Please dont get me wrong, it's a decent VR experience with the PSVR. If you've never tried VR before, it'll be awe-inspiring. But if you're tested the Vive or Rift before, the experience will be tempered down.

I just wish they'd pair the PSVR headset with motion control devices more precise than a 10 year old Move controller and a better detection camera than the PS Camera. I seriously want VR to go mainstream, but if first impression is sketchy, it'll dissuade widespread adoption of VR in general.

SteamVR needs calibration to use, and unless Steam approves the PS Camera as motion sensor in its database, it's highly unlikely.



Well, at least I can retire these. They looked futuristic at the time, and with the W model, they're wireless. Yup, Wireless HDMI. The set-top box is in your pocket, and the transmitter is transmitting wireless 720p signal to your HMD. Glad that Sony stayed on course with their HMD vision, their HMZ-T1/T2/T3/W paved the way to the current state of wearable display and its comfort now with the PSVR.

I take all my VR news from all sources, not select few that may skew towards the positives only. That way, if it is indeed subpar, I'd adjust my expectations appropriately instead of turning a blind eye and then get disheartened by the results.

We're already disappointed by the launch window, it's wiser to expect the same and not pile expectations too high on the product as well.

I'm going all in with the PSVR. Already have these in cart ready to roll from Amazon.



Just that I feel that tempered expectation is wiser and prudent so that I dont get disappointed.

EDIT, forgot to add another must-have title:



This post has been edited by stringfellow: Oct 14 2016, 06:58 PM

EXACTLY what I mentioned earlier. The good ones like Batman VR is short, they're more tech demos than a full game. The full games like DriveClub VR has this mess. RIGS better be good.

Not to throw a wet blanket over the red hot excitement here, but this is from a user in NeoGAF who has been trying his best to get it working, and still cant. Plenty of tracking problems as well as camera glitches. This is not his first VR experience, he has an Oculus Rift, which coincidentally, is a sit/standing experience very similar to the PSVR.



In fact, in the thread where that post comes from, experience varying all the way from "no problems whatsoever" to "totally unplayable". Take it what you will. The Vive and the Rift has its share of problems as well, but they were rectified immediately with software push via SteamVR(for Vive) or Oculus's own update.

He has the option to do a full refund with Amazon. No such options locally here.

This post has been edited by stringfellow: Oct 15 2016, 11:20 PM

7 days exchange. Not a refund. Sometimes, things just doesn't work with the way you living area arrangement. Neither will exchanging works if it entails having to totally redecorate the living area with "dark corners" and black cloths.

Not a problem to those who have dedicated room setup for VR.

Just telling it as it is, folks. Don't want you to purchase the unit and then stuck with the conundrum of having to redecorate, which may or may not cost more money. Money spent on PSVR here is not refundable.

If it were that easy, if it's a simple case of "disorientation", then it will only take a lot of repetitiously training ourselves to get used to VR and its effects to get ourselves desensitised. It's not that easy in reality. In reality, there are some whom until now can only play specific type of first person shooters only. They are okay with FPSes that simulate human movement heavily with head bobs and actual weight in the steps/walk. They totally cannot play Doom 2016, because the game is too "smooth" and fast for them, as it lacks that "bob and weave" with that weighted characteristics.

The same with VR. Some experiences are enjoyable and fine, others are not. The most apparent example is the game RIGS. IF anyone here got a chance, try RIGS on PSVR. Do the tutorial. In the game tutorial, those who aren't prone to VR nausea, are totally fine in the tutorial stage where the mech's movement is dictated by the movement of your head(designated by the movement of the headset strapped to your head) while remaining stationary. As you progress in that same tutorial, the game unlocks movement by your DS4 thumb stick, in addition to the targeting movement by your head. Try moving forward at a fast pace using the thumb sticks while leaning to the left and glancing to the left at the same time with the headset, and then face forward back again. The game tricks your eyes into thinking that you now have forward momentum, but you arent actually moving. The mismatch and disconnect here, confuses the body and brings the onset of VR nausea.

The cure is the same as the cure for FPS before, train your body to get used to it. It wont be immediate, it will take long play sessions to get your body desensitised to this, some will overcome it, other wont. Until today, I cannot play a VR game called Adr1ft on Oculus Rift without cold sweat coming over me, because the game simulates movement of astronaut in zero-G. There is no "up" or "down" on that game, you lose points of references, and it confuses the body so much it made the body sick. And I don't get sick easily: I'm a theme park commando by hobby, I look for rollercoasters to ride for fun, the more intense the better, and I'm laughing my ass off riding these. I also fly planes for a living, and even aerobatics doesn't phase me. This VR game called Adr1ft however, brought me to my knees. Literally.

