Oculus Expresses Concern Over Project Morpheus Investment and PS4 Hardware Limitations

VRFocus - Oculus VR is quite rightly seen as the driving force behind the revival of the virtual reality (VR) head-mounted display (HMD). The company’s Oculus Rift VR HMD has led the charge for the technology over the past few years, bringing us to a point in which competitors such as Sony Computer Entertainment’s (SCE) Project Morpheus VR HMD for PlayStation 4 have started to appear. In the past, the company has expressed excitement over names such as SCE getting involved with the technology. Last week at Gamescom 2014 however, it touched upon some of its concerns.

[Genesis5]

Well they are not able to control the quality of the PC that people use their product on either. A poor PC could lead to an inferior experience as well.

[bouzebbal]

the guy expects everyone to own a high class PC for VR. It could actually be worse for headset on PC because at least Morpheus will be optimized for one single platform.

[bmf7364]

Jackfrags made this as a good argument on why online games like BF4 are better on console. If you own a $10,000 machine that SLI's several Titan Z's, youre obiously going to do better than the dude with a $600 DIY budget build. Oculus Rift would have to be optimizable for the bare minimum of PC gaming while at the same time for the highest-tier of gaming to turn profit.

[Gohadouken]

Except you wont at all have any advantage with your ludicrous ex of an extravagant setting over a 600$ pc , past some threshold where the game is stable at 60 fps (or even lower) . Bare some depth of field advantage mostly negated by game designs anyway , you just get eye candy

And obviously online experience is based on your net's quality and the servers

[Evilsnuggle]

Pc fan boys and pc enthusiast just don't get how " mainstream" audience or consumers operate. There's a price point that the average consumer will pay or not pay.

Pc fan boys and pc enthusiast let There love of high quality and high tech blind themselves. Most average consumers will not pay a higher prices for small improvements . Look at console sales a console sales increase the most at the 300-200 price range. Most average consumer will be on willing to pay 500 or 600 i feel even 400 Would be to much for new VR technology.

Just look at blue ray and HD TV how long it took to be adopted by the mainstream consumer.

bmf7364@
"Jackfrags made this as a good argument on why online games like BF4 are better on console."

Pc fan boys and pc enthusiast get so rapped up in higher resolution and ultra frame rates . But ignore that console is far superior quality in online multi player .

Why hackers and cheaters are at epidemic levels on pc. Pc hacking and cheating with Shooter Aimbots & Auto Aim Software [FPS] - HackerBot.net ruins online multi player competitive online gaming for the non cheating players.

I would prefer to pay for online play and have Sony , Nintendo and Microsoft police my online multi player game. Personally it's very annoying to play competitive multiplayer games with someone who is cheating.

[user5669510]

Console gamers never know what they're talking about. You do know they're settings that you can change so you can get better fps. This is gear towards pc gamers first. So a budget pc or a budget upgrade for 600 will perform better. Nice try.

I'm not even gonna touch the mp argument ps fanboys forever grasping for straws. And yall do know technology doesn't evolve around Sony. New GPUs and CPUs launch every year.

You only need a high end pc for demanding games like they are now and that's for max settings and high fps something that consoles can't do. Keep getting defensive and spinning without knowing what your talking about. Sony are going to have to lower the gfx to do this smoothly and how much yall b! tch over gfx this is going to be a problem

[GamingTruth]

well maybe if sony had the brains of the people making your pc hardwares, but they dont they are much smarter than that so they will get great graphics without any sacrfices

[Coach_McGuirk]

i'm also worried that they'll half-ass it

[R6ex]

My guess is that you'll need something like GTX 780 Ti SLI for optimal performance on the consumer version of the Oculus Rift.

[Hassassin]

probably not... it depends on the games, but if you can run 3D 1080p on your games you should not have any problems.

[Azurite]

I hope Sony's found a way to run in 3D without cutting the FPS in half, doubt it though.

[DevilishSix]

Oculus is soooooo concerned about the competition that they talk it down, I almost spit my morn coffee on the screen when I read title.

[Ju]

All he really did was spreading some FUD (exactly in the sense of the word) with some vague and subtle comments talking down the competition while wrapping it into "I don't know much about it" clauses. Oculus won't win with PCs alone and pushing the performance envelope only to talk down the consoles will let them end up like Crytek.

[aliengmr]

If Sony fails it will hurt OVR and vice versa.

OVR has the funding to get VR out there and generate mass interest, its their ONLY priority. Sony has several hardware related priorities to deal with and can't drop support for everything but Morpheus.

OVR has to generate the excitement and Sony has to make an HMD console gamers are willing to buy.

Sony's role in this is to have a console HMD that sells and convinces a large segment of the gaming industry to get on board. OVR has to generate enough interest to keep either HMD from being an expensive peripheral.

Without either, VR is likely DOA.

[BLow]

Well its real easy to mention investment when you got bought for 2 billion. It was 2 billion right? That's one hell of an investment right there. I'm not on the VR train yet and BOTH still have a lot to prove. Its also easy to talk about hardware limitations when your on PC. And how many of those people can enjoy the proper VR experience? Oh well in the end competition will make both products better.

[Joe913]

So Sony being tight lipped about their product worries them lol that is funny I would be more worried about samsung than Sony even though they are helping samsung with their VR Samsung will try to make their own one day and do not support their devices for very long if anyone screw up how VR is looked at I think Samsung is it Yoshida have said time and time again that Sony wants to take it slow and do it right the fact that they are taking it slow is a sign that they are trying to do it right if Sony wanted to put one out just to make money I am sure they could have had one out by now or very soon.

[fOrlOnhOpe57]

Sony won't release it until everything's right - hopefully including the price. Otherwise PS4 hard-earned reputation would take a terrible hit.

[Miacosa]

Has it been stated what the recommend PC Specs will be for the Consumer version of Oculus? The reality is its going to be higher than the cost of a modern console, which will limit it to a niche product similar to cool racing wheels, flight sticks etc. At least with the PS4 the barrier is lower to give an average consumer the ability to experience VR if they so choose. If the Oculus experience turns out to be "better" maybe people will graduate to it and pay the higher cost for the "better" experience.

If Oculus is concerned with the experience they should partner up with a PC builder and create an optional bundle that would be competitively price with a PS4 and Morpheus that would fall in the 600-800 dollar range and Steam Box compatible.

[aliengmr]

DK2 was $350 and they are aiming for lower than that for the CV1.

They already sold 60,000 with 20,000 shipped and that's just the dev kit.

The key difference between the 2 HMDs is one is a known quantity and the other isn't, yet.

There is no indication about what Morpheus is going to cost. In fact there's very little information about their future plans for the device, hence the concern at OVR.

[DougLord]

The real issue is that Facebook is starting to realize it paid $2 billion for something that will cost Sony $10 or $20 million to duplicate and make even better. So now they talk smack about it.

[kingduqc]

Do you even know what you are talking about?

-Low presistence require 90 fps on a 90+ hz screen.
-VR with a screen right on your eyes require over 4k resolution if you don't want to see jaggies.
-Ps4 can't do both of these while maitaining eye candy.

I mean, real great vr experience is still a few years away hardware wise and the ps4 console is stuck in the year 2011 with it's 7850 gpu and slow cpu no matter how you love sony that's the truth.

[kryteris]

By the time the oculus rift comes out, we will have budget focused and new generation of gpus from both nvidia and amd. These will be substantially more powerful than the PS4's 2011 tech. (Radeon HD 7000 series)