Bloomberg: Sony PlayStation VR 2 Headset Will Be Released in Late 2022
News agency Bloomberg announced that Sony will release a second-generation VR headset for the PlayStation 5 during the holiday period of 2022. It will be equipped with an OLED screen from Samsung Display.
The PS VR 2 was officially announced in February 2021, Sony showed off new controllers in March, and UploadVR published potential specifications for the device in May. Sometimes, it is amazing how technology developed – in our childhood, we played those flat platformers and now we can appear in foreign worlds.
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News on PS VR 2
According to preliminary data, the headset will receive a fabulous 4K display and an eye-tracking function with foveal rendering, in which only the part of the screen is rendered at which the gaze is directed.
On the display side, many manufacturers such as Facebook and HTC are moving away from OLEDs to LCD panels, as the latter is much more practical at high resolutions, albeit with lower contrast. Sony is more conservative in this regard, Bloomberg notes.
PlayStation VR 2 has a demo in which you can tactilely interact with the palm of a partner on the network. A former SIE engineer on LinkedIn writes about this. Yutaka Yokokawa worked as a staff engineer at Sony Interactive Entertainment with VR/AR and game engines.
On LinkedIn, Yutaki listed what his team worked on:
“We developed a virtual reality web demo in which multiple clients using controllers with finger sensors and tactile feedback can physically interact and communicate with each other with low latency.”
He also listed what he was working on a finger tracking system, although Sony said that the new controllers can only detect finger touches. Yutaki has been working on the next generation of PlayStation VR since 2016. He left the company in April.
Why 2022?
The head of Sony Interactive Entertainment, Jim Ryan, said in an interview that, in his opinion, virtual reality technologies need a little more time to truly gain acceptance among a wide range of users.
“I think that enough time should pass for a leap in the development of virtual reality. At PlayStation, we believe in VR. Sony believes in virtual reality and we are definitely confident that VR will become an essential component of interactive entertainment at some point in the future. Will it be this year? No. Will it be next year? Likely. We believe in this. And we are very happy with all the experiences we have with PlayStation VR and we look forward to seeing where that will take us in the future.”
The current PS VR headset is compatible with the new PlayStation 5, but a special adapter for the PlayStation Camera is required, which Sony distributes free of charge to all the users who apply.
Official Announcement
There is no release date for the device yet but there are already several official statements. The company did not disclose the details or any specifications of the headset, but Hidetaki Nishino, vice president of PlayStation, said that the corporation intends to focus, among other things, on new controllers:
“One of the innovations is our new VR controller, which will borrow some of the features of DualSense and will be especially ergonomic. This is just one example of the kind of future technology we are developing to realize our vision for a whole new generation of VR gaming.”
In addition to controllers, Sony is busy with increasing screen resolutions and viewing angles and improving tracking. Unlike the original PS VR, the second version will connect to the PS5 with just one cable.
Nishino noted that Sony still has a lot of work on the second version of PS VR, so there is no need to wait for the release of the device in 2021. Nevertheless, the developers, he said, have already begun to work on games for the headset.
In an interview with GQ, PlayStation chief Jim Ryan said that Sony is not yet calling the new headset “PS VR 2”. With the second-generation helmet, Ryan says the company is pursuing two goals: to catch up with technology that has leaped forward since the first was released and to build on the lessons learned from the release of the original PS VR – in particular, one-wire connection.
He also confirmed that devkits of the new headset will soon be sent to developers. However, he did not say anything about the games that will go on sale with the device, assuring that they will match the second version of PS VR. Jim Ryan said that PlayStation was pleased with the results of the first version of PS VR and expects the second to be successful as well. Details about the device are planned to be disclosed later in 2021.
In Conclusion
Overall, we can see that Sony has a lot of great plans and we hope that it will be able to complete everything they expect to. The current situation in the world brings a lot of obstacles. First of all, it is a lack of details, which also influenced the situation with PS 5.
We all remember how difficult it was to even pre-order the new console and this situation might repeat. At the same time, the company set quite a distant deadline for their new product which lets us hope that the situation will change, and we’ll be able to use the new VR next year.
Another problem is whether game developers will make it to the deadline as similar problems are also not rare now. Overall, we need to stay patient and follow the news. And hope for the better!