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[Man]

Eurogamer impressions. Whole article is worth a read.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-03-20-how-does-morpheus-shape-up-to-oculus

Project Morpheus, perhaps unsurprisingly given the breadth of Sony's expertise and resources, comes strong off the blocks. As an experience it's comparable to Oculus - to the DK2, that is, the most recent iteration of the headset that incorporates Crystal Cove and that opened up pre-orders yesterday - although there are clear points of differentiation.

And what a feeling of immersion it is. Project Morpheus' tracking feels on a par with Oculus, even taking into account the advances brought about by the implementation of Crystal Cove. That's no doubt thanks to the PlayStation Camera's input, and the latency seems impressively low when moving your head. Even better, it allows you full 360-degree movement, letting you look behind you - a factor that's exploited to great effect in Sony London Studio's The Deep.

What Sony does have, though, is the ecosystem to make virtual reality a viable proposition for the living room - and in its open-armed relationship with indie developers, it's also got a community of its own who will help shape the future of what feels like the most exciting, disruptive technology to come to video games in an age. Regardless of that, though, it's made an accomplished start, and brought the VR dream a significant step closer to becoming a reality for all.

Great stuff.

 

[Jiraiza]

I can't wait for Japan to hop on this with the waifu simulators once the technology is perfected.

Heh heh.

Dark Souls VR when?

 

[TTP]

Eurogamer impressions. Whole article is worth a read.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-03-20-how-does-morpheus-shape-up-to-oculus

Great read, thanks

probably due to the fact that much of the processing is done by a separate box that sits between the headset and the PS4 with an HDMI in and out.

Any pics of that?

Edit: Nevermind found it

 

[thunder_snail]

Eurogamer impressions. Whole article is worth a read.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-03-20-how-does-morpheus-shape-up-to-oculus

Lol

I pulled both legs of the rag doll up and over my shoulders and proceeded to pull its crotch into my face

 

[Sidewinder]

Must have already been mentioned here, but I remember some asking what this "camera" thing is inside the Morpheus between the eyes, it must be there to sense if you're wearing the device or not.

Just like on the Sony SLRs (eye-start) with an infrared sensor, so that the camera knows whether you're looking through the viewfinder or not.

 

[Man]

Someone mentioned that it 'knows' when you put it on so that may be it (a small sensor of sorts).

 

[serversurfer]

Oh, on the subject of LCD/OLED, a year ago iSuppli estimated the panel in the Galaxy S4 at $75 a pop. How much is a comparable LCD?

Sony have been giving out dev kits "like candy." Perhaps they intend to do the same with Morpheus? If so, the LCD -> OLED bump could add up pretty quickly.

They basically said Morpheus is good enough for devs to "play around with." Maybe they pass them out like candy with instructions to hit 72 Hz so you're ready when you're deemed worthy of an OLED kit?

 

[Cthulhu_Steev]

lol seems like you can't have a negative opinion on this VR headset without people yelling and screaming at you XD

People are just asking for supporting evidence to backup your opinion, bombaclaat man (no offence), not denying you the right to say it.

 

[Man]

Gamesindustry.biz impressions up: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-03-20-hands-on-with-sonys-morpheus-headset

In Castle, it's all about physical interaction, grabbing swords and shooting targets with the crossbow in a very natural and intuitive feeling 3D environment. After smacking a hapless training dummy around with a sharp length of metal for a minute or two I was grinning from ear to ear, but when I realised I could rip his arm off and beat him around the head with it, the experience really started to hit home.

Just as the demonstrator suggested that I try and juggle some of his dismembered limbs, the skies darkened and a heavy beating of wings approached, showcasing the environmental 3D sound which adds so much to the immersion of the device. Sensing trouble, but buoyed by my mastery of an inanimate mannequin, I prepared myself to fend off whichever evil this way came, but perhaps not the arrival of an immense dragon - fully 40 feet high and occupying my entire field of vision.

It's no Dark Souls beast, instead rendered in relatively colourful and cartoonish style, but the sheer presence of the thing is incredible. Wrapped in that headset and encompassed in headphones, the experience genuinely takes me aback - literally in fact. As I step backwards and away from the monster in real-life, my avatar follows suit, but it's too late - the vast maw reaches open and outwards and I feel myself flinching as the screen fades to black accompanied by a tremendous roar.

"We can now make these in a large enough quantity that we can start getting them out next month," Marks tells me. "That's really why we're announcing right now. We've been iterating with a really small group of developers, but iterating very quickly.

