This is something that has been rumored about for years now, something that picked up steam once the Oculus Rift became a reality on the PC and finally we have a glimpse at it; Sony’s Virtual Reality headset. Sony unveiled the headset, named “Project Morpheus” yesterday at the GDC, explaining that it has been in the works since 2010 now and when it is ready to launch it will be a full virtual reality experience in 1080p with surround sound on the PlayStation 4.
So the obvious here is that it is a head-mounted unit that you plug into your PlayStation 4 via a USB cable and (or?!) HDMI cable, that it won’t actually be called Project Morpheus when it’s released and that it’s a cool piece of tech. It will display 1080p images in each eye, has a powerful accelerometer to detect where your head is moving. It can also send an image to your PS4 so that what you are playing is displayed on your TV for anyone else who wants to play along with you.
This seems to be the way that the game industry is moving right now, as the Oculus Rift on PC has made huge waves among the PC faithful and Microsoft has shown off possible future uses for the Kinect like displaying a virtual reality overlay through an entire room. It’s clear that while Virtual Reality was a bit of a flop back when Nintendo introduced the Virtual Boy in 1995, we’ve come a long way since then. Shuhei Yoshida also promised that Sony’s VR headset would be affordable, whatever that means.
The games showcased during the tech demo were Thief and EVE Valkyrie and those lucky enough to be at GDC can get their hands on it on the showroom floor starting today.