Intensity caution level is adopted by Oculus in their Store, they warned about that level of nausea and allow buyers to make an informed decision before buying. The guys at IGN (watch Up At Noon on YouTube) are already questioning why Sony is not taking any responsibility in informing its audience on the intensity level of the VR games they have in store.

VR nausea isn't restricted to space sims only, try any game without specific grounding in a particular reference and it will hit you gradually. Just that floating in space, with no point of reference, the onset of VR nausea is quicker.

Unlike the US store. Lucky my PSN account is US.

Camera Bundle. I find that the new camera is inferior to the old version. Unless I got it wrong, the cylindrical new PS4 Camera does not have tilt mechanism.

Yup. Got.

Setup isn't permanent. In fact due to to unforeseen circumstances, I can only experience it on Monday. Not a huge hurry, I have the Vive and Rift.

Gamers Hideout.

The sticker blends into the lens. If you didn't actively look for it you won't see it. I've had prior experience unboxing VR units that I've expected to see protective stickers on the lenses.

The one I didn't expect was the excessive stickers at the back of the processor box. That thing exhausts hot air out using that little fan, and with the stickers being nigh almost invisible at he back of the unit where the fan vent is, that's turning an overheat case even worse because the fan would need to ramp up to expel the heat from the internals.

In short, too many stickers. I get it that Sony wants to preserve the pristine condition of the headset but from my own experience using my Vive and Rift, you will eventually go rough on your VR units. Anything that involves moving said accessories in a vigorously active way will get scuffed eventually. I've banged my Vive controllers onto the walls many times swinging katanas and guns virtually.

This post has been edited by stringfellow: Oct 21 2016, 08:55 PM

Am also having a hard time find stocks for a VR stand. Both PowerA and Collective Minds stands ships US only and one of them ships in 1-2 months time.

Maybe I'll just use the mannequin head I used for my costumes. Charging the accessories is a pain as well.

The stand clip isn't malleable, stiff and if you wanna mount this on top of a TV hanging on walls or a VESA mount, making sure they stay in place require sticky tapes.

Gonna test how PC games will look like on the PSVR, since PC GPUs have beefier performance than whatever the PS4 can muster. Gonna run Doom, Battlefield 1, Gears of War 4 and Forza Horizon 3, all PC versions with higher resolutions, with higher levels of AA and supersampling. I believe the headset only needs the USB port plugged into the PS4 for this to work, while HDMI cable routed through the HDMI out of the PC GPUs (in my case, the Titan X Pascals and the GTX1080). Let's see if the non-pentile pixel array on the PSVR does it any better than the Vive or Rift on traditional non- VR games.

Not exactly true. If you supersample, it does alleviate stair-stepping and blurry image quality. The problem is, supersampling eats processing power like a hungry hippo, and once it does, you still need to present that supersampled image in high framerate (90fps on Vive/Rift and 60/120fps on the PSVR) to the display on the VR headset. It's inherent to the case of gaming on a resolution not native to your display, or image rendered at lower resolution and quality but upscaled to higher resolution. It retains the blurriness but framerate stays up.

I've tried 1.5x supersampling on my Vive, and with enough horsepower from the graphics card, the image cleans up substantially. Unfortunately with the PS4 or the Pro, there won't be enough horsepower to supersample up to alleviate blurriness.

Did a suite of games on the test run today. Kitchen, Playroom VR, DriveClub VR, Batman VR, Until Dawn Rush of Blood, Eve Valkyrie, Thumper, and apps like VRideo. The surprise hit was the VRideo, particular with a friend who was trying to get rid of his phobia for rollercoasters.

Kitchen was atmospheric but short. PlayRoom VR approaches the quality of "Lucky's Tale" on Oculus Rift but never matches it, DriveClub VR is serviceable but objects far off is pixelated, Batman VR is surprisingly polished, Until Dawn Rush of Blood is such a party game for us since each one of us laughed at the person before who tried the game for the jump scares and they got jumped henselves , Eve Valkyrie looked like it's been smeared in oil compared to the Rift and Vive versions I have, Thumper is surprisingly psychedelic when you drop the view behind the beetle close enough for VR compared to its traditional format. But for some odd reason I cannot understand, VRideo was a bigger hit than any other games in my library. I understand the appeal: you get to be in the seat of the experience recorded but I didn't expect it was that appealing to be honest. I had VRideo on the Vive and Rift but I guess the appeal of VR experience can have a bigger impact than what I though it would be.