 

[SighFight]

From Eurogamer

Motion blur is much more pronounced on Morpheus than it is on Oculus' DK2, and image quality is also noticeably not quite on par. Both are running at 1080p, but Morpheus' decision to go with LCD displays rather than the OLED used on Oculus hurts it a little - good thing, then, that Sony's already looking at exploring OLED for its own device.

But they also state that it is very close in overall quality to Dk2. Although they also mention that the field of view is also a bit smaller.

 

[keuja]

I can't wait for Japan to hop on this with the waifu simulators once the technology is perfected.

Heh heh.

Dark Souls VR when?

It would be a multi-million seller and the final nail in Japan's birth rate coffin.

 

[Nzyme32]

Yes, it's aimed at you.

First, the article you linked contains no quotes from Palmer, and says absolutely nothing about frame rates. Just so you know, Crystal Cove ran at 72 Hz, and I haven't heard a single person complain about flicker when using it. Apparently they found at least one guy though, because DK2 has both 72 and 75 Hz modes, in addition to a 60 Hz mode.

I think it's cool you've taken Abrash's video as your personal VR Bible — it really is an excellent talk — but that being the case, you really should try to pay closer attention to what he's actually saying.

They started out with a 60 Hz display, and that was great and all, but they were getting a lot of motion blur when they turned their heads. Shortening the amount of time the display is actually lit up for each frame solved that.

Problem was, people could perceive the gaps in the light. The solution for that was flashing the display more often. Caring more about having something that worked than figuring out exactly what the minimum frequency actually was, they just built a 95(?) Hz model and called it a day.

Abrash explicitly states in the video that frequencies lower than 95 Hz could also eliminate flicker for most users, but he hadn't personally done the testing to determine what frequency that would be.

Again, Oculus are eliminating flicker at 72 Hz with a 3 ms strobe, and at 75 Hz with a 2 ms strobe. That's less than 90 Hz, not more.

Just for the record, his first demo in that video shows it doesn't matter how shitty and unrealistic your graphics are; it's the experience itself that creates the immersion. PS4 can create presence with no problems at all. Probably better, actually, since they already have motion controls and binaural audio nailed too.



Perhaps they could start by using non-zero strobe lengths, like Oculus are doing…

Palmer talks about it in the video on that Engadget page. He says "The consumer version will be 90hz or higher. It's really the bare minimum for low persistence to work". The guys from tested also interviewed someone form oculus about dk2 (search for it on youtube) and they said the same thing and that dk2 is not good enough yet, their reason for being at 75hz is because "that's the best that we can do at the moment", the same as their choices of panel in dk1. Abrash said less than 95hz is possible, and palmer is settled on 90hz minimium. Abrash specifically states that it doesn't work at 60hz, so I said before the ps4 operates above that for VR. Carmack also talks about being at 90hz and 120hz in their dk2 announcement video.

What I said before is that I think that may be specific to the very low level persistence they are going for, which is in the region of 2ms. With a LCD you could probably do this to a lesser degree but still have it work... I don't know, they are the experts go argue with them

Why are having a go at me when I haven't said the ps4 is not capable of VR in any shape or form. You've turned this into some console wars shit without me even trying and I absolultly detest it. You clearly didnt even read the conversation being had. The purpose of posting the video in this instance was to introduce someone to why VR is interesting, specifically abrash's example of the poorly textured cube cliff demo. I'm excited for VR on the ps4. If you want to ignore the information of vetrans in the industry because your more experienced, go for it

 

[keuja]

Gamesindustry.biz impressions up: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-03-20-hands-on-with-sonys-morpheus-headset

Good read.

It makes sense that first-party studios and preferred partners would be given a head-start, but when will dev kits be shipping to other applicants?

"We can now make these in a large enough quantity that we can start getting them out next month," Marks tells me. "That's really why we're announcing right now. We've been iterating with a really small group of developers, but iterating very quickly.

Nice!

 

[nowheretorun]

The whole advantage of this technology is giving you a sense of presence in the world where you can perceive the depth and scale of things as you actually would. Seeing the 100 meter tall Colossi coming towards you would be so much more intimidating. You're right you might only see textures if you look straight ahead, but you'd be looking up and around to see where you can climb to and when you look down you'll feel that scale of a hundred meter fall

Good point.

Which is not without irony, given that the one area that almost everyone said needed improvement was the integration with the Move controllers.

They need to sort this out. I wonder if it's software related as I wouldn't be surprised if the move is based off original ps3 eye camera tech - I hope!

 

[Raist]

Hmm, eurogamer's article mentions moving around the square in the castle demo, which is only using 2 moves, but not how.

In their talk Anton (I think) mentioned "forward prediction". Is this related to character movement?

