It’s been no secret that Sony has been looking to compete with the Oculus Rift, but does their unveiled prototype seal the deal? The Japanese electronics and gaming giant, who’s already decimating the competition in the next-gen Console Wars, released to the world their prototype virtual reality headset.
Codenamed: Project Morpheus — the device is said to be used in conjunction with the PlayStation 4, according to Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios.
At last night’s Game Developers Conference (March 18), Yoshida showed off to an amazed audience the sleek black-and-white headset. “This prototype is by no means final,” said Yoshida. “We will continue to work on this to improve it, but we believe it’s a good representation of how PlayStation will deliver VR.”
Project Morpheus is adjustable to head-size and features a head-mounted display with 1080p resolution and a 90-degree field of view. That does pale in comparison to the Oculus Rift’s 110-degree field of view, but Project Morpheus does have support for 3D audio, plus headphone jack support, while the OR does not. Sensors are even built into the Morpheus headset that can track a wearer’s head movement in concert with a PS4 camera.
“The experience can be shared, and that’s only going to allow it to spread,” said Anton Mikhailov, a senior software engineer working on Project Morpheus. “I think that’s going to be the key. Once people see someone else interacting in VR, they’re going to want to put it on and try it next.” Gamers will be able to interact with the virtual world displayed on the headset with the gesture-detecting PlayStation Move controller, as well as the standard DualShock 4. But there’s no word on when the headset would be released or how much it would cost.
If you happen to be in San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference, be sure to check out Project Morpheus, as it will be available for demonstration today (March 19) for conference attendees. Four games will be also open for exploration: diving cage simulator The Deep, medieval combat game The Castle, sci-fi dogfighter EVE: Valkyrie and a VR rendition of the recently released stealth-action-adventure game Thief.
Props: High Snobiety / CVG
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Photo: Sony
