Sony has just announced that virtual reality is coming to the PS4. It’s called Project Morpheus.
First rumoured last year , the Sony headset puts the PlayStation 4 in a strange place in the gaming landscape, setting it apart from the Xbox One while offering a similar experience to the PC’s Oculus Rift.
Part of the announcement involved footage of a VR God of War, PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida saying “When I looked down, I saw my body was that of Kratos. That was an empowering experience.”
Yoshida directly referenced the Oculus Rift in his presentation, saying “I have an enormous amount of respect for them, and we were inspired and encouraged by the enthusiastic reactions of developers and journalists who tried [the Oculus Rift]”.
Note that the headset, pictured above, is not the unit’s final design, as Sony is still working on it. That said, here are the prototype’s specs:
- 1080p display with 90-degree field of view
- 15mm eye relief
- 1000hz display
- Full 360-degree movement
- Supports forward prediction
In terms of games, EVE Valkyrie is playable on the current dev kit, which is exciting. There’ll also be a special build of Thief being released; not the entire game, but some key sections reworked for VR support. There’s also games called The Deep and The Castle, the latter of which will let you use a PlayStation Move to control a sword.
Morpheus will be available for a hands-on with developers and the press tomorrow. Stephen and Kirk will be swinging by to give it a try, so check back tomorrow for impressions.
Another shot of the “Morpheus” prototype.
Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida with earlier, prototype headset units.
Another early prototype unit.
Comments
93 responses to “PS4 Gets A Virtual Reality Headset”
Ha. Totally didn’t see that one coming.
Mirror’s Edge 2 Bundle, yes?
“In related news, vertigo clinics are reporting all time high patient numbers”
Yep. I’d be one of them.
I would scream harder at that than any horror movie.
“I need to jump I need to JUMP DON’T LOOK DOWN OHSSSHHHHHHIIIIIII”
My vote goes for a combo VR headset and Steering Wheel/pedals combo. Think about Gran Turismo using that.
Definitely be a fantastic match for a wheel & Gran Turismo. You’d need no visuals for the control of the game since everything is hands and feet, you could concentrate entirely on the road. Playing Arma3 with TrackIR and driving a car with my racing wheel was a fucking great feeling, a proper racing game would be even better (though with less explosions so not awesome)
Yeah, I have been playing iracing with the Rift, and car games are where VR shines. No need for hand or foot tracking as they are on the wheel and pedals, so you look down and see your arms doing what you expect. It is so immersive.
Pre-order the collector’s edition now to get your exclusive spew bucket!
That will be interesting. Imagine playing watch dogs with move controllers and you can look around and sneak + bringing the move controller up shows phone.
Watch_dogs is third person so it wouldnt be that epic. I play assassins creed with my rift on pc and thats hard enough in third person.
We can only hope that some one makes a first person mod then run it through VorpX.
Oh yeah for some reason I just forgot Watch Dogs is third person.
How about a first person infamous title?
I dont have any sony games so im not sure.
sounds good though 😀
To be pedantic, most of Assassin’s Creed is a first person view. It just happens to be a first person view of the character in the animus, rather than a first person view of the historical character they are controlling.
Not that this would make much difference to VR suitability though.
Yeah. Its still good its just trippy.
To be extra pedantic, pick your assassins creed game though. Only 2 of them so far have had first person views for outside the Animus. Part 2, BH, Rev, 3, they were 3rd person. 1 and 4 were first person 🙂
I don’t see it doing well if it ever gets released in all honesty.
Based on what exactly?
VR devices are quickly gaining attention and interest. You just have to look back on how many stories on this site show off a game being used on devices like the Oculus Rift and how well it is recieved to see that people are interested in this direction, fad or not.
It’s NEVER based on anything real.
I just think it will have wii symdrome where people will buy one, relise it’s a gimmick they get sick of and never to be picked up again.
Think about back when the Wii was announced though. None of us had seen anything like it – I’m not remotely a Nintendo fan but I was excited as hell.
Granted, it soon fizzled out, but at least with VR they’re taking it slow…if the Wii had launched with the Motion Plus and hadn’t turned into a bastion of 3rd party shovelware, who knows where gaming would be…
I just don’t see it being the next big thing to change gaming. I just see it as niche gimmicky product. But who knows, I may be wrong.
the playstation fanboys will use this as a bragging point over xbox
i guarantee it
Oculus is making one. Sony is making one. Why wouldn’t Microsoft make one aswell? If they don’t want to lose the game, they should bring something similar to the market. Might be cool in combination with Kinect.
