Knitemare said:
So, you seem like the one who have tried the most VR games. What can you tell about the grpahics quality? do you play on an OG PS4 or a PRO?. A month ago, i was between jumping from my 60" Full HD Samsung Tv to a 4k 65" Sony TV, or get a PSVR. I got the TV, but now I want to know if itd be worth it to get a PSVR |
I bought a ps4 pro on release, had been gaming extensively on psvr since its release a month earlier.
The graphics quality varies. The perceived resolution is a lot lower than on a screen and detail is toned back, most notably in DriveClub VR. However most games look surprisingly good and you forget about the low resolution thanks to stereoscopic 3D enhancing the view. Brighter more colorful games look best. The darker the game the more you start to notice the screendoor effect, although it's very well hidden in psvr. Thumper is pretty dark for example, no screendoor effect visible. Yet wih very dark scenes in Until dawn Rush of Blood you'll start noticing the texture overlaying the screen.
The colors that the RGB OLED screen produces are excellent. A lot better than what my 1080p projector can produce and it makes games like Rez Infinite, Thumper and Pinball FX2 really shine. Thumper, SuperHyperCube, Hypervoid, Holoball look very hypnotic on psvr thanks to the color reproduction of psvr.
Note that resolution varies between psvr titles. The headset is 1080p yet not all games make full use of that. The rendered image gets warped to look correctly in the headset, meaning more screen pixels are used for the center of the image than the edges. So if a game renders in 1080p, part of the center of the image will be upscaled, while the edges are downscaled. You get the best result from downsampling the entire image, which means the game has to render at greater than 1080p for the center. PS4 pro has HW support for multi resolution rendering for VR, but I don't know if any game uses that yet.
Talking about the pro, some games get a big boost, most games look the same. The biggest notable boost is for Robinson: The Journey
Screenshots can't show how it looks in VR, yet you can see it's sharper on psvr. The difference is much more pronounced in the headset.
Other games that benefit are Bound (bit cleaner and extra lighting effects) although that already looked really good on the base ps4.
Trackmania Turbo (40 VR tracks) runs at 120fps on the pro.
DriveClub VR has some extra effects enabled on the pro (reflections on the steering wheel for example) yet no detail or resolution boost.
RIGS renders at a higher resolution on the pro for sharper visuals.
Again hard to show on screenshots, especially since it has been converted twice, once from render target to PSVR, then one eye back to 960x720 for a compressed screenshot.
VR is a lot more than the image quality above suggests though. Yeah it looks like that if you play on the virtual screen floating in front of you. As soon as it switches to VR you're in a different world. It still blows me away when Bound (that launched in 2D) makes the switch to VR. Then when it switches back to 2D when you active the build in photo mode it instantly kills any desire to take a screenshot. That's the most frustrating part, you can't take VR screenshots :/ Even if you could it probably wouldn't work anyway as it's the same as taking a picture in the real world, it doesn't compare. 360 videos, 3D or not, are the weakest part of VR. Lateral head movement is just as important as rotation to immerse yourself in the world.
The best things are, again color reproduction, no perceivable input lag, 120hz head movement correction, 60fps locked frame rate. Headtracking works really well as an input, some of the races in Eagle flight would not be possible with any other control method.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tt-plRlXA4
Unfortunately compressed to 720p at 30fps, not representitive of actual gamplay experience, but only way to record it.
Another example, Pinball FX2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KfHM7hy8YQ
It doesn't show the glow of the colors in the headset, the best part of pinball in VR, no display lag and look at it from any angle you want.
(Video capture also cuts off the bottom part converting it to 16:9)
Another one where input lag is vitally important, Thumper
Just as in DriveClub VR it's much easier to judge speed and distance in VR with things coming at you
Here's that horrible looking DriveClub btw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBSbKmBU6mQ&t=56s
Really doesn't look that bad once you get into it, and that I did. Played it for 2 moths again until TLG broke my 4th time addiction to DC.
Here's one of the best looking demos on PSVR, COD: Jackal Assault
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph64YlRcHMg
And this is one of the worst (resolution wise) Here they lie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMtPo8qBBvI
Still a vey mesmerizing experience I played through twice back to back.
The town section above and later sneaking through the village was amazing.
In the end, yes it's a lot like going back to ps3/360 level graphics. Except it's fully immersive, all around you, in full 3D. It really feels like everything is there and solid. I have tried to lean on virtual surfaces many times lol. It's a new way to experience gaming and the next step after going with a 1080p projector and full surround sound system. A lot cheaper than that too. Going back to the projector feels really restrictive now. Flat, much less sense of scale and that narrow fov making it a lot harder to stay aware of your surroundings in games. But, it is easier on the eyes to read text on the projector.
It's not perfect, but Resident Evil Beginning hour demo looked great, played great, felt amazing. Played it through 4 times. Couple more days for the real thing :)
