PlayStation VR, otherwise known as Project Morpheus, has been something of a hot topic for the GTPlanet community upon discovering Shuhei Yoshida, President of SCE Worldwide Studios, would like the platform to support Gran Turismo.
The premise was made more promising when a Driveclub tech demo was shown off behind closed doors that displayed the possibilities racing games could have on the platform, and was made euphoric when compatibility was confirmed for next year’s Gran Turismo Sport.
With the Q1 2016 release window drawing near, quite the interesting piece of information has emerged: the PlayStation 4 isn’t powerful enough to operate the headset by itself, opting for an external processing unit as shown above to deliver on the promise of VR.
The reasoning behind the external unit, or ‘PU’ as referred to by Sony, is to create the social screen through the available HDMI output. This allows gameplay to be displayed on an HDTV for others to watch and participate, while the main player is fully engaged in the VR environment.
As previously mentioned, PSVR will make use of ‘asynchronous time-warp
‘ which will allow 60fps games to be frame-rate upscaled to the native resolution of the HMD (Head-Mounted Display) at 120Hz. Asynchronous time-warp can be applied to all frames, even those on native 120Hz code, and will help to reduce potential nausea issues by ensuring that the visual response to HMD movement is as natural and fluid as possible.
PlayStation VR has undergone some slight alterations since its original unveiling and these alterations are apparent in the new inline controls, joining the headset and its connection to the external processing unit. While hard to identify the buttons in the image, they represent volume control, a microphone input and a power button.
PlayStation VR is undoubtedly a sizable investment for Sony and a risky one to boot, but we’re interested in its possibilities and what direction it will drive the racing game genre in all the same.
See more articles on Accessories and PlayStation VR.
Humm, this News Item makes it sound like having a Dedicated Processing Unit is a BAD thing.
Quite the Opposite… Let the PS4 handle the Game, and let the VR hardware handle the Stereoscopic Vue and Head tracking. To Me, that’s a Good thing…
don’t take away anything from the game experience and let the Headset Hardware do it’s thing.
One more thing that all members need to keep in mind.
VR headsets aren’t for everyone.
If your binocular vision isn’t good, then you will experience difficulties.
From Motion Sickness, to Headaches, to Not being able to see it in 3D at all..
A VR head set has two Flat Screens.
so our Brain has to take these Two separate FLAT views and trick us into seeing a real 3D image.
Some of us will have a better experience with it than others.
I’d advise to try it before you buy it..
here’s a web site with some info on binocular vision
http://www.vision3d.com/whycant.html
I see this VR headset as a novelty. Good for a bit of fun but I wouldn’t use it every time I switch on my PS4.
VR is the future, there’s no doubt about it in my mind. The ability to suit up right into the cockpit of a Lotus 49 and zip around a classic Spa or Monaco is a sim racers dream come true.
Stop trying to shoehorn VR onto these consoles. Remember how well previous expansions for consoles went? The Sega Saturn 32 bit and and N64 Disk drive were massive failures, so I don’t know why people would want to invest a considerable amount of money for an experience that will only apply to a few select games.
Don’t forget X360 Kinect and PS3 Move… ;)
They are £50-£100 products, pick up and buy. This is a £300+ product
Just because something fails doesn’t mean you stop trying, I hope you aren’t a motivational speaker, you’re awful.
This is actually a good idea IMO. It both removes some of the weight from the headset and relieves pressure on the limited PS4 resources. It’s a win/win for players and the PS4. I wonder if it works on pc as well.
I was wondering the same when I saw this article, it would be good for guys like me with an average PC that is too weak to support VR goggles. Probably less expensive than upgrading to a stronger GPU.
Well so long as your pc can generate a solid 60fps with settings you like then, if the Morpheus worked with pc, it would do the scaling up to 120 fps for you.
Wait a second. How will VR work with all the legacy cars from older versions of GT, that will be copied straight to GT 7, that have no cockpit view?
GT 7 needs to drop all legacy/non updated cars and just have everything next gen – Cars, Tracks, etc. Just makes sense for VR to work in GT 7.
I’m sure GT7 will have only premium models, I can’t say the same for gt sport. We’ll just have to see when it’s out.