Didn't try the PSVR-to-PC yet, the way the setup was arranged, we couldn't test it out just yet. I'll test supersampling later once the arrangement changes.



The playtest we had at location just now, video courtesy of Era of The Geeks. Scroll forward to 8:25.

This post has been edited by stringfellow: Oct 24 2016, 10:25 PM

Nope. I have the Vive and Rift, and the PSVR suffers the most in terms of pixellation and blurriness. "Here They Lie" is the worse offender. That game is supposed to be a horror game, but the whole "image looks like someone smeared oil onto the screen" blurriness kills any sort of horror ambiance it tried to convey.

Rift and Vive has a different sets of problem, but definitely not pixellation. Rift and Vive has the "screen door" and "god ray" effect, not to mention usage comfort when used in extended long sessions. But then again, if you're playing PSVR, it's uncomfortable in the sense that you're "trapped" in the little square box where the Move/controller sensor can be freely sensed, and despite the whole image "around you" you cannot interact with it because the sensor area is so limited. Try playing Job Simulator on the PSVR vs on Vive. The graphics may look the same on both (Job Simulator is not graphically intensive game), but the limited sensor area kills the game. Especially if you dropped sometthing in virtual reality to ground and have to pick it up. Your virtual hands just disappears because of the limited sensor area. You then adjust the PS Camera to point to the ground to compensate for this, but doing so, you cannot reach for interact-able items on higher ground. It's a limited experience. You'll notice that most of the games on PSVR is restricted in a small virtual "box" where you can move around: Thumper with limited view behind your beetle, SuperHyperCube with limited peeks behind your cubes, lots of cockpit-based layout like RIGS or Battletank. BatmanVR fakes you into thinking the virtual box is big, because it allows you to view its expansive environment with long draw distance, but try moving your arms anything further than arms length, it disappears, telling you that even though the environment looks huge, the size of area you can interact with is small, smallest compared to Rift (with its single sensor (just like PSVR) and the lighthouse sensors on the Vive. Not to mention, when I was playing BatmanVR, sensor jitter was so bad, my Batman in the game looks like he's suffering from Parkinson disease. No jitter in games like Until Dawn Rush of Blood or PlayRoom VR, so you can't fault it to the camera alone.

In one way, the drifting controls (the sensor drift is so bad, after playing, your screen slowly drifts to the right or left, you have to keep resetting VR location) and the jitters kept VR nausea to a minimum, thanks to the low-resolution image quality. Imaging if the graphics is of higher resolution, and you're shaking so bad from the jittering, the games would be unplayable.

The easiest comparison I can think of is between PSVR and GearVR. GearVR isnt exactly considered a viable platform to do VR on, due to its reliance on a phone as display, but even so, even after comparing the same app on GearVR vs the same on PSVR (Eve Gunjack, VRideo), the GearVR look sharper than the PSVR. VRideo videos on GearVR+S7 Edge looks much more readable when you're reading text on the browser in that app, compared to the VRideo app on PS4. Even after standing up and moving forward towards the camera in an attempt to make the blurry text look sharper, it is still barely readable. Which sounds and looked wrong to me, but that's the reality of it. I've just taken out my dust-collecting GearVR to verify this.

The only thing that keeps PSVR going is active engagements from studios supplying VR games for it. That seems to be the only advantage the PSVR has. Performance is the most entry level (read: good enough) of all the VR headsets available, even compared to GearVR. But history has thought us that even with the lowest performing hardware, a platform can survive if developers supports it. Just ask the Nintendo DS/3DS playing folks. It has beaten PSVita flat to the ground, even when the games looks horribly low-res on the 3DS.

Even with that disheartening statement, I consider the PSVR worth every cent to me, because I can finally have a 1080p-capable HMD that I can use to watch my movies and TV shows on Plex on the PS4, while the living area TV is free to be used for the VR rig running Vive, with both in the same play area.

This post has been edited by stringfellow: Oct 25 2016, 01:33 AM

Even with that disheartening statement, I consider the PSVR worth every cent to me, because I can finally have a 1080p-capable HMD that I can use to watch my movies and TV shows on Plex on the PS4, while the living area TV is free to be used for the VR rig running Vive, with both in the same play area.

I can finally retire this thing, and use the PSVR in its place. The grand-daddy of PSVR, the Sony HMZ-T3W. 1280x720 only. And this thing is wireless with a battery pack attached.


This post has been edited by stringfellow: Oct 25 2016, 12:38 AM