https://youtu.be/TYWpTZuLP5k
Hi gents, yesterday I had the opportunity to try out a demo of Driveclub on the PSVR and thought I'd share my impressions with you all. Shout out to buggie_brain for capturing some video and putting it up on Youtube.
Any comments on my double chin are not welcome
So we booked a half hour session but quickly realised when we got there that this was only a 3 lap go around Old Town. I didn't have any chance to change settings or have a more comprehensive fool around with the game. They even had the "automatic braking assist" function on, which was really frustrating. Also, the sound was no where near loud enough.
THE GOOD
- The unit itself is really light and comfortable. Easy to position and adjust, you can get this thing on and off in seconds. I'd imagine that an extended play would be really comfortable.
- The head tracking works really well. There is no perceptible lag and looking around the game world feels really natural. I had a giggle to myself as i was able to poke my head out the window, check out the interior etc. The head tracking does a tremendous job of planting you in the world.
- The graphics. This is more contentious but hear me out. If we're being realistic, we all know that the ps4 is going to struggle pushing VR, and it does. But what we have here was a pretty decent approximation of the DC experience. Lighting is good and framerate is very stable and once you feel immersed in the world it all comes together, but.........
THE BAD
- .......it's realistically about 50% (maybe more) of the graphics we know and love. Everything texture wise takes a bit of a hit. Interiors don't look as good and the jaggies are more pronounced. And there is no weather as far as I know.
- We couldn't get decent off cam footage from the second screen (where you see what I see) as there were too many reflections. But what you see on that looks better than what I was seeing on the actual device. What I experienced was markedly darker and I'm not sure if that is an inherent fault of PSVR or whether they had some settings all screwed up. Also, maybe the LCD second screen (or for instance your LCD/PLASMA/OLED at home) was just better than the PSVR screens at displaying the action
AND THE UGLY
- Bring a barf bag. Seriously, if you are inclined to suffer from motion sickness, this may not be for you. The first time (and the 2nd, 3rd and 4th time!) the car slid or got airborne were unsettling for me to say the least. I've only been car sick twice in my life, but this got me good. Felt nauseated for a while and the resulting head ache lasted about 4 hours. The Sony rep assured me that you get used to it quite quickly, but I'm not entirely sure I'd be willing to put up with the nausea in the meantime.
- Screen door effect anyone? Yeah, it's pretty bad. I felt like I was 5 yo again and 1 foot away from the old CRT watching Astroboy. 1080p doesn't cut it, I think that VR is going to be a whole lot more enjoyable with 4K screens.
CONCLUSION
For me personally, I think I've gone cold on the idea of PSVR. Mainly because of the motion sickness and screen door effect. I'm not really worried about the graphics, as immersion is the key and I think this game achieves that really well. But the screen door effect was pretty jarring.
Possibly the worst thing about it was the darkness of the display. I couldn't understand why it was so dark and didn't think to mention it to the rep. Maybe they had a setting screwed up, but I haven't read too much about PSVR till this point. Surely there would be a brightness setting.
Gents, my best advice would be to try this out for yourselves, as before this I was a lock for PSVR, but now, not so much. When I finally get more info on a PS4Pro version of DC VR, I'll give it a shot again. But till then I'm back on the fence.
EDIT: Disclaimer; I haven't heard anything about this game going gold. So at this point let's assume what I played is pre release code and may well improve on release.