 

[thunder_snail]

So what are the chances of Sony opting for 120hz display and implementing something similar to g-sync? Or Oculus implementing g-sync with 120hz displays in the final version?

It would allow disabling v-sync, really helping with the lag problem.

 

[Man]

Hmm, eurogamer's article mentions moving around the square in the castle demo, which is only using 2 moves, but not how.

In their talk Anton (I think) mentioned "forward prediction". Is this related to character movement?

The PS4 Camera covers a 3x3 meter walkable space before you go out of view. You walk with your own feet.

Seems like one of the bigger advantages Morpheus has over Oculus DK2 at the moment. 360degree positional tracking and walking space (not just a seated experience).

 

[nowheretorun]

Great read, thanks



Any pics of that?

Edit: Nevermind found it

- Do you have any pics please or link?

That's a very good thing. It's just so much better.

Yeah, I didn't expect Thief VR to be running on PS4, at least not at this point in time.

That's the first time I read about the FoV being smaller. And the outside light sounds annoying. I hope they don't make too many concessions to industrial design in the final product.

That seems reasonable enough, well done. I wonder if it would be possible to illustrate the maximum viable motion resolution in the same chart?

Oh, on the subject of LCD/OLED, a year ago iSuppli estimated the panel in the Galaxy S4 at $75 a pop. How much is a comparable LCD?

Sony have been giving out dev kits "like candy." Perhaps they intend to do the same with Morpheus? If so, the LCD -> OLED bump could add up pretty quickly.

They basically said Morpheus is good enough for devs to "play around with." Maybe they pass them out like candy with instructions to hit 72 Hz so you're ready when you're deemed worthy of an OLED kit?

- That's what I originally thought, a bit like the 8gb GDDR5 reveal for ps4.


- I was thinking the outside light coming could be sorted by a blackout breathable membrane or something? This is only a dev kit so I'm sure they'll nail this come the consumer version.

- I was also thinking about the fov and I wonder if they could put a few led lights on the inside (outside the optics) which change in colour depending on what's happening on screen and thus give the 'illusion' of a wider field of view which could be implemented some way to eliminate the tiny bars?

A bit like Ambilight on Phillips TV's?

 

[Broder Salsa]

Eurogamer impressions. Whole article is worth a read.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-03-20-how-does-morpheus-shape-up-to-oculus

But what about Geoffs second hand sources?

 

[gofreak]

Hmm, eurogamer's article mentions moving around the square in the castle demo, which is only using 2 moves, but not how.

In their talk Anton (I think) mentioned "forward prediction". Is this related to character movement?

No, that's about predicting where the head will be when the display actually receives a picture, to help minimise head-display latency.

I think in terms of moving around they might be able to do something where in analysing the motion of the head and two hands they can factor out what motion is due to the body and what's due to individual motion of those elements, and apply the body motion as movement of the avatar. But I don't know. They could be doing 'blob' tracking of your body in 3d space with the depth camera as a rough but maybe reasonable analog of where you are in the space. It's cool if they can do that within the latency constraints.

 

[Leb]

Again, Oculus are achieving fusion at 72-75 Hz. Maybe Abrash is talking about a 1 ms strobe. Or maybe, as he says, he's just guessing.

Except, you know, they're not. Clearly you didn't watch the video where Luckey says, quite explicitly, that:

75 isn't fast enough, it's as fast as we can get existing OLED panels to go but we're going to be at 90hz or higher for the consumer version, that's really the bare minimum for low persistence to work.

 

[KOHIPEET]

probably due to the fact that much of the processing is done by a separate box that sits between the headset and the PS4 with an HDMI in and out.

Theoreticly speaking. Can Sony hold on to this box with the consumer version of the headset? And if they can, could they use this box to somehow help PS4 hardware out with rendering?

 

[TTP]

- Do you have any pics please or link?

http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/19/5526730/sony-morpheus-vr-headset-compares-well-to-oculus-rift

Check the gallery mid-article

 

[RustyNails]

Lol

And there you have it folks. Next generation ice-cream games are going to take over the PS4 VR business like storm in Japan. It will be an unstoppable monster force.

 

[gofreak]

Gamesindustry.biz impressions up: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-03-20-hands-on-with-sonys-morpheus-headset

Very good read, lots of commentary from Marks.

Some specific latency info in there too, which is in line with amar's claims earlier:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-03-20-hands-on-with-sonys-morpheus-headset

All demos are running at 60fps. Some predictive camera tech allows Sony to cut into the current lag times, but it's something that Marks says is the first barrier which Sony wants to address.

