Digital Foundry: Hands-on with Sony's near-final Project Morpheus

You're probably fully aware of the revised spec for the Project Morpheus development kit by now, said to closely resemble the capabilities of the final model: a native 1080p display is in place with full RGB sub-pixel precision, OLED display technology is a lock, with a phenomenal 120Hz refresh confirmed. The spec is highly impressive on paper, but how does it feel once the visor is lowered into place?

[Rimeskeem]

Wow, pretty much nothing but great news all around. This is something that interests me a lot and i hope to get my hands on one in 2016.

[gamer1138]

Looks like the tech is there just need a developer to give me a reason to buy it by making a decent game.

[chrissx]

I'm impressed so far with morhpeous

[jp_footy2]

"Developers building games for VR are encouraged to target 120 FPS. But for those looking for high graphics, we offer the option to render games at 60 FPS but output at 120 FPS"

I don't understand this. Does project morpheus increase the PS4's processing power?

[mhunterjr]

No. In order to hit 120fps, there will have to be compromises to visual fidelity. The idea is that the immersion afforded by playing in a virtual game world offsets any reduction in detail.

[amiga-man]

mhunterjr, not saying your wrong, but there is no reason The Morpheus couldnt help the PS4 with Processing, the Morpheus plugs into a box and you have to wonder what tech is in there.

Time will tell but I wouldnt be surprised if Morpheus does indeed add some processing power.

[MelvinTheGreat]

@amiga-man

I cant see it doing anything extreme when u considering how small the box is and the heat it would produce if it actually helped render stuff

[mhunterjr]

@amiga-man

Actually, the HMD does do some processing in conjunction with the PS4... That's how their 'reprojection' tech works to help create the illusion of higher frame rates...

But if you think games that look like current PS4 games running at around 30fps (drive club, the order, infamous second son) are going to be able to run at 120hz just because you plug in a headset, your setting yourself up for disappointment...

VR games will be tailored to VR. That means developers will be aiming for 120hz from the beginning, as that's what's ideal for the VR illusion. As such, they'll have no choice but to cut back on some of the graphical effects that you see in traditional games... I mean just look at the quote! You won't see those high end graphics at 120hz... Unless they found a way to squeeze the power of 3 ps4s into the HMD hardware.

I think that's a fair trade, as the immersion of VR easily offsets any loss of effects.

[mixelon]

Noo.. Imagine half life 2 - that could probably already run at 200fps+ on the ps4 hardware. They just need to target lower end graphics in certain areas.

N64 games could run at 1000fps+ if there was such a thing as 1000hz screens. :D

Amiga-man - im pretty sure the box is doing motion interpolation only, that would make sense as they have the chip/SW from their TV lines. There isn't an interface to plug into on the ps4 that's capable of transmitting fast enough for any active processing to be happening in the tiny box, it's just passive interpolation and possibly up and/or downscaling.

[amiga-man]

mixelon you could be right, but Im sure I read somewhere that Sony is debating how much Morpheus should do, it all comes down to balancing cost and performance.

Time will tell.

[OB1Biker]

'Furthermore. SCE will provide an SDK that converts 60fps images to output in 120fps, which will allow developers to bring their content that was being developed on the prior prototype to the new Morpheus prototype.'

[mixelon]

120hz is amazing. :) 1080p not so much but it'll have to do in a pinch.

I love the idea of using motion interpolation to increase the fps - I guess that's what the little box is doing. Hmm. It'd have to be very good motion interpolation to avoid it looking like weird blur/fuzz.. Curious! Nice they have an OLED screen though.

This is going to be great.. Nice to see VR hotting up. It'll get really incredible once we get high enough res displays to not be able to see the pixels though. Still great as-is.. But yeah.. DK2 is 1080p and text etc has to be pretty big to be legible. It's not great for fine detail - amazing for immersion tho.

If someone can hack the Morpheus to work on the PC too it'd be a good way of scraping some extra FPS out of not super strong hardware.

[TimelessDbz]

Not to sound like a troll but does anyone else think that project morpheus is going to be a waste of time at sony e3?

I feel like this should be shown on a side stream. We all know this is going to end up like ps move, ps vita, and sony phones.

[mkis007]

I don't think they will bother with it there as they have already shown it off now.

[kstap33]

Sounds pretty cool. I suppose it's immediate success will hinge on the price point. Same with Hololens...just have to be priced right to sell.

[BlackPhillip666]

Only thing that can hold it back imo is the price i can't work out with the new spec's how they can keep the price down this is now very comparable to DK2.

DK2 costs 350USD that runs in at just under £230. Now for me i don't think that's bad for what your getting. But a lot off people are gonna be like -_-.

http://gyazo.com/ad6286c0c1...

[mabreu]

The price is a factor. But more importantly, the games that are compatible with the headset will make or break it's sales.

We all know that the best advertisement for any new gaming hardware is the games that will use it. Sony needs to follow through with that.