At the Game Developer conference in San Francisco, Sony revealed plans for a new prototype for its virtual reality headset, codename ‘Morpheus’, which jives beautifully with the PlayStation 4 console. It will be launched in 2016.
Movement response time is half for Morpheus, compared to its predecessor. Its got a new 5.7 inch display, which is OLED based, that allows for more vibrant range of colors. What is cool is you can simply shift between reality and the virtual world by pushing the set to the right of your face, without having to remove the whole shebang off your head.
Morpheus works with a tracking system; the combination of camera tracking and gyroscopic angular tracking charts your movements to virtual space. What is important here is tracking movement speed, and Morpheus has done it seamlessly. Graphics rate is at 120 fps, a 0.018 second latency rate(you can not make out the time lag between your movement and the tracked movement in virtual space), a 100 degree field view, screen res stays the same, though, at 1080p high definition.
Physically, what they have taken care of the fact that its wearer does not get nauseous due to either the weight(which is, for its major part, kept off the face) and the reduced latency period.
Shuhei Yoshida, President of Sony’s Worldwide Studios for Sony Computer Entertainment said in an interview with the Journalists at GDC
It is important to not make people feel uncomfortable. It’s very easy to make people feel sick in VR. You feel like you are visiting a place and you naturally want to enjoy the scenery.
However, the current version is still not what the consumers will hold, it has some finishing to go through before it is made available within the first six months of 2016.
Virtual Reality is not an exotic entity anymore, proven by the competition Sony is facing- Facebook buying Oculus Rift, HTC’s Vive headset (a Valve collaboration), Samsung Gear, Microsoft HoloLens, to name the upcoming biggies in the field.
