The new PlayStation VR2 details have officially been announced the design and new technical capabilities for their newest VR addition.
Today (Tuesday, February 22, 2022), the Sony camp came out with the full specifications and features list of their latest, anticipated VR hardware—the PlayStation VR2. The PlayStation blog highlighted a lot of the notes on inspiration for the design of the new headset and Sense controller. On top of the innovative design, the blog brushed on the update to the tech upgrades it has undergone as well.
As someone who has only dabbled in VR, the latest headset design looked very comfy. The Senior Vice President of Platform Experience and the name behind the blog, Hideaki Nishino, mentioned how the ergonomics and research based on player feedback were important in creating the new look.
“Our goal is to create a headset that will not only become an attractive part of your living room decor, but will also keep you immersed in your game world, to the point where you almost forget you are using a headset or controller. That’s why we paid very close attention to the ergonomics of the headset and conducted extensive testing to ensure a comfortable feel for a variety of head sizes. We already had a lot of positive feedback on the ergonomics of the first PS VR headset by carefully balancing the headset weight and having a simple headband that can be adjustable, so we kept the same concept for the PS VR2 headset. Other features such as the headset’s adjustable scope that places the scope area closer or further away from the face and placement of the stereo headphone jack also remain the same, so players will be familiar with it.”
Hideaki Nishino, Senior Vice President of Platform Experience
He mentioned how they wanted to match the design of the headset with their PS5 console with its “flat edges” made for “flat surfaces” versus the PlayStation VR2 that would focus on its “roundness” to match the various round heads of humans—and match the “rounded edges of the DualSense controller and Pulse 3D headset.” While it was strange to talk about human heads this way, the design looked very refined and has taken into consideration what PlayStation VR players had been commenting on its original iteration.
Another interesting design choice was stated by the Senior Art Director at Sony Interactive Entertainment, Yujin Morisawa, on the added vent in the headset. “When I started to work on the design for the PlayStation VR2 headset, one of the areas I wanted to focus on first was the idea of creating a vent in the headset to let air out, similar to the vents on the PS5 console that allows airflow. Our engineers came up with this idea as a good way to allow ventilation and avoid having the lens fog up while players are immersed in their VR games,” Morisawa wrote.
This is a problem I can relate to when wearing any kind of protective eyewear or VR headsets, so hopefully this would help VR gamers stay immersed with the annoying heat fog from impeding their experiences. Some other features the blog glossed over were the 4K HDR visual fidelity, improved graphics rendering, enhanced tracking, the new headset feedback and the revamped PlayStation VR2 Sense controller.
More on these upcoming improvements, the upgraded eye tracking tech was stated to adapt to the wearer’s eye motions and would be able to better follow their line of sight, less chance of breaking the immersion. The sound quality has improved with its Tempest 3D AudioTech surround sound that is meant to adapt to the wearer’s head motions and is said to pick up whispers and gunfire in real life-like distance. The addition of headset feedback was described as slight vibrations that players could experience at certain moments based on the gameplay, similar to the feedback in the PS5 DualSense controllers.
The same feedback features in the headset are also in the Sense controller. The buttons on the controller have also been reworked for the purpose of making the buttons players would press to be more natural and match the gestures they would be doing as if they were doing it in real life.
While hearing about all of these great features coming to the PlayStation VR2, there have been no official release date or cost yet. The original PlayStation VR launched at $499.99 and the competitor, Oculus Quest 2, was marked at $299.99, so VR players can expect to see potential prices ranging in this area.
