I finished CotM, 8/10 for me.

The good: Great visuals, awesome scale, lot of interactive objects, good physics, amazing climbing, great tool set
The bad: Restricted movement while walking, very restricted combat movement, Alloy is only around for a minute, main character talks as much as Alloy while playing

It definitely has tons of wow moments. But it's a shame they went overboard worrying about 'comfort' that combat locks you into an on rails circle strafe. Which isn't comfortable at all when for example stormbirds go behind you and the rotate view is locked out :/ I can't turn 180 degrees on the couch! It also makes little sense to me as there are far wilder movements in the game than you would do in combat. It was much more fun to take out watchers in stealth sections (where you're allowed to move freely) than all the boss fights.

Anyway very solid game, but does have a lot of visible LOD transitions. It's made with Unreal engine and while the draw distance is great, the 'popping' of LOD changes becomes more and more noticeable as you progress higher and higher up the mountain. However up close everything is rock solid, everything feels and looks real. Characters even react to you trying to poke them. Cloth rendering looks very good and everything sways in the wind, foliage reacts to you, it feels real.


Then I started NMS, looks much better than on PSVR1. The dual sense controls look interesting however I didn't get far. The game started me on an extremely hazardous planet and killed me twice already while trying to set up the controls and then try to follow the 'tutorial'. So I turned the survival elements off for the moment, which seemed to break the game. Just an icon stuck in front of me telling me to point to my left wrist and nothing further. Hmm.

At least it lets you play the game as you want, turn blinders off, full movement and rotation, freedom!!! Just not sure yet about the whole point to your wrist to get the menu. Not everything has to be a gesture :/ It's cool at first, but just let me press a button if I'm going to play this for 100 hours... I closed the game since I broke the tutorial, will restart another time. I'm gonna play more RE: Village now :)

Squeezed out enough time to set up my PSVR2 tonight and give it a spin. Had a big stupid grin on my face the whole time. The headset was surprisingly light and comfortable to wear with glasses, though I'm still getting used to operating it. Tried the Star Wars demo for an hour just messing around. Glad to see I'm not too prone to motion sickness though I did start to feel uneasy after about an hour in full motion. I'll be sure to work on improving that length with time and get my sea legs. Can't wait to experience Rez again for the first time in 20 years. :)

Okay, PSVR2 is incredible. I bought GT7 with it. Now I am not a car guy. I played Need for Speed Underground like 20 years ago. And than I bought GT5 for PS3. Did not play it that much. Did not enjoy it that much either. I cant really say why GT7 is my first PSVR2 game, other than driving seems like such a natural fit for VR. You sit. You are stationary in the car while everything around you moves. The restricted field of view and the weight of the headset on your head can be compared to wearing a driving helmet (in my mind at least, never wore something like that in real life).

I am in awe! This is the best gaming experience I had in years. Finally something feels new and exciting again. Reminiscent of psvr 1 for me. But 2016 had plenty other games I very much enjoyed and lots to come. In recent years though, gaming felt stale to me. The promises of the future resulted in disappointing games. And there is not much for me to be looking forward to. This makes the arrival of PSVR2 all the more poignant: Just wow!! I guess I could only play GT7 for the rest of the year and I would be just fine with it.

It feels so real driving in GT7 with PSVR2, that this thought actually entered my mind: why don't I just become a real competitive driver? -Spoiler: I won't. And this is silly. But the excitement is real. With no story. No characters. No arcs. Things I value the highest in gaming. Just driving. To get to know how a car handles and getting the perfect turn, or driving at neck break speeds in Tokyo Speedway (or whatever it is called) is exhilarating.

I tried for a very short time the RE8 demo too. That's gonna be my next big project. I have not felt such a rush since playing RE7 on psvr1. And this is, like SvennoJ perfectly put it, like skipping a generation and going from ps1 to ps3. The nervousness and fear having to load and shoot a gun, facing an approaching monster - nothing a flat screen could ever do will ever come close to this.

