Sony: PlayStation VR May Not Match Oculus in Quality

[Steven Bogos]

Sony: PlayStation VR May Not Match Oculus in Quality

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If you're expecting the PlayStation VR to give you a VR experience on par with the Oculus or the Vive, you may be disappointed.

In a lengthy interview with Oculus Rift [http://www.polygon.com/2016/3/9/11174194/the-making-of-playstation-vr].

"If you just talk about the high-end quality, yes, I would admit that Oculus may have better VR," says Ito. But, he goes on to explain that while the Rift requires "a very expensive and very fast PC," PS VR's advantage is that it works with the much cheaper PlayStaiton 4.

"It's more for everyday use, so it has to be easy to use and it has to be affordable. This is not for the person who uses a high-end PC. It's for the mass market."

So for those of you expecting the incredibly immersion that Oculus and Samsung are promising, you may be in for a bit of a disapointment. However, if you were dismayed at the high price tags [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/166526-800-Price-Tag-for-HTC-Vive] of these PC-centric VR headsets, and were looking for something a bit on the cheap side, then the PlayStation VR is probably for you.

PlayStation VR is set to come out this year, although we don't know at what price point it will enter the market.

Source: Polygon [http://www.polygon.com/2016/3/9/11174194/the-making-of-playstation-vr]

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[deadish]

Not surprising.

Sony probably wants to avoid a repeat of the $600 PS3 situation.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I have no problem with there being an "entry level" VR headset. Though I don't own a PS4 so this doesn't really do much for me personally.

 

[dragongit]

Well... honestly I was expecting as such. Really it may be more of a blessing for them, if it means it can reduce the price of the VR system. I know a person who works at Sony, says that if the price of the VR system exceeds the price of a standard PS4 it would be impossible to convince people to buy it.

What the actual price is they will not say, but I imagine they will have stand alone packs, and ones that may include the camera and move controls to get the full VR functionality. Even if they take a hit to produce them, What matters most is software, and Sony really seems to have at least some focus in making games for it.

It may still be garbage and as sucsessful as the move was, but it may be the VR people go to. Why buy a Vive for 800 dollars and hope you have the PC to run it, when you can buy a PS4 and the VR for roughly the same price, or even less.

 

[flying_whimsy]

So if it ends up cheaper (both for the headset and the system to hook it to), this may end up a huge win for sony. Now they just need to actually capitalize on it rather than abandon the hardware. You know, they don't have a track record of wasting hardware innovation or anything.

All we need now is for some intrepid person to find a way to make that vr system work on a pc and oculus and valve will have some real competition. Yeah, it may not work as well, but if it costs a full house payment less then you can count me in.

 

[Revolutionary]

In other news water is wet, is anyone really surprised that a platform supported by high end PC's is going to deliver better performance than one backed by a PS4.

 

[Dead Metal]

Not really news now is it. They already said back when they revealed it that it's not of the same quality as the Rift, they even showed off a game that had cartoony graphics because they said the tech wasn't expensive enough to go hyper realistic and convincing.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Who would be disappointed? It means this is gonna be cheap (relatively of course). Not to mention anyone who ever thought that the PS VR would be even close to Oculus or Vive quality is deluded.

 

[medv4380]

"High End Quality". So only in the absolute edge case where someone has the exact hardware spec on their PC will it be better on the PC. In all other cases we're dealing with unstable nature of a diverse PC market that results in wonky performance in the upper mid to mid range PCs. You didn't spring for that 1400 dollar graphics card to go with that 600 dollar head set? You could only afford a 200 dollar graphics card to go after all that other investment in your rig? Sorry but only unstable, or low performance for you.

This is where the stability in the hardware spec pays off. You write it once, and a few million people get to use your stuff as you intended. You write something for the PC with the latest and greatest Direct X 12 GPU then you'll only get about a 3rd of Steams 11 or so million users. Which is why there is so little made for the cutting edge of the PC market, and so much made for the previous generation of PC hardware.

Alas, the MR will claim that PS4 VR is holding back the occulus resulting in the next generation of Consoles creating games that wont work resulting in claims of poor porting, and so on, and so forth.

And thus you have the cycle of the PCMR.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Not surprising.

Sony probably wants to avoid a repeat of the $600 PS3 situation.

More than the price, whatever hardware Sony comes up with the PS4 needs to able to power it to at least a stable 2x30fps, but really 2x60fps to stop people getting motion sick.

Whether that's even possible on what is a essentially a down clocked HD7850 remains to be seen. You certainly can't run an Occulus DK2 on that kind of GPU power.

 

[Mothhive]

Snip.

Your figures are way off there. Steam has more than 125 million users, not 11 million. Having a quick look at the Steam hardware survey stats, more than 8% (10 Million) have graphics cards that meet or exceed the requirements for the Oculus or Vive, and that's just the newest generation of cards, there are older ones that are more powerful than the GTX 970 or thr R9 290.

