Hi everyone PlayStation 4 Remote Play.
So, quite a few of you asked me to take a look at PlayStation 4's
Remote Play feature. Now what this functionality allows you to
do is to use a PlayStation Vita to stream your games from your PlayStation 4
directly to the PlayStation Vita. Now
in previous consoles where we've tried this technology out,
for instance on the PlayStation 3 with Vita or with original PSP
it didn't work particularly well. It was tied and limited to only a few games
those from the PlayStation One catalogue or whatever it was or PSP
catalogue, and it just didn't work very well. Now the kind of standout feature really on the
PlayStation 4 is the ability to stream your games
from the PlayStation 4 directly to the Vita and it works
remarkably well. The pairing process takes seconds. PlayStation 4 Remote Play
All you have to do is on your PlayStation 4 go to the remote play option
it will give you an eight digit code, you pop in the eight digit code when you're prompted on
your PS Vita using remotely
functionality for PS4 and it just configures itself. Then
anytime you start remote play it will hook directly onto your PlayStation 4
of your wifi network and just works. So this is
the PlayStation 4, it's currently a few rooms away from me. This is all running over wifi,
even the PlayStation 4 is not on a wired connection and it works PlayStation 4 Remote Play
absolutely fine. So if we fire up a bit of Shadowfall. Now bearing in mind
this is Killzone Shadowfall for the PlayStation 4
now running on the Vita, and it's not actually
running directly on the Vita, what it's doing is it's streaming the content
directly from the PlayStation 4 over the wifi and providing picture and controls
on the Vita. Now there are few caveats to that,
or caveats depending on how you want to pronounce it
but because the Vita doesn't have the same number of buttons available
as a full fledged PlayStation 4 controller, some
strange compromises have to be made with some games. So for instance
what we're traditionally used to with any kind of shooter is having a second set of
buttons.
We have our shoulders and our triggers. Now in this case with the Vita all we have
are
the triggers as it were, which are the shoulder buttons. Now how that's been got round
is if you press your PlayStation button on the Vita control unit itself,
you can go to the button guide and then what it will do, it will show you what the developer has
mapped
for the remote play functionality. Each game is different
each shooter we've tried has been different as well, slightly annoying.
So far Killzone has kind of got the mix just right I think
using the on-screen controls L2 and R2
the R2 and L2
controls from there are effectively mapped to the front so if you can
see there, there's the actual traditional controller and they will be
mapped to the
front of the PS Vita. L1 and R1 are still your
shoulder buttons on the back and R3 and L3
are effectively triggered by using the touch screen on the back of the unit.
So that's the controls - let's just go back PlayStation 4 Remote Play
and what we're going to do we're going to jump into some multiplayer, Why not? Let's do something
really difficult as it were. Because it's not just about being able to play, you know, the latest
single player games we're going to play but, you know, can we play multiplayer games as well?
The simple answer is yes! You know? So I'll be back just as soon as this has loaded.
OK, so this is Killzone just loading up now.
Now all of the kind of buttons are fairly standardised
from this point of view so if we press X things are mapped quite easily
and then I can just grab my control sticks and off we go.
Now one thing I found quite interesting with Remote Play is because
the games themselves tend to be set up for the PlayStation 4 controller which doesn't
have as much play in the thumbsticks.
It will take you just a little bit of getting used to. Oooh!
that you can end up just with a little bit too much sensitivity in some of the
first person shooters so you end up kind of wildly missing your mark.
It just takes a little bit of practice, just to kind of get used to how
that's kind of working out. Oooh! Just to PlayStation 4 Remote Play
bear in mind because I'm recording at the same time as talking and trying to
play
it's not the easiest angle to actually play a game from. I'm sat off
on about a 30 degree angle, from the screen currently, so not the easiest thing to actually
demo gameplay footage that is twitch like this but
you get the idea. The one thing I've found when I've been playing
Remote Play on the PS4 is no lag whatsoever, it is
rock-solid throughout and it just works beautifully well.
Let me just turn this sound down a little bit.
Obviously with the Vita you're dealing with a lower resolution screen
Around a 940 I think it is, compared to obviously the
1080 output that you would get from the PlayStation 4 natively.
So that does mean that you kind of get a drop in clarity I would say
and for some first-person shooters like Battlefield that does become a little bit
more of a
problem because obviously things are a lot further away from you
and, you know, they turn out to be little teeny tiny dots on the Vita screen
but again it's not something that I found that you couldn't kind of adapt to over time or
use a bit of guesswork. Let's get him.
But it's something worth bearing in mind. Not all games are going to translate
perfectly PlayStation 4 Remote Play
to the Vita control system for remote play, just because of the nature
of how the game actually works. That said though, a little bit of adaptation on your part
and you'll probably find it's absolutely fine. I've had great fun playing a bit of Battlefield
last night
on this and it's just remarkably well executed in my opinion. There is zero lag here
that I could find.
Playing a pinball game I was able to notice a bit of a round trip
if I was watching the TV at the same time. You can see the action happen on screen
and then it's kind of
on your TV screen then it's relayed to the Vita a fraction of a second later
which was a little disconcerting but actually when you're playing a game and
not watching the TV if you're just watching the Vita
screen action then everything's absolutely fine, you don't get any sense that there's any
lag here at all really. Now
one thing to mention is the remote play functionality is supposed to work over
the internet as well.