"A lot of the demos have about 40ms of prediction built into the tracking system," he tells me. "But that depends on your rendering system. About 40ms is probably the best you can get out of it right now, but that's too much - it's something we want to bring down. If you don't do enough on the graphics side it gets worse and you start to get some artifacts from the prediction system. We know that needs to be improved."

 

[nowheretorun]

http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/19/5526730/sony-morpheus-vr-headset-compares-well-to-oculus-rift

Check the gallery mid-article

Thanks.

It's one thing I hope they get right if the consumer version is wired (more than likely and I'd possibly prefer that anyway!), is that I wouldn't want twisting wires. Perhaps having right angle connectors where needed would be a good idea too.

 

[gofreak]

Theoreticly speaking. Can Sony hold on to this box with the consumer version of the headset? And if they can, could they use this box to somehow help PS4 hardware out with rendering?

No, it's just unwarping the image for the TV. Which is handy, but it's not going to be involved main render work. I'm wondering if an ext box could do some of the audio duties, but haven't had any answers to that. '3D audio' is listed alongside the 'social screen' function for that box.

 

[nowheretorun]

Anyone with any thoughts on a potential Ambilight system to help with a bigger FOV illusion?

I've never tried on a VR system - would it be possible?

 

[TTP]

Very good read, lots of commentary from Marks.

Some specific latency info in there too, which is in line with amar's claims earlier:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-03-20-hands-on-with-sonys-morpheus-headset

What does "40ms of prediction" entail exactly? I think it means it reduces the overall latency by 40ms via prediction. But it doesn't really tell us much about what the actual "hardware" latency is.

Or am I reading this wrong?

 

[KOHIPEET]

I was also wondering if they could fix the headset with some kind of controls. A touchpad for example. Cyclops simulator anyone?

 

[Man]

What does "40ms of prediction" entail exactly? I think it means it reduces the overall latency by 40ms via prediction. But it doesn't really tell us much about what the actual "hardware" latency is.

Or am I reading this wrong?

Oculus Rift has the same option. Developing for it you can adjust the prediction time in ms (longer is not recommended as it becomes more and more imprecise).

 

[gofreak]

What does "40ms of prediction" entail exactly? I think it means it reduces the overall latency by 40ms via prediction. But it doesn't really tell us much about what the actual "hardware" latency is.

Or am I reading this wrong?

I think it is linked to the system latency because it is how much latency the prediction is attempting to compensate for.

If you are predicting 40ms ahead it's because there's going to be 40ms of latency. I guess.

 

[TTP]

Oculus Rift has the same option. Developing for it you can adjust the prediction time in ms (longer is not recommended as it becomes more and more imprecise).

Yep, I get that.

I think it is linked to the system latency because it is how much latency the prediction is attempting to compensate for.

If you are predicting 40ms ahead it's because there's going to be 40ms of latency. I guess.

So the system latency might be of at least 40ms?

 

[gofreak]

Yep, I get that.



So the system latency might be of at least 40ms?

I think the suggestion is that this is the most prediction they can get away with, so it might be an upper rather than a lower bound of the latency in current demos. Amar, earlier, suggested that latency is 30-40ms. I guess that's with 60fps software. Amar seemed to be presenting himself as his own source - I think he is at one of the GT websites?

 

[ScepticMatt]

Where's the image from? What literature?

I made it.

 

[DerZuhälter]

Quick question I'd love to get some technical info on.

So Oculus DK2/Morpheus is rendering on an 1080p OLED so the output is 960x1080 per eye. Each eye is rendered seperately for the 3D effect.
But does it have to be really rendered?

Thing is: I remember Crytek using a unique 3D rendering solution for it's console Crysis 2 experience using stacked 2D layers, the same 3D rendered image used twice but with a few pixel offsets for the second eye, creating a "fake" 3D, which was rendering very fast.

Could the PS4 use such a method (in 960x1080) to get at least 60FPS across all games including graphical showpieces, or would the effect just look terrible?

Could someone maybe even replicate that type of rendering (I don't know if the PC version of Crysis 2 used "real" 3D) with a DK1 to really point out differences between 3D and faux 3D?

 

[Triple U]

I'm saying it's not an easy fix - running your games at a stable 85+Hz with AA is "something to be concerned about"
I'm not saying it is not possible for Sony or they will not do it.

Ah, ok.
Marks on supporting Oculus/competitors

"The way I should answer that is that we want to give customers the best value we can. If we didn't feel we could do that, maybe we would entertain that idea, but this system is really well matched to the PS4; the camera and the DualShock. It fits really well, so I don't really understand why we'd want to have something else that doesn't fit so well. We wouldn't rule it out if we thought that it could add value, but I don't know that we can see that right now."

