Will Playstation VR kill PC VR Games?

Calo

Calo

Calo

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Bare with me here, its all about the games in the next 3 years.

Many PSVR games will be exclusive and never show up on PC. +1 Sony

The ones that do go cross platform will no doubt suffer much more from shoddy porting. I imagine there are a thousand more ways a port from console VR to PC VR will make playing a serious headache. +1 Sony

Any AAA VR games on PC will show up on PSVR GUARANTEED! As it costs so much more to make, they will want to maximise revenue with playstation's installed base. +1 Sony

Only a very small percentage of PC Gamers will invest in VR (many are probably on this board!) = harder to make business case for genuinely great VR games. +1 Sony

PC can upgrade easier to handle VR now and its future. +1 PC

BUT

Its costs about the same as buying a PS4 + VR (currently) +1 Sony

Im struggling to find the strongh argument for PC VR here in 2016, other than the status of early adopting and having many more indie games through the likes of steam (but honestly, £700+ for indie game experiences???)

Lets see more +1 for the PC, do you know any?
 
1st gen PC VR is niche. It's 1st gen, it's clunky, it costs a fortune to get in. Prime early adopter lifecycle.

PSVR might just go mainstream, getting punters and developers onboard for what, right now, looks to be the next gaming platform. However, there's a chance it might bomb. Depending on price and massively inferior performance. Fingers crossed it hits the sweet spot and sells millions?

Why fingers crossed? Simple - 2nd gen. 2nd gen PC we can assume will be cheaper, higher quality and (maybe) ready for primetime but it's going to need a market. I'm imagining a best case scenario where a £2-300 quid headset, plugged into a £3-400 quid rig* will get fans of PSVR an upgraded experience beyond, not just PSVR but Oculus and Vive CV1's.

*Price estimate based on the idea that foveated rendering or something similar will put much lower demands on the gpu
 
Calo said:
Bare with me here, its all about the games in the next 3 years.

Many PSVR games will be exclusive and never show up on PC. +1 Sony

The ones that do go cross platform will no doubt suffer much more from shoddy porting. I imagine there are a thousand more ways a port from console VR to PC VR will make playing a serious headache. +1 Sony

Any AAA VR games on PC will show up on PSVR GUARANTEED! As it costs so much more to make, they will want to maximise revenue with playstation's installed base. +1 Sony

Only a very small percentage of PC Gamers will invest in VR (many are probably on this board!) = harder to make business case for genuinely great VR games. +1 Sony

PC can upgrade easier to handle VR now and its future. +1 PC

BUT

Its costs about the same as buying a PS4 + VR (currently) +1 Sony

Im struggling to find the strongh argument for PC VR here in 2016, other than the status of early adopting and having many more indie games through the likes of steam (but honestly, £700+ for indie game experiences???)

Lets see more +1 for the PC, do you know any?
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From what I read your need the PSNeo to get a good VR experience as from what has been said it was really bad on the base PS4 due to not having the power for it even at 1080p
 
Limited game architecture on Ps4 -
Sony liking to do things its own way (look at its special ********* audio codec/system which is making it hell to have fallout 4 mods work with the system) -
Sony having final say on all games on that system.

Pc + Vive
Open architecture +
Steam +
Valve Resources +
Hacks/Mods +
 
The pure creativity of the independent scene on the steam will ensure a healthy future of the pc platform.

Literally one guy can come up with something and amaze you, the beauty of it.
 
Even with the new PS4 coming out sometime soon it will struggle to keep up with the graphic power required for VR, we may have have dual screen 4K headsets before the end of next year (pure speculation) and I think there business plan is 4k gaming with VR tagged onto the side. Look at how quickly we have moved from the original DK1 to where we are now, consoles will struggle to keep up with this pace.
 
I think pc development for hardware is faster and with the ever increasing need for more resolution on these headset displays I think most people will opt for pc VR and thats where the biggest market will be for the foreseeable.
 