But so far I've not been able to get it to work. A lot of it I
think comes down to the various port settings
that need to be opened up on the router but so far on our Virginmedia hub we've not been
able to get the
internet remote play functionality to work. That said, running it over your local wifi
network as it were PlayStation 4 Remote Play
absolutely no problems, that's how this is being displayed here. Now
one thing that's worth mentioning. because it's quite an interesting thing from
my point of view is you can access absolutely
any part of the PlayStation 4 system directly from
the remote play - apart from
media. So if we try and say boot up LoveFilm
what we'll actually get is an alert that basically says. "Hmm, you're
blocked from doing that," which just strikes me as being a little bit odd really.
Presumably this is because of various
copy protection mechanisms that have to be in force
to make content companies happy but it still kind of
strikes me as being a little bit strange why we can't stream our content directly to the
Vita using apps that are not available
actually on Vita. It would have been a really nice
extra little feature from my point of view. Certainly I would have thought
it wouldn't cause any major problems bearing in mind that it's a one-to-one
stream and it's been secured end-to-end.
The remote play functionality can also be used for second screen functionality as
well.
If you're not familiar with this, second screen is the idea that you might be playing a
computer game
then you get your mobile phone or your second screen like a tablet or your Vita out of your pocket
and you can then access additional information whilst you're playing a game. Now it might
be a
expanded version of the world map that you then can have sat in front of you while you're playing
or it could be the ability to interact, for instance, Battlefield-style
with a whole map as a commander dropping things for your troops.
So far not managed to find a single game that actually uses second screen at launch so
there you go! What we've found is that games
companies like the independents like EA, Ubisoft etcetera
are providing second screen functionality but through their own third party apps.
They're not using the native built-in functionality that say Sony is providing
or even Microsoft are providing.
Fair enough. They want to keep their user bases etcetera but it would be nice to see
tight integration there so one app to rule them all. Now
let's just jump back into remote play and you'll quickly see, it's a very fast process once you've
got this setup.
It did take me probably three attempts putting the code in then
eventually it just went Oh,
found your PS4, found the Vita, hook you up and there we go.
So it did take me a couple of goes just to get it
initially started but once you do, it's a very very quick and easy process, and as you
can see you get an alert that pops up
whenever you attempt to play any content that you are not entitled to.
One thing that I do wish they had done is enabled the touch control
why they didn't is beyond me, but it does mean that you have to use the physical
buttons to get into content. A slightly strange thing but there you go. PlayStation 4 Remote Play
Let's quickly have a look at Resogun because this is a fast-paced game
and you know, if Resogun plays without any lag then you're going to have no
problems with any game at all. As I say, there is a resolution drop because this is being
streamed to the Vita with a
lower resolution screen of the Vita hardware but at no point does it ever feel like
it's overly compromised. Certain games become slightly more difficult to
play, purely because of the, you know,
draw distance as it were. If you're playing something like Battlefield and you're trying to snipe and there's a guy
half a mile away across the map best of luck playing that on your
Vita is what I would say. It is simply too
small a screen. So let's just fire up a little bit of this.
You can see when I touch the back of the screen can you see this
marker popping up? And what that's doing it's telling me where my fingers are
basically at any time. As I say, some of the games do a really poor job at mapping these
controls
Battlefield especially means that you accidentally can slip your
finger and end up throwing grenades and all sorts. Not a
great control system. To my mind, Killzone so far has provided the best
Vita remote play experience for a shooter really really nice controls and
it's well thought out and logical.
It actually works basically. So
this is obviously Resogun, probably one of my favourite games
on the PlayStation 4 and certainly on remote play as well.
It just works beautifully, you can see this slight drop in quality PlayStation 4 Remote Play
I was talking about. Things feel slightly softer and part of that is because
of the lower resolution screen of the Vita, lower pixels per inch count
but also there is some compression having to be done here in order to have
one-to-one map controls so that when I press left the PS4 sees that command
instantly
gets on with it and then sends me the video footage back and all of that has to be
compressed unfortunately
so you will find, you know, a compressed image is being sent down.
You know, personally, if you were to compare this to Vita footage natively running
on the device
yes it is a little softer but you are getting vastly better lighting, texturing
and so on, made available through the PS4's raw performance power.
It'll be really interesting to see if we get this
remote play functionality working really well across the internet and what the
limitations there are.
You would hope that if you were on a private internet connection like round at your mate's house,
it would work absolutely fine, but a lot of variables involved in something like
this for instance you know
how good the internet connection is at the time, how good the wifi connection is at the
time and so on. So you know it's always going to be a bit of a mixed bag but PlayStation 4 Remote Play
we found this remote play functionality could possibly be
PlayStation 4's killer feature and then some. It really is a triumph
especially given that it actually works and, you know, it's very rare when we
see a new piece of technology coming
through for the consoles like Kinnect, like PlayStation i and all of this
and they make big promises and actually when you get to launch you find out that
you know, there's too many exceptions to the rule as to why it will work or
won't work in the case may be. Here Sony have delivered exactly on the promise.
They have made the Vita a useful device and they've given the PlayStation 4
an extra leg-up against the competition by far.
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