Honestly, don't know what to take from this news. If it was a stand-alone device I would be both happy and worried. Happy because that would break Qualcomm's hold on the market and worried because of the support. But being an accessory that only works when plugged into a PS5 makes it sort of dry.
It takes serious image processing on all the data coming from the cameras to determine where you are looking, moving, controller position, eye position, etc. All that compute is taking place on the headset to keep the burden off of the ps5. Maybe that's what the chip helps with
@crazyCoconuts - it's possible I guess. Although most of VR is just relaying X, Y, Z coordinates in real time. Maybe a chip helps offload that.
-EDIT having a look it seems the Oculus controllers have chips in each of them to help with positional data, it's possible that the SoC in the headset will help with that tracking and then relay it back to the system. Plus it doesn't have the processing box like the original PSVR did, so these SoCs can help with things like that as well.
Honestly Im just excited to get my hands on one of these, i would have liked wireless but then I would have wondered what amount of performance was sacrificed to achieve it. And standalone would have been too expensive (and heavy) if it was to have anything remotely close to the performance levels of this PSVR2. Im just glad that Sony decided to compete with high end VRs this time.
Nothing to do with price or weight. It's a market decision, by building a standalone device they would have to allocate resources to manage and develop its library, store, etc. And would also go against the Meta Quest and the Pico line-up of devices. By making an accessory, they don't need to mind that.
Don't get me wrong I'm pretty happy that Sony is actually developing an interesting VR headset this time around. However, it's a shame that it will be limited to function with a PS5.
There is no way price and weight did not factor in the decision. They would for me, thats for sure. Also, they have to do all of what you mentioned regardless of whether its standalone or not.
As long as they deliver the goods, and I think they did a good job with the original, then I dont really mind that its not standalone. If anything I personally prefer to have the best experience possible at a relatively good price point.
I don't think they even reached the point where that would be a consideration. Their market segment simply doesn't give them a reason to add components that wouldn't help the PS VR 2 in its accessory mission. Also, that is not true at all, the architecture of a standalone device is completely different, and the requirements to run one are also completely different. They wouldn't be able to pig back on their PS5 backend as much as they can with an accessory. Plus, we know from the current standalone affairs that they can be made lighter and reasonably cheap.
I don't really disagree with that, however, I also do find that is quite a shame that such a potentially interesting device will be tied to a piece of hardware that it should comfortably outlive.
MediaTek's CPUs are generally pretty decent but the GPUs they use get completely blown away by other brands like Qualcomm. If the headset were standalone that would be bad news, but it isn't. The PS5 will still be rendering the game so this shouldn't be a problem.
It's computing input from all cameras. That's a serious task. And it needs to be almost instant, with lowest latency possible. Mediatek is on a roll lately. Their latest mobile processors are excellent.
Honestly, don't know what to take from this news. If it was a stand-alone device I would be both happy and worried. Happy because that would break Qualcomm's hold on the market and worried because of the support. But being an accessory that only works when plugged into a PS5 makes it sort of dry.
MediaTek's CPUs are generally pretty decent but the GPUs they use get completely blown away by other brands like Qualcomm. If the headset were standalone that would be bad news, but it isn't. The PS5 will still be rendering the game so this shouldn't be a problem.
So, the cable is removable and in it's place a addon?
It's computing input from all cameras. That's a serious task. And it needs to be almost instant, with lowest latency possible. Mediatek is on a roll lately. Their latest mobile processors are excellent.
I'm just hoping that PSVR2 takes VR games to a new level. I would love to play a VR game that doesn't look like a PS2 game.