SYDNEY: Sony has made enough progress with Project Morpheus that it plans to deliver the virtual reality headset into the hands of video game players sometime in the first half of 2016.
Sony officials were at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this week showing off the company’s upgraded Project Morpheus prototypes, designed for use with the Sony PlayStation 4. The latest prototypes have sharper view screens and more powerful hardware than the first VR devices Sony unveiled at the GDC a year ago.
Shuhei Yoshida, president of Worldwide Studios for Sony Computer Entertainment, said during a preview for journalists and tech analysts that Sony has met enough internal technical benchmarks to promise a consumer ready version will ship early next year.
“We are one step closer to realizing our vision for making VR a reality in games,” Yoshida said.
In brief hands on demo, the latest headgear was far sharper and more responsive than last year’s model.
Sony replaced the original LCD display with a 1920 x RGB x 1080 OLED display, which Yoshida said reduces motion blur. The new Morpheus also has a 120-frame-per-second refresh rate, double the refresh rate of the original model. Sony also increased the field of view to more than 100 degrees.
And the company has added three more LED tracking sensors, which gave the headgear a cool glow.
