Once you’re in a game, you’ll get some familiar prompts, like whether you want to use gestures or the analog sticks for movement. Repeated configurations didn’t help, but I beat the first two areas unscathed anyway - it was biased downwards but accurate and extremely responsive otherwise. It was accurate enough for non-precision stuff but I found it was impossible to look directly at the crosshair in Rez:Infinite, which was frustratingly always just half its width below my gaze. Gaze detection is built in and setup is likewise quick and simple: follow the dot around, and in 20 seconds it’s finished. It builds a little play area using the clear space around you, which you can easily add to or subtract from by zapping it with a beam coming off your controller (it’s quite fun actually). Image Credits: SonyĮstablishing a play area is done automatically by looking around you in the passthrough mode, which is a black-and-white real-time view of your surroundings (and for some reason slightly unnerving). Plug in the headset to the USB-C port on your PS5 and it gives you a step-by-step tutorial of how to put it on, adjust the fit, which buttons do what and how to sync the controllers (literally just hitting the PS button on them).Īutomatic scanning and customization of the play area. Setting it up is also incredibly easy - by far the easiest VR setup I’ve experienced. It’s all very well thought out and put together. Likewise the controllers, which are a bit puzzling and pretzel-like at first but eventually make sense. Easy, breezy, beautiful-ishįirst, the headset is attractively styled and reasonably light, and doesn’t take up much space when it’s not being used. Still, I don’t want to outright dismiss a perfectly good VR headset because it takes part in a developing ecosystem, so let’s talk about what the PSVR2 does right. And now, a decade later, I’m seeing a significant fraction of that potential - but nothing like what it would take for me to tell someone “hey, go spend six bills on this,” unless they were ready to forgive a lot. I want it to be successful - I tried on that duct-taped Oculus prototype all those years ago and immediately understood the potential. I know some will say that just makes me a hater. Within 10 seconds of putting on Sony’s biggest hardware effort in years, I couldn’t help thinking “So VR is still like this, huh?” Even at its most seamless and convincing, VR is a sweaty, uncomfortable, artificial-feeling experience like sitting under a blanket looking at a 3D TV through a screen door. So why do I still hesitate to recommend it?īecause VR gaming - as magical as it can be - is itself still a compromise. A variety of games are available on day one, including a Horizon: Zero Dawn spinoff and a Resident Evil title, and others in less-intense genres. It’s a piece of cake to set up and accommodates room-scale as well as sitting and standing play styles. With a 4K OLED screen working at 120Hz, inside-out sensing (meaning no mounted cameras or emitters), and a pair of controllers cribbed from others and improved on, it seemed to embody a best of breed, its primary drawback being that it is a single-platform device.Īnd really, in practice that is exactly what PSVR2 is: best of breed, without meaningful compromise in hardware beyond having a single cable. With a retail price of $550 all in, it struck a balance between the increasingly decent entry-level headsets (Oculus Quest 2) and more expensive, complex PC-bound ones (Vive Pro 2). Last year the PSVR2 was announced, and based on specs alone it generally led the pack, with a few exceptions here and there. Still, it demonstrated that VR had a future in gaming, and that Sony was approaching it with an eye to accessibility and ease of use. The PSVR was one of the first really consumer-accessible VR headsets, and was simple to set up for its time, but also relied on outdated controls in the instantly obsolete Move controllers and a TV-mounted camera. It’s the best VR has ever been, and I still can’t bring myself to recommend it to anybody who wasn’t already on board. Well-specced, easy to set up and reasonably light and comfortable, Sony’s latest still can’t shake the fundamental issues that have prevented VR from going mainstream: a lack of compelling content and despite a brand new 4K OLED display, distracting image fidelity. The PlayStation VR2 is a simultaneously exciting and disappointing development in the virtual reality space.
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