PCVR will benefit from PSVR, bigger install base will provide Devs with the incentive to make VR games, invest more money for bigger projects, a vast majority of these games will be ported to PC, and overall experience and innovations made in VR will benefit exclusive PCVR headsets.
and PC will always have better headsets than console, because they will be able to upgrade new versions more often than console, sony said the PSVR will be compatible for this gen and next gen of playstations, thats like 5-6 years.
 
Calo said:
Bare with me here, its all about the games in the next 3 years.
Click to expand...

But there is a flip side to all your points........

Many PSVR games will be exclusive and never show up on PC. +1 Sony
Many PC games will be exclusive or too powerful to show up on console +1 PC

The ones that do go cross platform will no doubt suffer much more from shoddy porting. I imagine there are a thousand more ways a port from console VR to PC VR will make playing a serious headache. +1 Sony
PC VR games that do go cross platform will no doubt suffer from poor performance due to the lower resolution and lack of resources giving console gamers a serious headache. +1 PC

Any AAA VR games on PC will show up on PSVR GUARANTEED! As it costs so much more to make, they will want to maximise revenue with playstation's installed base. +1 Sony
Only the most ardent fanboys would want exclusivity...it doesn't help anyone. Unless bragging rights is something to be proud of? Why wouldn't you want as many people as possible to play the games?

Only a very small percentage of PC Gamers will invest in VR (many are probably on this board!) = harder to make business case for genuinely great VR games. +1 Sony
PC will always drive technology, PC will also receive the next generation of VR headsets sooner than any console will. At this moment in time the ideal VR would be a hybrid of the best parts of Oculus/Vive. We are also much closer to 4K/8K performance for gaming than a console will ever be...and that also puts it into good stead for higher resolution headsets.

PC can upgrade easier to handle VR now and its future. +1 PC

BUT

Its costs about the same as buying a PS4 + VR (currently) +1 Sony
Not if you already own a PS4 and then have to go out and buy yet another console (PS4K) so that it will actually run the 1080p resolution VR headset at a decent frame rate. Even the uprated PS4K console will gimp console games to get the framerates up so even if AAA games feature they won't be the same as the standard game......an example is Driveclub, the devs have stated they have to reduce a lot of effects, reduce the number of cars etc. I can see console VR being a series of party games as the horsepower just isn't there. Gone are the days when consoles eek out extra performance in comparison to PC because everyone has the ability now to hit the bare metal rather than going through layers of API libraries and drivers....console hardware is now customised off the shelf PC kit and we know just how much horsepower is needed to drive VR with good framerates - console just don't have equivalent power

Im struggling to find the strongh argument for PC VR here in 2016, other than the status of early adopting and having many more indie games through the likes of steam (but honestly, £700+ for indie game experiences???)
The Vive is £700, the Rift is £500.....not everyone needs the controllers either if cockpit games (racing/flight) are your primary games.

Lets see more +1 for the PC, do you know any?[/QUOTE]
There are boatloads of reasons why the PC is the better VR experience, and especially the reasons based around the technology, the closed console systems and future progress and expense.

I'm quite sure you'll see just how limited the console VR experience is going to be with 1080p visuals from a screen that is 1 inch from your eyeballs and a system that already struggles with 60fps at that resolution. Anyone with DK2 experience or even the Oculus retail at 1440p know just how important the resolution is as an absolute start-point.
 
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PDUK216 said:

I'm quite sure you'll see just how limited the console VR experience is going to be with 1080p visuals from a screen that is 1 inch from your eyeballs and a system that already struggles with 60fps at that resolution. Anyone with DK2 experience or even the Oculus retail at 1440p know just how important the resolution is as an absolute start-point.
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This last point almost swayed me on the PC side, but then I read this from sony:

"Not every 1080P screen is the same. Ours has three subpixels per pixel, which means true RGB for every pixel; some of the other displays actually don’t have the full RGB for every pixel, so they have less subpixels per pixel.
The frame rate of PS VR is also very high, but probably the biggest effect is the optics. The designers have done a really good job at matching the optics to the field of view to the screen."

