New Project Morpheus Prototype Shown at GDC

VRFocus- For the past year virtual reality (VR) fans have been referring to Sony Computer Entertainment’s (SCE) head-mounted display (HMD) for PlayStation 4 as Project Morpheus. The company revealed the device with that codename as a prototype at the 2014 Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, California, USA. A year later and SCE has returned to GDC to showcase a new version of Project Morpheus.

[Pandamobile]

Interesting to see that Sony are actually making good on that ridiculous 120 FPS comment from years back.

[BitbyDeath]

Yea, 1080P was a given but did not expect it to be 120FPS.
Impressive.

[lameguy]

The screen refreshes at 120Hz. Games that fail to meet that will be provided similar treatment to 24fps TV when you use the 60fps option on "smart" TVs (soap-opera effect)

[jhoward585]

That's 60fps for each eye. combined,"120fps"

[yewles1]

jhoward585 nailed it. It's just like those PS3 titles that pulled it off like SSHD.

[-Foxtrot]

So how do you activate the TRON cycle?

[sonic989]

i am not interested in VR or AR .
but congrats to sony for their amazing work hopefully more good news to come in the coming months .

[lameguy]

For those that have used VR, how do you think it will apply to non-FPS genres? Will it work well for 3rd person or top-down games?

Also, titles like Hellblade (according to their dev diary) are prototyping various character movement systems and much of it looks to be non VR friendly. I wonder if the added realism of restricting the camera movement for VR will have good gaming ramifications outside of FPS and flight/racing sim games.

[Jdoki]

This is a good question.

Looking at the price of the Oculus dev kit, it's pretty clear that these devices are not going to be cheap - so people will want to use them with the widest number of titles.

FPS, driving games, flight games are a no-brainer. RTS games could be good as looking down on the battlefield would be neat. Sports games could be interesting (First Person view in Madden, FIFA, MLB : The Show etc??)

I think that in 3rd person games the effect will still work well, but be slightly less immersive. In that case the device becomes less 'Virtual Reality', and more 'Alternative type of screen'.

I assume that the Morpheus can be used as a regular display as well as a VR unit - so for non-VR games it could be a case of the Morpheus just presenting the game as if it's on a large HDTV screen.

[jhoward585]

120fps in mind. MMMM, sounds like Project Morpheus could be a future proof device.

PS5+Project Morpheus= greatness

[elazz]

Yeah, or maybe the internal processor copies each frame that's being played twice. Then you don't need that extra juice.

Hopefully this device will also be compatible with PC

[jhoward585]

Like you said, Project Morpheus should be compatible with PC b/c I think oculus is going to run circle around Morpheus all day long.

Could you imagine: 2video cards + dx12/mantle+ Oculus = Fun.

Edit: I agree with the disagrees on my i made commit above this one. 4k VR will most likely be the next tech next gen.

[gangsta_red]

"The front can even be flipped out to get a quick view of the real world."

It's those little things about all these new devices that I really appreciate.

[telekineticmantis]

Can we see some games though?

[GameDev1]

They showed some games though

The Deep and newly announced London Heist both by Sony London studios

and games for PS4 VR are also confirmed for E3 by Yoshida

[smolinsk]

If thy can get rid of motion sickness they have a winner, if not, no winner;)

[Jdoki]

There's very little they can do to eliminate this. Some people are hit buy it, others are not. Having a high refresh rate will definitely help.

Also, one of the other things VR headsets can do is leave a gap at the bottom of the device, so the player has some visibility of the ground. Apparently that works for some people.

I believe the Morpheus allows people to either have a gap, or not - so Sony are doing what they can to reduce the the problem.

[S2Killinit]

well, that might solve any lingering doubts people have about being overly sensitive to motion sickness then, it seems. I for one can't wait to get into VR. For good or bad, I think its a nice change to gaming. One that is waaaaay overdue.