Oculus is being developed on Windows, if Microsoft really wanted too, it wouldn’t be too big of a stride for Microsoft to team up with oculus, and make their technology available on the one as well as PC
If this is a great success, I’d buy a PS4 at some point.
That last prototype is so great
I too want the Dalek helmet version
I was in Sony’s showroom in Tokyo in early 2012. They had some ancient-looking VR headset, or it could just have been this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMZ-T1
In any case, Sony’s has head-mounted displays for a while now so it’s not surprising.
Surprised no one has mentioned the obvious Matrix reference in the project name!
Cause this – http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morpheus_(mythology)
What if I told you that Sony is bringing out a VR headset for the PS4?
So we got Morpheus, Valve’s mysterious VR thingy in the works, and the Oculus Rift, eh?
well, it’s a far better boom than what motion controls brought in. 😛
Valve’s headset is for internal use only. What they’re really working on is an API for VR, as well as some R&D on what works and doesn’t work well in terms of VR gameplay.
I’ve always wondered what will happen for people who wear glasses, is the headset accommodating?
Probably too early to ask this about Morpheus, but how about the Occulus Rift?
It wasn’t super comfortable. Seemed like long stretches would suck.
Depends on the glasses, sometimes they can fit in the Rift’s current dev kit, but some people’s are too wide to get in there. There’s every chance that the next version will be more accommodating though, so who knows.
Realistically speaking a shitload of people (including john carmack who’s working on the rift) wear glasses, it’d be bone dead stupid to not design with some provision for them in mind.
This, a thousand times this.
Going in to the settings and applying your prescription rating to the goggles seems like something that should be goal.
If they start releasing perscription goggles or lenses that have to be brought and added physically I will have no interest in it.
I hope they think like this, i avoid 3D films because i end up having to wear two sets of glasses on top of each other.
well unless your long sighted AND cant wear contacts
its not that many people affected by this issue
thats me, long sighted, got astigmatism and contacts iritate my eyes…
Now I don’t know whether to get a Steam box or PS4 to sit with the old Xbone. hmmmm.
If you already have a gaming PC, I think it would make most sense to get a PS4. At least you have the option of all platforms near you if anything interests you.
I was going to build a system specifically for the rift to play eve valkyrie, looks like I can just stick with my PS4 now!
Your turn XBox One?
I thought the head tracking was 1000hz, not the display?
You are correct. 1000Hz displays don’t exist, and won’t for a long time.
Thief would be fantastic to play with an independent head camera, I know I’ve instinctively tried to use TrackIR with it numerous times and felt a bit disappointed when I couldn’t
From everything I’ve read, the lack of VR is the least of Thief’s problems, though.
Personally, I’m going to go buy up shares in adult diaper manufacturers before somebody announces they’re patching Outlast to use this technology.
It’s quite a good game really, crank the difficulty up to full, pop the majority of the challenges on and its a fairly solid Thief game.
Some of the design could be better for sure but it looks like far too much of the negativity is coming from the fact it’s not Thief 2.
90degree FOV = No sale
Pretty sure that’s more than enough. The FOV would be controlled by the game itself anyway, so you can have 120 degrees of what you’re actually seeing in games.
If it only has 90 degrees then that is what it should be set at in game. To do otherwise would skew the image which kind of defeats the purpose of ‘reality’.
I think 90 degrees refers to the ability of your eyes to only move to see 90 degrees. So you can have an FOV of 120, but still limit the eye movement to 90.
Not quite sure.
My interpretation was that the screens inside the headset cover a 90° field of vision based on where your eyes are positioned. If you tried to compress a 120° FOV onto those screens, it would be the equivalent of stretching a widescreen image to fit on a 4:3 aspect ratio screen.
To see more of the world, you’d need to move your head, so that 90° covers another portion of the world.
i own a 30″ monitor with 1200 horizontal res
i tried to play Battlefield 4 SP which locked the FOV to something ridiculous like 60 and it was vomit inducing ON A MONITOR
i cannot imagine how bad 90 degree FOV is that close to your face
100-120 or go home
or at least allow us to change it
In terms of the Rift at least, the FOV is locked where it is because of the optics and the distortion the image goes under to present you with a realistic image. If you screwed around with the FOV things would start distorting incorrectly and probably make you start feeling unwell.
I wonder if its 90 degrees per eye? If so this is what the Occulus Rift dev version offers apparantly.
Sick! Finally all the dreams of VR I had in the late 80s and early 90s are coming to fruition. 😀
Looks like cool tech so I hope it gets the support it will need with games to make it worthwhile.
