Hi,
I finally made up my mind on which VR device/ setup I wanted. Played around with a RIFT DK2 for a year, but in the end the price/ possibilities combination made me decide to go for the PS VR in november. Also because I own a PS4.

Now, they introduced a PS4 PRO for better processing power etc (labeled as 4K support etc). Does this mean you should better upgrade to the PS4 pro first? Will I have the same experience with PS VR and the "normal" PS4?

Personally this messes up my plan. I really wonder if underneath, VR performance was also a reason for Sony to introduce the PS4 PRO.

Always curious on your thoughts on this.

We don't know anything about PSVR at this stage, beyond some marketing nonsense. Personally, as someone with retail Vive and Oculus units on hand, I heartily encourage you to wait until 2017 before making any decisions relevant to VR.

labeled as 4K support etc

If I recall they didn't quite say 4K, they phrased it in such a way as to avoid saying 4k support explicitly.

I also own a Vive and I don't think I could have not bought one, It really is something I must have. That said I rarely use it (once a fortnight perhaps) and I am in the 'Wait and see' camp. I do think it is amazing and there are a great deal of games for it but most don't quite do it for me. Hopefully the PSVR launch titles will be quite strong but I'd be very eager to let them settle in the wild a bit first. before jumping in.

Wait and see.

Thanks, that sounds like good advice. The DK2 felt good but in another way clearly lacked on some things. That's why I'm curious for the next step in VR.

Thanks, that sounds like good advice. The DK2 felt good but in another way clearly lacked on some things. That's why I'm curious for the next step in VR.

Oh, the current retail units are miles ahead of the DK2. SO MUCH BETTER. Despite being first gen products, they've come a long way and I expect great things in future iterations. The problem is that there's minimal content and control schemes are still being worked out, as are the various competing platforms. I'm expecting a lot more clarity in spring of next year about where things are headed for VR and where to buy in.

I wouldn't be surprised if the PSVR requires a PS4 Pro...

Graphics wise, it's two PS4's glued together, which means you can take your existing game to VR or 4k output resolution a lot easier. Doing a VR game on the basic PS4 would require a tour de force of optimisation. One that I worked on only did monoscopic rendering, going to stereo in post with a parallax shader :(... Double the graphics power would let them go to real stereo rendering.

This puts Microsoft in a big catch-up position too. The basic PS4 is already 150% of an Xbone (graphics wise) so the Pro will be 300% of an Xbone.
Scorpio needs to be three Xbones glued together in order to catch up!
I don't look forward to that as a dev; optimizing for a really shit GPU, a poor GPU, and two adequate GPUs... Shipping a console game is hard enough already :|

And yeah, Rift CV1 / Vive are miles ahead of the DK2 - no comparison... But you do need a $1500 PC to use them!

I read a few articles a few months ago about the PSVR during its public debut and showing. The overall consensus was that it was inferior in quality to the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive and that people were experiencing motion sickness. I think the PS Pro is an answer to that problem.

If I was targeting the PSVR hardware platform, I would be most concerned about hitting performance targets. I'd also be very interested in knowing what its limitations are. Can it do room scale tracking? How reliable are the motion controllers and tracking? Can I create a believable virtual reality which creates immersion and presence? Can the hardware keep up? Although I'm not building for PSVR, I'm really, really hoping that PSVR is sufficient for gamers. I see it as a middle ground between mobile VR and high end VR. The future of the VR industry needs every major player in the hardware space to be successful.

If I was targeting the PSVR hardware platform, ... I'd be very interested in knowing {long list}.

I can assure you -- as someone who has Occulus, Vive, and several other AR/VR solutions in the office for development purposes -- that you are not alone in your curiosity.

There are many major obstacles to overcome and many major tool sets that need to evolve first. Many companies are still struggling with what should be basics of the platforms, trying to display content correctly on a range of devices, particularly AR devices.

As one example of hundreds, developers can't just overlay things and call it good on AR systems, several AR displays require subtracting out 'real life' light; if you want to display a pixel of #FF433F you've got to figure out the real world has roughly #E8A56B at that location, then figure out based on lighting how much display light to add to generate your scene. Because light doesn't behave linearly and because you can't subtract light in the systems, you can't just try simple subtraction of #FF433f - #E8A56B. You need far more complex solutions to brighten and recolor based on environment.

As the technology stands right now it is a race to see who will generate the first killer app, the thing that everyone must have. Several companies have already made ventures, with Google Glass being the most mainstream, but generally none have gained big acceptance.

Personally I think you've got a few more rounds of innovation before it gains acceptance and succeeds. Although many people complained about it because complaining is trendy, I envision the killer platform to be something along the lines of Google Glass; a tiny always-worn device rather than the large bulky headsets out there today. It is going to need multiple cameras and world sensors but somehow be released in a way that doesn't offend the paranoid. The killer app will end up being something akin to Pokemon Go, something that is location dependent, requires people to get public exposure, encourages socially positive behavior, and cannot carry much social stigma. (Also, though most people hate to discuss it, the other killer app is going to be porn.)

There will be several more rounds of people introducing products, there will be products tied to PCs, products tethered to smart phones, products tethered to small computer packs, and these will all fail because the public won't accept them.

Then suddenly one day someone will introduce yet another augmented reality product and instead of failing like the last few hundred have done, the product will succeed spectacularly making the companies that launched it very rich. Many companies will invest a lot of money on the gamble that they will be the lucky one. And if they aren't the first one with the astronomical bank account, they will hope to be the second or third that only gets a colossal bank account, or maybe at least an also-ran that can recover the investment.

As consumers and game developers we benefit from that investment, so of course we are anxious for that day to come. We are quite close, but I don't see that day for at least another five years or so. When Sony's product finally hits the market this will probably still be a niche market. While the press releases on PSVR are quite impressive and AR/VR headsets are great pieces of technology, in many ways today's VR consoles are little better than the Virtual Boy that Nintendo failed with twenty years ago. They can do automatic positional tracking and more fancy colors, but the underlying problem of isolating the users remains.

If I was targeting the PSVR hardware platform, ... I'd be very interested in knowing {long list}.

I can assure you -- as someone who has Occulus, Vive, and several other AR/VR solutions in the office for development purposes -- that you are not alone in your curiosity.

It's not too hard to become a licensed/NDA'ed developer. You pretty much just have to actually be a dev and ask the right person nicely :wink:

True enough, and I've had breadboards, raw hardware, and prototype devices on my desk quite a few times over my career. Yet even so, when a new product is announced and you're not working on something that grants access to it right at that moment, it can lead to a long list of questions.

As our set of projects currently doesn't put us in high priority for the devices, I don't expect I'll have one to play with for quite some time.