A senior Sony staff member has hinted at a particularly bright future for PlayStation VR
It’s high time Sony released a PSVR 2 headset. The original PlayStation VR has been steadily gathering momentum since it first launched in 2016; an arsenal of top-notch exclusive VR titles and some aggressive discounts have helped place the hardware at the forefront of the virtual reality market. But that was a long time ago, and we’re growing impatient.
As rumours of the PlayStation 5 develop into tangible news, we’ve been treated to a glimpse of the future for Sony’s gaming hardware. That future, according to Dominic Mallinson, Senior Vice President of R&D at Sony, includes the next generation PlayStation VR headset. We have a good idea of what to expect from PSVR 2, so to find out what we know so far, read on.
PSVR 2 release date: When will it launch?
Sadly, this is one thing we don’t know. PSVR launched on 13 October 2016, just before the beefed-up PS4 Pro and PS4 Slim. It’s looking increasingly likely that the PS5 will launch next year and when it does, it will likely support the current version of PSVR.
That much has been confirmed by Sony. What hasn’t been confirmed, however, is whether the next generation of consoles will usher in a new age of virtual reality. As we’ll discuss below, Sony has a few neat ideas up its sleeve, but there’s no real likelihood that a new headset will make an appearance before the end of next year.
PSVR 2 features and specs: What’s inside?
Senior Vice President of R&D at Sony, Dominic Mallinson, spoke on the subject of PSVR 2 at Collision 2019. While he made no specific promises, his insights have helped produce a remarkably firm image of what will distinguish the next-generation headset from its predecessor.
Improved resolution
Using a VR headset with a poor resolution is quite like staring at the world through a mosquito net. The current PSVR model has a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 – that’s 960 x 1,080 per eye – which is commonly known as Full HD. Mr Mallinson wants Sony to do better when the next headset launches.
He hopes to double the resolution of PSVR’s display, essentially packing a 6in 4K screen into the headset’s eyepiece. By comparison, HTC’s £800 Vive Pro headset has a resolution of 2,880 x 1,600.
Wider field of view
PSVR has a field of view (FOV) of 100 degrees, which is a little less than the ideal amount for an immersive 3D viewing experience. Mallinson hopes that Sony’s next-gen VR headsets will go some way to bridging the gap, although he was keen to point out that there were “diminishing returns” for doing so – most of our field of view is peripheral and therefore unfocused.
You can expect PSVR 2 to have a 120-degree FOV; it’s the ideal figure for reducing perceived borders to a minimum.
High Dynamic Range
Next on Mallinson’s PSVR 2 wishlist is HDR support. So far, no existing virtual reality headsets offer the colour-boosting technology, and Mallinson feels that the industry has missed a trick.
No more wires
Possibly the most ambitious concept on this list, wireless VR is an imperfect idea that is currently best championed by the Oculus Quest. Mallinson explains that an all-in-one wireless headset like the Quest “cannot possibly compete with a wired headset today” due to the hardware requirements for high-end VR.
His theoretical solution is to leverage recent advancements in 60GHz wireless transmission technology in order to stream content from console to headset. It’s certainly a bold vision, and probably one you should take with a pinch of salt.
Gaze tracking
The recently announced HTC Vive Pro Eye features technology known as gaze tracking, whereby the wearer’s eye movements are tracked by internal sensors. Dominic Mallinson would like to implement the same technology into PSVR 2.
As you might expect, the benefits are huge. Being able to accurately track where a player is looking will allow for advanced rendering processes that materialise and dematerialise in-game environments in a much more efficient way. In other words, stuff appears where you’re looking, and disappears where you aren’t.
PSVR 2 price: How much will it cost?
If the above features make the jump from concept to reality, you can expect PSVR 2 to cost a fair bit more than the PlayStation 5 itself. Fortunately, Dominic Mallinson has a plan.
Just like the many generations of PlayStation consoles, Mallinson hopes to see PSVR become an umbrella term for a family of devices, rather than just a single headset. Referencing the idea of a wireless VR headset, Mallinson proposed that Sony has “an introductory model and a high-end model” that ditches the wires.
The current PSVR headset launched at £350, making it the same price as the PS4 Pro console that launched one month later. We might expect to see Sony adopt the same strategy for PSVR 2 and if we do, we’re anticipating that it will be the introductory model that costs as much as this, with the souped-up variant costing much more. Essentially, don’t expect to pay any less than £350 for PSVR 2.
Source: expertreviews.co.uk