- The past couple years,
we've seen a lot of virtual reality companies
pivot to the metaverse,
and today we aren't going to talk about any of that.
(upbeat music)
Later this month,
Sony is releasing its PlayStation VR2 headset,
a follow up to the first PS VR from 2016.
The PS VR2 is the first VR system we've reviewed for a while
that's pitched as almost entirely a gaming device.
If you want a plug-and-play headset
that supports graphically intensive virtual worlds
with cutting edge features like eye tracking
and something called face rumble,
there's not really anything quite like it.
But at launch, we're still waiting for Sony
to take advantage of what it's got.
Sony's original PS VR was an odd gamble.
The gaming giant was going up
against the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive,
a pair of expensive high-end VR headsets
that often required buying a whole new PC.
Its strategy was to go low where they went high.
The PS VR paired a just good enough headset
with a lot of hardware Sony already made,
like the PlayStation camera and the Move controllers.
It plugged into the PlayStation 4,
a console lots of people already owned.
Its promise was in its relative accessibility
and ecosystem backed by a major publisher
and the fact that it was surprisingly comfortable.
The PS VR2 is a very different device.
It's a completely new package of hardware
built for the PlayStation 5,
launching February 22nd.
It includes custom design motion controllers,
head-mounted, inside-out tracking cameras
and internal eye tracking cameras,
a feature that's not yet standard on all VR headsets.
It has a vivid OLED screen with 110 degree field of view
and 2,000 by 2,040 pixels per eye,
and a 90 or 120 hertz refresh rate.
And at $549 plus the cost of a PS5,
it costs a lot more than the standalone Meta Quest 2,
its biggest competitor in the field of VR games.
Here at The Verge,
we've had three people checking out the PS VR2,
me, senior editor Tom Warren,
and senior editor Sean Hollister.
Our experience so far
is that the headset gets a lot of things right,
but that we're still figuring out
how much Sony will give people to do with it.
Sony's first headset
required setting up a complicated cable box
and an external tracking camera,
as well as deciding whether you are going to buy
its optional Move motion controllers.
There's none of that with this headset.
When you unbox the PS VR2,
you'll get a headset
with four built-in front-facing tracking cameras
and a single USB-C cable that you plug into the PS5.
The setup process requires starting on a TV or monitor
and then switching over to the headset,
but other than that, it's nicely seamless,
at this point, better than the experience on Meta's Quest.
Thanks to a feature that maps your walls
and automatically suggests a play space
instead of making you draw one out.
Sony is apparently one of the only headset makers
in the world
that thinks you might wanna play a video game
without everyone in a 10 foot radius
hearing you shoot zombies,
so the headset comes with a set of snap-on earbuds
instead of the current convention
of little speakers near your ears.
That can introduce problems if the buds don't fit you,
but there's a standard 3.5 millimeter headphone jack
if you wanna substitute your own headphones.
The Sense controllers use a layout
roughly similar to Meta's Touch controllers.
Each hand gets two triggers, two face buttons,
an analog stick, a menu button, and a PlayStation button.
It goes without saying that they're vastly superior
to the 13-year-old PlayStation Move,
but they also feel a little more solid
than Meta's controllers.
They charge over USB-C like the PlayStation 5 controller,
and we got five to six hours of playtime between charges,
not as long as controllers powered by AA batteries
but not bad for a VR gaming session.
Also, like the PS VR,
some games can still use a standard game pad.
We found a few pain points in our time with the PS VR2.
The headset's easy to put on,
just like its predecessor,
and it's actually lighter than the original PS VR
at 560 grams compared to 600,
but although it's relatively comfortable,
it's not as dramatically uniquely good
as the PS VR seemed back in 2016.
It's tracking generally performed well
and it's way, way better than the original PS VR,
but we occasionally saw issues
like controllers drifting slightly.
The screen looks great when it's perfectly in focus,
but we all had to keep adjusting our headsets
to hit that sweet spot.
And most of all, that wire.
Meta and HTC have sold me on wireless headsets,
and although Sony's made that cable
as easy to use as possible,
it still literally trips me up.
But Sony has laid the foundations for a solid VR experience.
It's planning to launch around 30 PS VR2 games
in February and March,
and it says it's got over a hundred in development.
One of its early flagships
is "Horizon Call of the Mountain,"
a spinoff of Guerilla Games'
robot-dinosaur fighting simulator "Horizon Forbidden West,"
but the launch lineup features
several re-releases of familiar VR titles
like "Pistol Whip" and "Pavlov VR,"
or VR modes for non-VR games like "Resident Evil Village,"
and we got access to a tiny fraction of that lineup.
So we're still waiting
to see how it's overall ecosystem pans out.
How do the games we did check out feel?
I'll let Tom take you through it.
- I spent most of my time in "Horizon Call of the Mountain."
It's the PS VR2's flagship title.
And while it starts off slow
like a kind of Disney-like ride in a boat
where you're appreciating all the beautiful scenery
around you,
it soon moves into combat and climbing.
And I think this is where it really shows off
the haptic system
and just what this headset is capable of.
There's a high amount of detail in the plants and the trees
that surround you in the early stages,
and everything looks really well lit.