Man, I know that people say the xbone will get better as people work out how to code for it….but it does suck seeing all these games saying 1080p for PS4, oh and 720 for XB1.
I got the Xbone cos my friends all had it, (and i liked the controller) so we could play together, but it kinda gets my goat that there’s always this slightly better version out there. (not counting PC of course)
I doubt the Xbone will ever get 1080p, most likely the 720p games will just get prettier.
Don’t say that PiratePete….I don’t want to believe it….
They could probably do it but I think most gamers are happier with less resolution if it means they get more detailed worlds.
The obvious solution is to join team PC and play at 2160p :p
Xbone’s about to announce DX12, which might be a saving grace.
Possible dumb question, but what will that do? The MS dude said it won’t do much at all for Xbone at the GDC…but I could be wrong
This is what next gen gaming is all about.. hoping Sony can pull this off, but I feel VR is the next big evolution step with gaming.
Am I the only one amused that a lot of their early prototypes are mostly just a bunch of move controllers strapped to someone’s head?
It is pretty funny, as that is the way I have been adding tracking to my Rift for a while now. My friends call me dildo-head…
That might not be related to the VR gear though.
Looking at the pictures, the person at the bottom looks a bit like a Dalek.
Oooooooh. 🙂
Be nice if they release a PS4 camera extension cable so I can use mine…
My problem with VR in its entirety is the fact that I don’t know how it would effect eyes over long periods (4-5+ hours), I mean you can’t really adjust VR to not be so close to your eyes and 15mm isn’t that much.
That and I’m already susceptible to motion sickness from some games when just playing on the TV. While I reckon VR SOUNDS like it’d be a blast, I worry I’ll end up spewing my guts up after 10 minutes of it 🙁
Easily the biggest problem with it is that for the average person there’s no way to know one way or another without taking a risk, dropping a hefty chunk of cash and buying one.
Yup, there is a need for a business to set some up in a house that you and a couple of mates can rent for the weekend with all the current and best games available on several setups.
With the Rift at least, while the screen is only an inch away from your eyes you’re not actually focusing on anything that close, the lenses make it so that your eyes focus at infinity so there’s no more strain than using a regular monitor. Maybe even less?
They’ve already started dodging questions about how they are going to render the 2×1080 screens without losing visual quality, and no mention of stereo 3d. Typical sony ME TOO move.
I can’t believe they went to all the expense of building a time machine and going back to two years before the Rift was invented to start prototyping the Morpheus.
Typical Sony. Boo! Hiss!
Because the Rift was spontaneously invented in 2012 with absolutely no prototypes or development behind it at all.
I doubt the Wunderkid had a prototype when he was 17, yes.
COLONY WARS PLEASE!
This, connected or not to this headset, I don’t mind.
I totally remember seeing VR hooked up at the PS4 exhibit at last years EB expo. Totally something worth investing in when the time comes.
I thought EVE Valkyrie was oculus exclusive? frickin’ awesome!
How much is something like this gonna cost? Given that Sony is actively gouging every country that doesn’t have PPP with the US I don’t look forward to seeing the price tag on that beast.
Shu said as little as possible.
Hopefully this actually comes out, unlike the OR which feels like it was announced back at the dawn of time.
Well I think this is pretty awesome. Will wait to see more (and a price) but man I’d love to give this a shot.
90degree field of vision, same as my snorkelling mask. Pretty cool.
How would this work? Console games have an extremely low FOV, and are designed around the idea that you are three metres away from the television.
Well PC games have FOV options, it’d not be too hard to have a pair of settings for new games to use this tech, if it detects this thing then it implements the wide FOV, if not it uses the standard
I predicted the ps4 would fail by jan 2016 but man you guys are making this too easy for me. lol. The sad part is people are posting like its something good. You don’t know history,someone with a brain please look up Nintendo virtual boy. If nintendo couldnt sell the virtual boy when they OWNED the market at the time and videogame’s were at thier peak in 1995 how in the world is a nobody sony corporation whos sharing the market with nintendo and microsoft going to sell such a silly gimmick at a time when A: people have no cash and B: the little cash they have is going towards cell phones,ipods,laptops etc… Sony has NO games on the ps4 and this is the best they can do?a peripheral?lmao. The WiiU just came up with an innovative game called “Hex Heroes” which is going to sell like crazy and this is sony’s answer?
Matrix game pls.
Damn! Who knew Sony was working on this tech for the past 5 years? Totally unexpected but definiately awesome.