Sony patrons will be all eyes and ears as the Japanese tech giant is set to announce its much-owned PlayStation VR headset. This device is expected to make its first appearance this month during a press event at the Game Developer Conference.
According to MNR Daily, the Japanese multinational company was reportedly delivering press invitations as it will be showcasing its PlayStation VR this month in the city of San Francisco. Based on the said invitation, the press event will occur during the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2016 on March 15th. Also, it was stated that the event will be started with a PlayStation VR presentation at 2:00 p.m. PT, which will be followed by hands-on demo of the device until 6:00 p.m. PT.
It was also reported that the PS4 will be of great advantage if the said device will be finally released. Currently, there are already 36 million VR-compatible PS4 consoles that are available worldwide. With this, Sony had already some advantage of controlling an ecosystem of gamers because of its high quality products.
Another advantage that the PlayStation VR will deliver is compatibility. The owners of other VR devices like Oculus Rift and HTC Vive will be spending a lot of time reviewing a lot of Reddit threads in order to make sure that their PC will qualify in terms of the device' requirements and specifications. On the contrary, the PlayStation VR users will simply plug in the device to their PS4 and start exploring without hassle and stress.
Meanwhile, Neurogadget stated on its article that Dr. Richard Marks, the head of the PlayStation Magic Lab at Sony, had a presentation at the 2016 Vision VR/AR Summit. During his presentation he talked about the upcoming PlayStation VR headset, which is predicted to have a 100 degree FOV and a latency of 19 ms. Citing the PS4 console, he affirmed that the device is more efficient than computers when it comes to processing VR content.
Based on Richard Marks' statement, the PlayStation VR headset will work with the PS4 console and it's extremely close to being similar with Vive and the Rift w/a gtx970 based on the tests that he has done. The PSVR only needs about 1/4th of the render target size that the Vive requires. This has significantly to do with the display that the company is using that can run a 60Hz game at 120Hz (in addition to the 90Hz mode).
During the presentation, Marks also stated that the PS4 console is 60 percent more efficient compared with computers having similar specs at handling VR processing. "For example, the draw calls on the PS4 are faster than with dx11 which is something that a lot of people don't realize", he added.
When it comes with the price, Alphr noted that Sony's PlayStation VR headset have appeared on three separate Swiss tech sites, each one having a different price point. Spotted by Kensama on NeoGAF, Swiss retailer Brack tagged the PlayStation VR at 499CHF (£350), while Internet.ch lists it at 541.20CHF (£379.77) and Techmania originally priced it at 552.45CHF (£387.67) but has changed it to 588.25CHF (£413.10).
As the press event for PlayStation VR nears, more details about the virtual reality headset should surface soon. Nevertheless, all of these information remains on the rumor mill only until the Japanese tech giant unveils the much-awaited device.