Also, those recomended specs are to run games at a higher resolution and framerate than the PS4 VR, so having lower specs might result in an inferior performance to other PCs, but not necesdarily compared to the PS4.

As for cost, why are you mentioning $1,400 graphics cards when you only need a $350 graphics card?

 

[ShakerSilver]

Of course it wasn't going to be as good, it's on a platform that can barely get a single 1080p display at 30 fps, let alone 2 of them at 90 fps. Who in their right mind thought this would be anything other than the happy meal-quality VR headset?

 

[Lightknight]

Haha, of course a $400 machine powering a VR device isn't going to be as good as a VR device requiring a $1,000+ machine. Even if it was literally an occulus Rift with a Sony logo on it, it wouldn't be as good because the device powering them is what makes the biggest difference.

I mean, the PS4 was launched back in 2013, that's quite a bit of time in PC years and at the time it was just a decent $400 (it was a great deal for the price but still not the equivalent of a $1,000+ machine).

The point is that phones already offer an entertaining VR experience. If these headsets are powered by a more powerful machine than phones (and they are) and if they offer additional benefits that reduce motion sickness (and they do), then we should have a budget VR solution that does perfectly well.

Either way, I'd say the price point of these things will make or break them.

 

[The Lunatic]

PS4 is using what is essentially a modified HD 7800, it's not terribly surprising the expectation of VR is going to be a bit beyond what they're capable of delivering.

 

[Lightknight]

PS4 is using what is essentially a modified HD 7800, it's not terribly surprising the expectation of VR is going to be a bit beyond what they're capable of delivering.

Eh, the PS4's setup is non-standard in ways we don't entirely know how will impact it. Like the use of GDDR5 instead of DDR3 or DDR4 may lead to better texture processing and such.

But yes, it is three year old hardware that was intentionally middle-ware at the time so it would be affordable to all which is the whole point of consoles. Anyone shocked that a three-year old mid-level (albeit higher-mid level due to the customization) isn't going to perform at the same level as current high-end machine is just entirely outside the loop.

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

I mean considering the Oculus is designed around crazy graphics cards in superpowered gaming rigs and costs (what was it? 600 I think?) I would assume that would be the case. If the PS4's is cheaper (like under 200) I could see it being more widely adopted.

I've actually tried the gear VR which uses fancy lenses to make a fucking samsung phone a screen, and it looks fine. That retails for like 100 on its own so if it uses similar technology, they would just need to add a 5 inch screen to the manufacturing cost.

 

[Strazdas]

Alas, the MR will claim that PS4 VR is holding back the occulus resulting in the next generation of Consoles creating games that wont work resulting in claims of poor porting, and so on, and so forth.

And thus you have the cycle of the PCMR.

when you have a static hardware that developers pick and develop limitations to their games in order to run on it (though most games on that haredware right now is not something i would call running) then yes, it is holding back the version that would be had those limitations not been in place. not to mention that consoles being absolutely shitfest in hardware this generation has forced some game engines (for example Unreal engine) to remove features because consoles couldnt run it. guess what, PCs got those features removed too, because of consoles. Given that PS4 VR will run on PS4, it will most definatelly be holding VR back for years.

 

[razer17]

I got to try the PSVR back in September. Graphics weren't anything special, but it was just a tech demo. Even just from the tech demo I was very impressed, so frankly I think the PSVR will be pretty good if it gets enough decent games. Even if it will be "entry level", I think it will make a good VR platform as long as the software support is there.

 

[Kahani]

I mean considering the Oculus is designed around crazy graphics cards in superpowered gaming rigs

I'm not sure why people keep repeating this, it needs a mid-range graphics card from 2014 and a mid-range CPU from 2013. As noted earlier in the thread, around 10% of people already have PCs that easily meet the requirements, and we're still months from release - there's even supposed to be a new generation of GPUs from Nvidia released by then (the minimum for AMD is already previous generation). Oculus is certainly aimed at enthusiasts, but that's nothing to do with the the PC required to use it and entirely down to the high price and limited use as a peripheral.

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

I mean considering the Oculus is designed around crazy graphics cards in superpowered gaming rigs

I'm not sure why people keep repeating this, it needs a mid-range graphics card from 2014 and a mid-range CPU from 2013. As noted earlier in the thread, around 10% of people already have PCs that easily meet the requirements, and we're still months from release - there's even supposed to be a new generation of GPUs from Nvidia released by then (the minimum for AMD is already previous generation). Oculus is certainly aimed at enthusiasts, but that's nothing to do with the the PC required to use it and entirely down to the high price and limited use as a peripheral.

I honestly can't tell if this is serious or not. You just said 90% of people would have to replace or upgrade their PCs by the time of its release and that any PC not built in the last 2 years wouldn't be able to handle it. I'm not sure how you see people calling that high end as so offensively inaccurate.