
PlayStation VR Will Arrive in October for $399 - kjhughes
http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/15/playstation-vr-will-arrive-in-october-for-399/
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illumin8
With a 36-million installed base with compatible hardware, ~$150 lower
starting cost (including PS4 camera), and the ability for people without a
headset to play on the main screen in the livingroom, it looks like Sony might
clean up on the first generation of consumer VR.

~~~
fla
This will certainly be a big step for VR democratisation. I'm surprised they
aim for 120hz, it's really amazing. Can't wait to see what gets out of it.

~~~
Negative1
That's an 8 millisecond frame time! I've seen physics simulations that take
longer, never mind graphics intensive systems like post-processing (think
Depth-of-Field, Tonemapping, 'HDR'/Bloom).

I'm skeptical at how this will affect the quality of upcoming VR games since
less time to render generally means a scene that is less photorealistic. Then
again, maybe the immersion (presence) factor will overcome the graphical drop
in quality?

~~~
teej
Photo realism isn't going to happen in the first generation. Game developers
are going to have to be creative in art direction and gameplay instead. And
for games that do this well you won't ever notice a drop in quality.

To me, that's one of the most fascinating things about games. Breakout hits
make the right trade offs to push the platform further than you thought it
could go. This stands true since games were put on computers.

~~~
mortenjorck
At this point, photorealism isn't so much a question of hardware limitations
as one of scene complexity and interactivity.

If you have a simple enough subject to start with, and bake enough lighting
and shadow mapping into the textures, you can make a photorealistic scene on
even previous-generation console hardware. Once you start adding more objects,
and allowing more things to move, you start needing to calculate more in real
time, and you need more processing and rendering power.

A room with a table and a teapot could probably be made photorealistic on a
PS3, even at 90 FPS. A densely populated street with moving cars and
pedestrians, however, would have to be fairly visually abstracted to hit that
target even on a PS4.

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sinatra
The most interesting bit for me was about "Social Screen." If I understand
correctly, this will allow two people to play non-VR games on the same PS4
without splitting screen on TV. One person will be looking at the TV, and the
other person will be looking at the VR headset. This means that even if we get
no good VR games for a while, there will still be nice benefit of owning a VR
headset.

~~~
sbarre
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes comes to mind almost immediately here...

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AndrewKemendo
I'm always surprised at the lack of enthusiasm for VR and AR on HN. Is there
something specific about this vertical that makes it lackluster for this
crowd?

I get cynicism and all that but given how much HN users talk about on demand
delivery, CRM tools etc... things that are relatively boring in comparison,
and the massive growth in the VR/AR industry I don't get the lack of
discussion.

~~~
potatolicious
I think VR and AR ( _especially_ AR) has largely failed to prove why anyone
should care.

And keep in mind this is coming from someone who backed the original Rift DK
and is looking forward to getting the final Rift.

There really hasn't been much in VR-land that isn't just a cool tech demo.
"Hey you can walk through this virtual world and it's like you're actually
there!" \- yep, sure is cool, but then what?

Both VR and AR are at the stage where we have the technology to make whiz-bang
cool tech demos that are legitimately technically impressive, but are not real
products the masses actually want. Worse, we _know_ we don't have any real
killer applications of this tech, so we're branding a lot of these tech demos
_as_ products, which only generates more disappointment in the field.

At a previous job we hacked around for a bit with a Google Glass - which isn't
real AR, but certainly has similarities. We never could figure out anything
_real_ to do with it. Everyone had tons of ideas for cool tech demos, but the
only things they accomplished were being cool and making you feel like you're
in a sci-fi movie. We could never come up with anything that was truly a lot
of _value_.

Right now VR and AR feel like _very_ early motion pictures - I'm talking about
the period between its invention and the development of cinema. We're still at
the stage where it's a novelty trotted around like a circus act, and curious
people pay a penny to view a 5-second loop of something dumb. Motion pictures
obviously found a real place with real substance and lasting demand - VR and
AR are struggling to do the same.

~~~
waterlesscloud
"I'm talking about the period between its invention and the development of
cinema."

Right. Which should absolutely _scream_ to an entrepreneurial crowd there's an
immense opportunity here to develop the VR version of cinema.

The time you want to get into an emerging technology is precisely this stage.
The groundwork has been laid but the direction is not yet set.

That's the puzzling part to me, that HN isn't all over _that_ aspect of
things.

~~~
potatolicious
I take a less optimistic view on it - we're in this limbo state where the
technology exists but no good application has been found or developed.

Now, it can either achieve its Eureka moment and blossom into something really
useful.

Or it can continue to wallow in obscurity finding at most a few niche
applications.

Not every technology that is invented is destined to become world-changing
like cinema or antibiotics. There are plenty that become the Betamaxes and
Segways of history. At one point the Segway was also heralded to be the Second
Coming of transportation.