I am with Rage9one here…
If GTS and GT7 are going to support this headset it can only means that we are gonna see only Premium models in this games…
Finally i say cause the mass of PS2 cars in a PS3 title was disturbing enough IMHO…
Kaz has already confirmed he wasn’t ready to drop his GT4 models for the next GT opus.
Not that matters, if there’s additional computing box, as long experience will work as intended.Considering price, VR could easily replace triple monitor/tv setups (cost of 1000€ + ) ,so for me price I’m willing to fork is 400-500€ > price of a 40-50″ TV set or ORift.On the other side, I do wonder if I want to wear that plastic on my head for an hour , two , three?
”the PlayStation 4 isn’t powerful enough to operate the headset by itself, opting for an external processing unit as shown above to deliver on the promise of VR.”
Erm, yes it is but it would be bad for everyone if you dedicated its resources to that, games would be compromised by running at a spec in which power is being reserved for VR usage and those who wont be picking up VR will be putting up with a reduced experience while a chunk of processor power sits around doing nothing. External processor? Everyone wins, both VR and non-VR users will get a great experience.
You realize that you’ve self-neutralized your own argument, yes?
If the requirements set by the Oculus Rift for a modern PC requires, at minimum at GTX 970 or R9 290 – both of which are leaps and bounds ahead of the GPU’s used in the Xbox One and PS4, in what realm do you find it possible that the PS4 could reliably allocate enough resources to rendering VR on its own without severely hampering performance or visual quality along the way?
There is quite the difference between the definitive statement of ‘isn’t powerful enough to run’ and ‘well a PC peripheral built for a completely different environment requires different hardware which cant really be directly compared to a closed console situation to run without compromises.’
The environment has zero to do with your original point. You do realize you’re suggesting that not only is the PlayStation 4 capable of rendering a VR-compatible game at 1080/60 but it is then also capable of rendering the same scenes a second time for a peripheral with no discernible loss of performance.
Yeah, no. The provided video outright states the external box does “a lot of heavy lifting.”
Which part of ‘games would be compromised by running at a spec in which power is being reserved for VR usage’ makes you think I’m suggesting that it would be the same quality?
NO YOU THINK? 1200MB of vram on todays games is an absolute nightmare, the ps4 was never meant for vr (or games for that matter) and having games be upscaled to 120fps would introduce huge amounts of control lag. this take off on consoles.
wont take off on consoles*
Please don’t talk about things that you clearly don’t understand.
“1200MB of vram…” not sure where you managed to get that number from. The PS4 has 8GB of unified system RAM. Even in a worst case scenario, the GPU will have plenty of memory(unless you want >1080p or max settings, neither of which are going to work well if you buy a PC for $400).
“120fps would introduce huge amounts of control lag” No, it would not. Increasing the frame rate, if anything, literally does the OPPOSITE of increase latency.
Ram and Vram aren’t same things.
It’s unified memory, there is no ‘VRAM’ per-Se, it’s up to each developer to allocate each resource from that unified pool.
You also don’t ‘upscale’ Fps, and more FPS typically means less latency/lag.
But give the PS4 dig this is clearly a troll post anyway.
There are rumours that PlayStation VR could cost not to far off the price of a PS4! Yes it’s pricey but not abnormally high compared to the competition and nowhere near Microsoft’s Holo Lens price. As long as it performs well and more crucially has a use outside of gaming (so it works on PC and other media etc) it could be a very dominant. I like how the PU unit looks like a mini PS4 and shares the same design.
Pretty sure that driving games were a shoo in for VR, it would make driving from cockpit so much more useful and make it easier to peer into corners and look around. Not sure why people are always thinking of other things when VR in driving games are the obvious easiest methods to test first? Mainly sitting and head tracking would be easier to troubleshoot than head tracking and hand tracking and possible large body movements.
I’d love this for Drive Club and reprojected at 120fps means Drive Club even smoother and that sense of speed is to die for in cockpit cam.
It’s a good idea that Sony went and had this Unit built, instead of half assing it. I have a feeling that if it’s compatible with Drive Club and upcoming GT Sport, I will be buying this straightaway. Hope Assetto Corsa and Project Cars on PS4 supports it too.