The ever loveable Shuhei Yoshida, head of Sony Worldwide Studios, has finished his presentation of Project Morpheus at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, and topped it off with a blog post on the official PlayStation blog. The big news is, Project Morpheus, Sony’s virtual reality device, which will likely ditch that name for something even more ambiguous, now has a launch window. The device is aiming for a release in the first half of 2016, so anywhere between January and June of 2016 is a possible debut month.
There’s still no price point on the device, but Yoshida and staff did show off a new prototype that they claim is at near final specifications with the retail model that the public will be able to buy next year. The big changes are:
- OLED display:In exchange for the 5 inch LCD, the new Morpheus VR headset is equipped with a 5.7 inch 1920 X RGB X 1080 resolution OLED display. This new screen expands the field of view and enables low persistence, removing motion blur.
- 120hz refresh rate:The previous refresh rate spec has been doubled for this new prototype, which means games for Morpheus can be rendered at 120fps. When combined with the OLED display’s high refresh rate and the power of PS4, Morpheus is able to output amazingly smooth visuals.
- Super low latency:We know how critical low latency is to delivering a great VR experience, and we’ve reduced latency to less than 18ms, about half of what the first Morpheus prototype had. Low latency is critical to deliver a sense of presence, at the same time making the VR experience comfortable to players.
- More accurate tracking:To make positional tracking more precise, we’ve added three LEDs to the headset – one on the front and two on the side – for a total of nine LEDs to support robust 360 degree tracking.
- User-friendly design:We’ve made the Morpheus VR headset easier to put on and take off, with a single band design and quick release button. The headband supports the weight of the unit on the top of your head, so there is no pressure on your face. Other components have also been adjusted and configured to make the headset lighter, so that players do not find the headset cumbersome or uncomfortable to use.
That’s actually a lot of pretty surprising improvement, especially the 120hz refresh rate, keeping the Morpheus competitive with what Facebook is aiming at with Oculus Rift and Valve with the Vive. There’s likely to be more information released at E3 and possibly Tokyo Game Show as we move closer to launch, but with Valve already declaring a 2015 holiday release, it’s only Facebook’s Oculus Rift device that now has an uncertain release date.