Part of the problem is that the groundwork has been laid but nobody has the
slightest idea which direction to go in. To be clear, it's not that we have a
wealth of choices ahead of us and can't choose which one, it's that we have so
few choices ahead of us that look genuinely promising.

\- VR workspaces/entertainment spaces (see: 50 foot theater screen in your
living room!)

\- Cockpit-style VR gaming experiences (flying, driving, etc)

\- Room-sized VR gaming experiences ("experiences" might be overselling a bit,
all are tech demos where the room-size motion tracking feels more like a bug
than a feature)

\- ???

It seems pretty likely at this point that #2 (cockpit style gaming) is likely
to succeed, at least moderately, but all of these other things are being tried
but just aren't that interesting.

~~~
zurn
I don't think any Eureka moment is needed to find high value applications to
implement. Just nobody has executed well enough yet.

Even if you think conservatively and consider only vr-ifying apps we already
have: For VR, some types of games (Elite Dangerous, Until Dawn), applications
directly related to design of real physical environments and objects. For AR
there many obvious industrial applications even with simple overlaid
indicators, eg in inspection and manufacturing. In AR games there are also
many quite obvious concepts that should work (think eg party games or outdoor
games) and you would be way off to say "we haven't come up with any worthwhile
games" at this point.

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emcq
Seems like it's only one 1920x1080 screen, so half that resolution per eye at
120hz. That's going to be some chunky pixels.

I'd rather have double the resolution at 90hz with a Vive or Rift :)

~~~
taneq
Is a stable 120Hz frame rate realistic on a PS4? Can it achieve that kind of
rate just in normal 1080p output? Or will this relegate the Playstation VR to
rendering 5-10 year old graphics? Bearing in mind that VR is a lot more
sensitive to frame rate jitter than a traditional screen.

~~~
joshschreuder
I believe (and I could be way off the mark here) there are two modes, one is a
kind of frame smoothing to achieve a 'fake' 120Hz similar to what you see with
modern LCD TVs, the other is actually 120FPS which is accomplished by dropping
the graphics quality down.

You're not going to see Uncharted 4 doing 120FPS natively in PSVR.

~~~
joshschreuder
FYI this slide from Sony explains a bit more about what I was talking about:

[https://i.imgur.com/UijG9Qll.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/UijG9Qll.jpg)

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prbuckley
It seems like there will be three tiers of VR...

High-End VR: Gaming and graphic intensive applications will run on computers
wired to special HMD systems. Vive, Oculus and PSVR

Smartphone VR: This will be the GearVR type experience, dedicated VR appstore
of content.

Casual VR: Google Cardboard type devices used for viewing 360 photos and
video,download content from existing Play store and Apples App Store.

full disclosure we are making and selling things in the casual VR category
([https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/smartvr-make-your-
phone-a...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/smartvr-make-your-phone-a-
virtual-reality-viewer/x/7469849#/))

~~~
Karunamon
I'm not sure the PSVR can qualify as high end. And I'm not saying this as a
subscriber to PC Master Race Weekly, I'm saying it with the limited specs of
the PS4 in mind compared to even the minimum requirements of the Vive and
Rift.

Given how those requirements are just north of crazy right now, it follows
that there must be something that was compromised on to allow the PSVR to work
- and also keeping in mind that the Rift/Vive specs are _that high_ just to
get VR that's _acceptably convincing_.. I just can't work up the excitement.

I'm hoping that I'm wrong here, and that they did some kind of insane
algorithm or something to do a lot more with a lot less hardware. Anyone who's
had hands on the device care to chime in?

~~~
serge2k
The insane algorithm could just be "design games that need less power". I
mean, why not?

~~~
Karunamon
And maybe it is just that simple - you don't need super high detail to convey
presence.

I just wish I could get my hand on one and see with my own eyes. With VR,
there's no substitute.

~~~
georgemcbay
"And maybe it is just that simple - you don't need super high detail to convey
presence."

In my experience with various modern VR systems this is absolutely the case.
Latency and proper movement tracking is non-negotiable when it comes to
achieving an eerie feeling of presence in the simulated virtual world, but
rendering detail is far more optional. Nice to have if you're going for true
reality, but not required.

If they've nailed the latency and tracking (I haven't used a PSVR so I don't
know if they have) the lesser detail will be lost in the noise, sort of like
it is now when you compare the PC version of a game (say, the Division, for a
contemporary example) to the console versions.

Everyone knows the PC versions of these games are capable of looking better in
A/B tests, but many people are perfectly happy with the lesser detailed
version.

I buy PC/console releases on console far more often than on PC despite having
a powerful enough PC to run new games just because I find avoiding the
pitfalls of driver versions, the perfectly standardized voice communications
for multiplayer, etc more valuable to me than the extra rendering detail.