Of course, we wont be able to see it for real until october
 
Yeah, but the people that played Valkryrie on the Morpheus Prototype build also commented how grainy the image was. That's not to say that it won't improve but it's so noticeable when it's that close to your eyes. Sony are always going to claim that PSVR is the best thing since sliced bread.....I'd be more concerned about the lack of power and the frame rates needed to run the games when the current console can barely hit 1080p in most games nevermind 60fps in order for reprojection (that has its own problems) to double it up to 120fps.

Let's be honest here too....if reprojection was so good then low frame rates wouldn't be a problem on the PS4 now because otherwise they'd have all games running at 30fps but doubling it up to 60fps with the additional frame injected. Reprojection adds latency and the GPU takes a hit every other frame, it's obviously not ideal and with console gamers primarily outputting to TVs hence the need for 60fps/60hz and doubling up to 120fps it's the only way Sony could ever make VR work without everyone throwing up everywhere.
 
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PDUK216 said:
hence the need for 60fps/60hz and doubling up to 120fps it's the only way Sony could ever make VR work without everyone throwing up everywhere.
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I'll paste what I've posted elsewhere, as some people don't seem to realise what reprojection does and doesn't do.

---

What it does do is effectively give you extra frames as far as head tracking (rotational movement) is concerned. It does this by slightly warping/shifting the last rendered image using the very latest rotational information from the headset.

Note that this is probably rotational only. It likely doesn't update the position in 3d space as that introduces problems and is slower/more complex, and more importantly, it does nothing to the transitional position of objects in the game world.

Some people seem to think it's a bit like Smooth Video Project, where extra frames are interpolated to smooth out movement of objects within the scene. Reprojection doesn't, and can't do that, as it can only works on the last frame that was rendered - there's no future frame to interpolate it with.
If you had a game running in either PSVRs 90/90 or 120/120 mode, then you'd have either a true 90fps or 120fps experience. 60/120 mode gives you a game running at 60fps but with head tracking effectively at 120fps.

It really can help in places though. If you've played Elite or ETS2 on the Rift, having your headtracking remain smooth when the framerate takes a sudden hit really helps stop you from throwing up your lunch ;)

There's an article here (https://developer.oculus.com/blog/asynchronous-timewarp-examined/) talking about Asynchronous Timewarp (basically the Oculus version of reprojection) which goes into more detail.
 
Cheers Fluke, thats quite informative as I've wondered why such a high rate was needed in VR when, even at 60fps, games look smooth. Its the illusion of 120 fps when looking around that makes or breaks the experience maybe?
 
Sony has a 4k Smart Phone.

Whats the chances they can use the same screen on the PSVR?

They could have the higher pixel count to negate the screen door but still render stuff at 1080p or whatever.

Is this a possiblity...?
 
Maybe DX 12 / Vulcan hasnt been used smartly enough? i know no game thats been built ground up on those APIs which should help performance on current gen cards
 
Superior HMD +pc
Superior touch controller +pc
Superior graphics / framerate (rig depending) +pc
Ability to hack, mod and tweak settings +pc

The big one for me - many more genres and uses other than games. Tech demos, simulations etc. I cant imagine 'games' like No limits 2 roller coaster sim on psvr where you have to basically know how to use CAD to build a rollercoaster then ride it in VR.

Using software to play console games. E.g. People getting Metroid to play on oculus and vive with a wii controller. Maybe not the best experience but this will only get better as people work on getting things to work and experimenting.

Good luck playing something like DCS world on psvr. Hardcore sims are pretty niche, simply because they have such a hard learning curve. Add in the fact you need to configure peripherals and graphics options so its even playable from a controller point and fps point (doesnt make you sick if you flyby a town, roll the plane and dip to 60fps!)

So, i hope psvr does well and im sure it will have some great titles but it simply doesnt have the customisation a pc has. Pretty obvious really but thats a big win for me
 
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