There's even a bit at the beginning
where a Tallneck steps over your boat
and you're just free to sit there
and splash your hands in the water.
Just check out these ants chilling out on a rock
next to exactly where I'm climbing.
This level of detail I think really helps
with the immersiveness in VR,
but I didn't always feel fully immersed
when I was traversing rocks or going across wooden beams.
And I think a lot of this was down
to the PS VR2's hand tracking
that didn't always place my hands down correctly.
I also noticed some occasional issues with tracking
during the bow and arrow combat
and even times when a warning would pop up
about bright lights.
Still, I think "Horizon" does a good job
of showing why the PS VR2 headset
needs to be tethered to the PS5.
We're still in the very early stages of this new VR headset,
and I think we need to see a bunch more games
to really understand exactly
how the PS5 is pushing this hardware
and to see some more flagship titles
really take advantage of Sony's powerful console
to really make the PS VR2 headset shine.
I tried connecting the PS VR2 headset
directly into a USB-C port on an AMD graphics card.
Now, Windows picked it up as a second screen
and limited the resolution to 1080p,
but SteamVR just kept asking me to plug in my VR headset,
as it couldn't recognize the PS VR2.
Now, someone might just get this all working eventually
but there's no official support from Sony just yet
and no real sign that the company will support PCs
in the future.
I think that's really disappointing because at $549,
this would be a really interesting alternative for PC gamers
looking at VR headsets.
- Sony is trying some interesting extra features.
I mentioned face rumble a while back
and it's exactly what you might guess,
a vibration that shakes the face mask on your headset.
Face rumble is a theoretically cool idea,
but it can be distracting when it's harsh,
although fortunately, you can turn it off.
And when it's gentler, I kind of tune it out,
which might mean it's a really intuitive,
seamless part of the VR experience
or it might just not do much for me yet.
What Sony has sold me on is eye tracking in games.
It's easy for eye tracking
to feel either gimmicky or ignorable,
but "Horizon" uses it in subtle, very natural feeling ways.
When you're in a conversation with a character,
for instance,
you can look at a dialogue option to select it
instead of turning your controller's analog stick.
Eye tracking is also supposed to enable foveated rendering,
which lets games render at a higher resolution
right where you're looking,
but it's harder to see the effects of that so far.
Eye tracking isn't the kind of thing
you should buy a headset just to experience,
but it opens up new options for developers
and makes the PS VR2 feel just a little fancier.
The headset isn't just a VR gaming device,
Sony also has something called cinematic mode.
I'll let Sean talk you through it.
- If you're looking at that $549 price tag
and thinking it's not quite worth it,
here's one thing that might help: cinematic mode.
I am currently looking
at a gigantic virtual flat screen television
I can use for anything else I do on PS5,
including PS5 games, PS4 games, Blu-Rays, Netflix streaming,
and I think it could actually be useful
for somebody who doesn't have room
for a big TV in their house.
You can even kick back, lie down,
point the virtual screen up at the ceiling.
And though you have to get fancy with pillows
'cause the PlayStation VR's adjustment tile
leaves quite a lump under your head,
mind you, it's not perfect,
it's only 1080p resolution in this mode.
And between that and the graininess
of trying to look through VR lenses,
I found that PS4 games,
like the original "Horizon Zero Dawn,"
were a little bit too muddy for me to wanna play,
but PS5 games like "Returnal" work pretty well,
and so do Blu-rays and streaming apps,
though I did run into one issue
when I tried to play HDR on a 4K Blu-ray
threw me some error messages.
- If you came here wondering,
"Is the PS VR2 better than the PS VR?"
yes, it definitely is.
If you're wondering, "Should I buy a PS VR2?"
that's a little more complicated.
The PS VR2 catalog overlaps with the Quest's and PC VR's
and it's probably gonna be smaller
than either of those for a while,
particularly because it's not backwards compatible
with original PS VR games.
You're in Sony's lockdown console ecosystem,
so you can't check out new experimental projects
like you can with PC or Quest sideloading,
and VR is still a new experimental medium.
And okay, I said we weren't gonna talk about the metaverse,
but some people are using VR headsets
for social spaces like VRChat,
and those can be slow to come to consoles like the PS5,
if they show up at all.
That might change if you can get the PS VR2
to work with the PC later,
but out of the box,
the system probably won't have the flexibility
a lot of other options do.
But if you want easy access to great looking games,
the PS VR2 is in a uniquely good position to deliver it.
The Quest 2 is an excellent mid-range gaming machine
that's fighting limited computing power.
The Quest Pro has advanced features like eye tracking,
but it's aimed at professionals.
Valve set a solid bar for PC VR with the Index
but that was almost four years ago,
and we still don't know how some newer SteamVR options
like the Bigscreen Beyond will perform.
So if Sony brings a lot of PC VR games to the platform,
it's position will get even stronger.
Mainly, it's code for they need to bring Alyx to it.
"Half-Life: Alyx" is so good.
Sony isn't trying to reinvent the computer with the PS VR2,
but it's made something that feels worthy
of being called a next-generation headset,
if it can back it up with games to match.
what PS5 game do you wanna see Get a VR mode?
My final answer is the "Dead Space Remake."
I played that thing like four times.
I will play it again.