------
sandGorgon
And with ARM claiming [1] that they will produce mobile chips with PS4
equivalent performance by 2018 ... We are heading towards snow crash.

[1]. [http://www.phonearena.com/news/ARM-says-mobile-game-
graphics...](http://www.phonearena.com/news/ARM-says-mobile-game-graphics-
will-catch-up-to-PS4-and-Xbox-One-by-2018_id78415)

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wiradikusuma
looks like VR/AR is (finally?) the new gold rush! any recommended starting
point for Web/mobile dev like me who's interested to try his luck?

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tgb
Does anyone have links to someone playtesting the PSVR recently? One imagines
there's some quality lost compared to the more expensive Oculus and Rift
offerings, and I'm curious to know the difference.

~~~
monk_e_boy
Yeah, it'd be interesting to know if this gives you 'presence'

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michaelbuckbee
Tested.com has done great coverage of the various VR gear.

PSVR hands on:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq5VVnsQgB8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq5VVnsQgB8)

~~~
hrnnnnnn
Those guys always ask really good probing questions in their interviews with
VR folk too.

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JavaScriptrr
It seems history is repeating itself. This VR hype is going to be killed by
lack of business innovation. We've seen this exact scenario with 3D printers.
Awesome tech, but with a pricetag that has kept those devices from going
mainstream. With VR, the guys are delivering innovative tech, but with the
oldschool business model, trying to make money on the hardware. Sony would
lead the game if they would lose money, offering a simple to use VR headset
for $99 -$199, dominating the market and then make money on games and apps.

~~~
gwern
What sort of VR headset do you expect for $99? At that price, you get
Cardboard and Gear, at best, and those have underwhelmed the market and people
who have tried them & Vive/Rift/PS.

~~~
JavaScriptrr
The question is: why not lose money on the hardware, to accelerate
distribution and put an awesome device in people's hands and then make money
on software. So my suggestion would be to sell the $399 devixe for $99. Not
push out something crappy

~~~
goshx
Come on Javascript (no pun intended), they'd lose money very quickly. They are
already below the price tag of the competition.

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__david__
Neat. Has Sony demoed this yet? I've heard first hand reports of Valve's and
Occulus, but I've not heard anything about Sony's yet...

~~~
Tiktaalik
They've demoed it a fair bit. Impressions I've heard so far seem quite
positive.

This announcement is from Game Developers Conference, which is going on right
now and where they're demoing it to a ton of people, so I'm sure we'll get
even more impressions soon.

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jerf
Protip to future VR marketers: The generic "staring longingly into the future"
pose does not work if you put a freaking VR headset on!

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cha5m
The ps4 rendering 1080p at 120hz? Yeah no.

Unless they significantly pare down their graphical fidelity.

~~~
Caprinicus
They're aiming for rendering at 60hz from what I can tell. Graphics will still
have to take a hit to meet that, but not quite as badly.

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FLGMwt
Heads up, this also requires a PS4 camera which costs $60 if you don't have
one.

~~~
brazzledazzle
Also a heads up: Based on Amazon's price history you can usually get it
between $40 and $50. If you see it for $60 probably worth waiting for it to
drop.

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akurilin
Just to clarify, is it possible to use the VR headset as a TV/monitor
replacement? I live in a super tiny studio and this would actually make owning
a console pretty feasible.

~~~
iLoch
Yeah you could probably write a program to put a TV in virtual space and use a
live video stream as a texture.

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dcw303
I remain sceptical yet hopeful that they've solved the motion sickness
problem. Biggest problem for me playing DK2 was spending more than a minute
running around in anything first person induced the urge to vomit.

I see that Star Wars Battlefront has been announced, and the idea of that
seems excellent. One thing lacking in the Rift demos was a distinct lack of
_characters_. Lots of vast, empty landscapes, but no actual people.

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bitwize
And with it... Rez Infinite.

I am so stoked.

~~~
qbrass
I was hoping for Rez designed around VR instead of Rez with VR tacked on.

I went from wanting to buy a headset to play the game, to wanting to buy the
game if I get a headset.

~~~
bitwize
Rez gets a leg up from being conceptually built around what we thought VR
would be like (think Lawnmower Man), and (according to Mizuguchi) designed to
accommodate future VR technology from the start.

The game engine has been significantly reworked to accommodate VR; it offers a
360° panoramic perspective rather than constraining you to face forward, and
the playstyle in VR is "look to aim" much like Vanguard V. I'm to understand
that the enemy placement in the original levels has been changed somewhat to
make better use of the technology, and no one has seen "Area X" (all new
content) yet...

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guidefreitas
Go Microsoft, make Oculus work poorly on Xbox One...

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yingnansong
Looking forward to using it!!!

