IGX 2016: The PlayStation VR headset’s potential is wasted on the PS4

The Indian Games Expo (IGX 2016) made its way to India last Saturday, but more importantly, so did PlayStation VR. With all this hype surrounding VR and hearing tales of it being the best thing to happen since sliced bread, we just had to check out. Luckily, Sony brought the PSVR to India and demoed it at IGX.

Let’s start with the headset itself. Looking at the spec sheet, it’s easy to dismiss the PSVR as the budget alternative to the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive, and it is exactly that, but it has surprising potential.

Unlike the Rift and the Vive, which are adorned with sensors and require fancy tracking cameras, the PSVR uses simple LEDs and the PS Camera to track orientation. If you’re familiar with TrackIR, the PSVR uses a similar system.

PlayStation VR headset

The tracking wasn’t as fluid as I’ve experienced on the Vive or the Rift, but it was more than enough for the games. Tracking aside, my second concern with the PSVR was the screen resolution. The Rift and the Vive use 2K screens; even then, the images aren’t very sharp. You’ll have noticed severe pixelation if you’ve ever tried Google Cardboard with a Full HD screen. The PSVR uses a Full HD screen.

Interestingly, I saw no pixelation whatsoever, which was a pleasant surprise. Sony did say that the PSVR uses three subpixels per rendered pixel vs. the two subpixels per pixel on the Rift and the Vive. This means Sony’s PSVR renders a denser image than the Rift and the Vive, making for a better VR experience.
Sadly, the PS4 itself doesn’t seem to be able to do that amazing headset justice.

Oculus and HTC recommend a pretty beefy system for handling VR. In comparison, the PS4’s graphics capabilities are very tame. In VR, that performance difference is very apparent.

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We tried many games on the PSVR, including Drive Club, Batman VR, and Resident Evil 7. In all those games, the one factor that stood out was the low resolution. Jaggies and low-res textures were everywhere. It was so bad that it felt like we were watching a 360p video on a 1080p screen.

Barring resolution, the experience was pleasant enough. We did have controller and tracking issues in Batman and Resident Evil, but those issues were more down-to-set-up than PSVR issues. We couldn’t try the Move controllers in-game because they weren’t properly set up during the demo.

I spent only 20 minutes at most with the PSVR, but those 20 minutes convinced me of two things. The first is that Sony’s done a better job with games and the headset than either Oculus or HTC. The second is that the PS4 is the wrong console for VR. I hope the PS4 Pro manages to render higher-resolution VR gaming because it would be a shame to waste PSVR on just the PS4.

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