eye-tracked foveated rendering. If you want maximum gains, it needs to be as tightly optimized as possible, implemented in a raytracing pipeline, and used on headsets with an extremely wide (>180) FoV.
PSVR2 will provide some really appreciable gains, but it likely won't be at it's maximum capacity until PSVR3, which I would assume is a PS6 thing.
Thanks for the always great insights!
I am minded to wonder about the framerate difference vs 60hz games, though, and if that will swallow up efficiency gains from foveated rendering in the first gen (to yield something like 'parity' at 90fps). It was mentioned in the stream last night that the screen supports 90 and 120 hz native, the suggestion seemed to be that 60hz reprojected to 120 would be a thing of the past. But maybe that was just their own read on it.
I mean - hw will remain capable(60fps content can run on 120hz refresh displaying frames twice), if Sony decides against allowing it though... that's always possible I guess.
But yea - that'll eat some resources if it's mandated, particularly since CPU overhead is a problem going up to 120hz, even on these consoles.
God I fucking hope so. That game was held back sooooooo much by PSVR. No other PSVR game felt held back like Iron Man. I hope it gets a remaster and a full sequel.
With things like VRChat having a lot of this integrated it would be cool if Sony used a similar approach, and also as a thing to include with a reinvisioned PS Home of sorts, with both flatscreen and VR support just like VRChat allows.
I loved PS Home, VR is the perfect opportunity to reintroduce it to a new audience.
Just spitballing here but as for user created avatars and environments, integrating something like Dreams into a new version of Home would be fantastic. Make it as easy as possible for people to create their own custom avatars, personal home/social spaces.
You're welcome Sony :P
I didn't play Iron Man, but for me the title that felt "god this is held back like hell" was Blood & Truth. Both from GPU grunt and especially from the Moves and tracking issues.
If there is a better screen, day soon as I can get one for me. I liked the original screen but found the device and screen to be too poor to use. I think higher res with power of ps5 will be amazing. Also just got on the OLED train — literally better than imax/Dolby cinema.
I'll be surprised if they'll prevent 60fps games on PSVR2, as the main goal seems to be to have as many AAA titles be fully playable in VR.
I could sort of see the rationale trying to differentiate away from 'lower-fidelity' of standalone HMDs. Both AAA cross-play 'and' higher targets for framerate / fidelity play into that. But as you say - it's a double edged sword as you might lose out on some titles as result - hard to say.
On the flipside - if they're really doing any sort of 'AI' reconstruction (I'm skeptical of that bit of reporting - but we'll see) that could be applied to motion reconstruction just as well (basically "nex-gen" version of what Rift did to hit lower hw-spec targets), so that could be one way to state 'no 60fps' titles too (Would potentially also work to enhance BC PSVR stuff...).
At least the connection port will now be an ordinary USB C.
...we are getting eye-tracking with PSVR2. It's slowly settling in. Really curious to see the tracking precision.
Here's a cool demo someone made using the Vive Pro Eye (which released to the enterprise market on June 2019) :
It's cool to see the tracking detect the user's pupils expanding when he turns off the light in the virtual environment.
Well we know PlayStation has been developing and experimenting with eye tracking tech for years. Here is a video of them demonstrating eye tracking tech for Infamous Second Son back in 2014.
It should be fine if they don't abuse it. Like, when driving a car, you feel some slight revving of the engine or wind simulated via rumble against your face, but not the jarring impact of any crashes.
God no, even in a real car, your face is the last place in your body where you'd feel vibrations. As other people have discussed here, this tech may apparently be useful to reduce VR sickness. I don't think it should be used for any kind of force feedback, nor does it seem to be the plan at the moment.
Well that's a shame. VR is at its best when you design to the strengths of the platform, not distill it down so it is basically a 3D traditional game. Much as how the 2D modded version of HL:Alyx is dismal when compared to the VR version. Tailoring to 2D is a path of concessions.