Hmm so maybe Sony wanted more control of the implementation? I see oculus has its own tracking style and camera, one that would seem to be incompatable with the LED based Move/DS4 and PS4 Camera.

This is probably the closest we'll get to in regards to why Sony/Oculus never worked out.

 

[hohoXD123]

So immersed, in fact, that it's easy to forget that other people around you may be watching and, thanks to the separate box that feeds a non-distorted view of what you're seeing onto the television screen, witnessing your actions - something I wished I'd taken into account when I pulled both legs of the rag doll up and over my shoulders and proceeded to pull its crotch into my face. (Jetlag can make you do strange things on a trade show floor.

Amazing.

 

[StuBurns]

Sony are looking at OLED?

I hope they confirm it for E3. They seriously can't justify shipping with LCD.

 

[TTP]

Sony are looking at OLED?

I hope they confirm it for E3. They seriously can't justify shipping with LCD.

Yeah. That would be like shipping PS Vitas with LCDs.

Oh wait.

 

[Triple U]

Sony are looking at OLED?

I hope they confirm it for E3. They seriously can't justify shipping with LCD.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETxmCCsMoD0

 

[iceatcs]

Sony are looking at OLED?

I hope they confirm it for E3. They seriously can't justify shipping with LCD.

Depend on Samsung. I'm betting they will rip Sony off again just like when Japan TV dropped OLED produce and Samsung rise the cost for old vita screen.

Hopefully OLED won't be too bad price at 1080p because I think it still on the mass.

 

[GoaThief]

Depend on Samsung. I'm betting they will rip Sony off again just like when Sharp dropped OLED produce and Samsung rise the cost for old vita screen.

Very interesting, got links for all that?

 

[geordiemp]

Sony are looking at OLED?

I hope they confirm it for E3. They seriously can't justify shipping with LCD.

I agree, I really hope they don't penny pinch 50 bucks and go for a lower spec display....

The display performance and delays seem key to the experience, they should go for the better option OR give us a Morpheus budget and Morpheus prime model with every bell and whistle and the best possible display.

I know me personally it would be an easy choice, best possible, but appreciate that others are more budget conscious.

Having 2 models basic and premium would keep every consumer happy ?

Cant see it being a problem for developers as long as both viewers are 1080p and have same refresh (75 Hz ?)

 

[geordiemp]

Depend on Samsung. I'm betting they will rip Sony off again just like when Sharp dropped OLED produce and Samsung rise the cost for old vita screen.

Hopefully OLED won't be too bad price at 1080p because I think it still on the mass.

Don't know why they don't just make 2 models, Morpheus Gold and Morpheus Diamond (super absolute best possible OLED version).

We are just buying a display device, as long as they are the same resolution etc, there is a market for low and high end TV's, I see this as no different.

Sony offer different price and performance levels for headsets, I see this as no different.

 

[StuBurns]

Depend on Samsung. I'm betting they will rip Sony off again just like when Sharp dropped OLED produce and Samsung rise the cost for old vita screen.

Hopefully OLED won't be too bad price at 1080p because I think it still on the mass.

Well Sony went with a standard RGB subpixel matrix on Vita, which would be fantastic to see on Morpheus, but they could certainly get away with pentile.

I know this thing needs to be as cheap as they can manage, but there's a baseline of quality they really should be looking to achieve. Especially when a lot of the qualities of VR are on the render side of things, all the headset really can do is provide a nice screen and nice optics.

OLED is a clear win that doesn't require more computing performance, and it's really not going to break the bank.

 

[Ran rp]

http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/19/5526730/sony-morpheus-vr-headset-compares-well-to-oculus-rift

Check the gallery mid-article

Cute.

 

[useyourfist]

Don't know why they don't just make 2 models, Morpheus Gold and Morpheus Diamond (super absolute best possible OLED version).

We are just buying a display device, as long as they are the same resolution etc, there is a market for low and high end TV's, I see this as no different.

Sony offer different price and performance levels for headsets, I see this as no different.

I agree with that, i dont know how it would work from a buisness point of view, but if they are just going to use lcd to make it cheaper i think they should consider, like you say, having a premium version.

 

[Sidewinder]

Cute.

LEDs everywhere!

 

[AllIsOneIsNone]

I second the idea that if they're going to use Move, they need to add dual analog sticks. Glad this thing seems on par with devkit 2, although a few things seem to be slightly behind. They look to have a solid foundation and that's all I wanted/expected this early on. It basically shows me they know what the hell they're doing.