So, as some of you may have noticed. The last few days have seen no less than half a dozen articles with headlines reading something along the lines of "PSVR requires 60 feet of space!"

Seems like alot of space right? Well, every one of those articles includes this picture;

Going off of this picture, it's pretty easy to see where they are getting the 60 square foot number from. They're just taking the 6.2 ft width, and multiplying  it by the 9.8 ft length. Which would be fine...if it were a rectangle.

But alas, it is not. Turns out the actual area of that space (starting from the point on the camera, all the way back to the end of the play area) iiiissss.....

44 square feet. The more observant of you may have noticed that 44 feet is a good bit smaller than 60 feet.

Mind you that I'm not even talking about the fact that this very likely is the MAXIMUM play area rather than the required space. Since...you know...if you can sit in the middle of the play area, the camera isn't going to need the space behind you...

So please, gaming media. Stop doing dumb things.

Dude, when is the last time you did math? Clearly the area near the camera needs to be subtracted. The 6.2 feet minus the 2.3 feet give you 2.45 feet on one side of the missing area after dividing in half, take into account the PS camera's 85 degree angle, divide by 0, and you get $599.

EDIT: Your math is still wrong.

How so? Mind you that I am including the space between the camera and the begining of the play area.

You have two basic shapes there. The triangle running from the camera to where the play area stops following the cameras viewing angle, and the rectangle that runs from that point to the back of the play area.

The triangle has a total area of 16.7 sqft. (it's made up of two 3.1X5.39 ft. right triangles)

The rectangle is 6.2X4.41 ft. or 27.34 sqft.

For a total area of 44.04 sqft.

Eww Math

Edit: On a side note: Why does it even need that much space anyway? If its recommended the person sits most of the time, can someone tell me why it needs so much more space? At least the vive is room scale so are there games on the psvr that will also make you move around and etc? Cause the Vive requires like 4 motion trackers where as the pseye is just a single one so how accurate is it?

Listen here you! I am a dork! This is all I have!

Uhh...is this actually something the gaming community is debating?

I just thought of something. When I played Thumper with PSVR it was in this dinky little press booth that was maybe 4X6 and I could have touched the camera if I wanted to.

I've seem debates over whether it's actually the required space, and how big of a deal it would be if it is. But I haven't seen anyone point out yet that it's actually incorrect.

BOLD1 - Unsure how you calculated this. Tech specs for the PS4 Eye give an 85° viewing angle.
L_1 = 3.1/(cos(42.5)) = 4.2
A_1 = 6.2x4.2/2 = 13.0 ft^2

BOLD2 - You didn't take into account the 2ft distance of the PS Eye to the play area.
L_2 = 9.8 - (4.2-2) = 7.6
A_2 = 6.2x7.6 = 47.1 ft^2

A_Total = 60.1 ft^2

It's because  60 square feet is considered bad so the defense force has to step in and make it 27% less bad.