Dr. Richard Marks, the head of the PlayStation Magic Lab at Sony, recently spoke at length about the technical capabilities of the PlayStation VR headset during a presentation at the 2016 Vision VR/AR Summit .
During his presentation, shown below, Marks revealed that the PS4 was effectively 60 percent more efficient than same-spec PC computers at handling VR processing. He also said that the the PlayStation VR headset would have a 100 degree field of view, and thanks to being optimized around the PS4’s fixed hardware, would have an incredibly low latency of less than 18 ms.
Marks mentioned that the reprojection would be left continually on with the headset as well, and that the only new hardware needed to make the PlayStation VR headset work with the PS4 will be included within the device. Lastly, the external processor will mostly be concerned with processing 3D audio. This means that no PS4 CPU/GPU cycles will be spent on processing audio.
A PlayStation VR headset developer spoke about the device’s technological capabilities compared to other VR headsets in a reddit comment thread recently , saying, “PSVR is extremely close to being on par with Vive and the Rift w/ a gtx970 based on the tests I've done . . . In brief, the PSVR only requires about 1/4th of the render target size that the Vive requires. This has a lot to do with the display they are using that can run a 60Hz game at 120Hz (in addition to the 90Hz mode).”
“There are other things to consider as well, if you want to go further. For example, the PS4 has hardly any driver overhead compared to Windows so it's a fully dedicated gaming system that can focus purely on performance. For example, the draw calls on the PS4 are faster than with dx11 which is something that a lot of people don't realize,” PlayStation VR headset developer /u/yantraVR wrote . “They have also started beefing up their small conversion box unit with processing power to help do some heavy lifting.”
Marks’ onstage demo of the PlayStation VR headset at the December 2015 PlayStation Experience event didn’t go as planned . Viewable below, demo was supposed to showcase two players dueling one another with PlayStation VR headsets, but the controllers failed to work. Mark addressed the snafu at this time in his presentation at the 2016 Vision VR/AR Summit .
Sony is holding a press event March 15 regarding the PlayStation VR headset, and while no information has been leaked on what will be revealed at the event just yet, considering that both the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift have announced their imminent release and are accepting pre-orders, the hopes of PlayStation virtual reality fans are running high.
Hopefully the March 15 press event will not just be a developer showcase for games, intended to show off the capabilities of the PlayStation VR headset in the two weeks running up to the March 28 and early April availability dates of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive respectively.
It is unlikely that this will be the case . Instead, PlayStation virtual reality fans are looking at Sony to declare both price and a concrete release date for the PlayStation VR headset at the March 15 press event.
Sony’s past track record of announcing product launches at designated press conferences bolsters these hopes. The press event may even be streamed online for PlayStation fans to watch live, as was the press event in 2013 that revealed the PlayStation 4 console.