I said it with the release of psvr 1 and say it again now: there will always be a time and place for flat screen games, but VR is where gaming can really break new ground. And I will be there, hoping for long-time support that is as incredible as the initial slate of PSVR2 games.

Rez was one of my favourites on psvr1. The new additions are absolutely stunning. Super cool vibes. Could not stop playing it. Almost strange that it originally came out so long ago and was not specifically designed for vr. Because it definitely feels like a new game made for vr.

The new stuff must look crazy in PSVR2. And eye-controlled shooting? It is going to be kinds of insane awesomeness.

a lot of exciting thoughts. Keep them coming guys!

Selecting dialog choices just by focusing your eyes on them is magical already. Eye controlled shooting, that's how aim assistance works in CotM :)

I spend 6 hours in VR last night, had to quit because it was 3:15 AM already. I can't remember the last time I stayed up that late playing games. (Probably with PSVR1 lol) RE Village is just so amazing to play in VR, map in right hand, flash light in the left. Quick drop the map, knife or gun out, run fuck fuck, hide reload, where did they go. Better not get close to me while playing that game, violent stabbing with the sense controller lol. Up close head shots are on a whole new level in PSVR2. So satisfying to blast them with the shotgun, then you realize they get back up, crap reload, pump, argh another one behind me :)

It gets worse, at some point your right hand gets sliced off, can't use it lol. That was hectic, getting chased by Dimitrescu in the cellars. That's one huge scary women! She might well succeed 'breaking' me before the game is over haha. Holy every encounter is so intense :) Love it.

Does the display have a variable pixel density or does foveated rendering just automatically lower resolution around the edges of the screen? I feel like I can only see things in full focus and clarity if I'm facing directly at them, regardless of where my eyes are pointed.

Depends if the game uses gaze tracking for foveated rendering. I imagine the older games might not be compatible with variable foveated rendering. It works in Kayak VR, RE Village, GT7 and CotM. Make sure gaze tracking works correctly for you, check in settings.

The resolution on the edges is lower in a physical sense as well due to pincushion distortion.

That is what a grid looks like without barrel distortion compensation to the source image.
To see things normally the headset is fed an image rendered (corrected) like this


The display itself is 'foveated' with higher density of pixels in the middle vs the edges. Gaze tracking foveated rendering goes on top of that to save resources and make it sharper where you are looking. But can only do so much when the actual perceivable dpi decreases towards the edges.

So yes, there is variable pixel density due to how a lens works

There's a few different things you might be seeing.

The panel doesn't have variable pixel density (but the lenses kind of do), but you will probably find that the further away from the center "sweet spot", you'll find that things look notably lower resolution there. Which is more due to the lenses, than the display.

You might also be seeing foveated rendering not actually be eye tracked foveated rendering. A lot of PSVR1 games would use a "fixed" foveated rendering, and have the middle of the screen higher resolution, and the edges lower resolution, but there was no eye tracking with that. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the PSVR2 games were still using that technique. 

I played No Man's Sky some more, this time starting with relaxed settings so not to die over and over trying to follow the tutorial lol. Yep it's cool, but it feels like a rushed release to say the least. Distance detail is very disappointing, like it's a straight port from PSVR1 without any upgrades to the graphics. Close up everything is sharp and clear yet aliasing is very visible around straight lines and trees further away shimmer all the time. I don't think this has any foveated rendering working yet, nor HDR.

Flight controls are pretty awful as well, almost made me nauseous trying to fly. For whatever reason you can't use the analog sticks to fly??? The right analog stick only controls rotation, you have to keep your hand on the throttle and joystick in the ship to steer. Very uncomfortable holding your hands in front of you in the air, and if you rest them on your lap tracking can get glitchy. Disappointing.

I can also use some optional input filtering for the menus. My hands aren't that steady anymore so holding up menus in front of me with my left hand, any bit of jitter in my hand gets amplified and the menu shakes about. The text is very clear to read, however now the menus jitter around making it hard to read lol.

The good bits, can run at full speed no restrictions. Using the sense controllers feels great apart from my own short comings. Playing for an hour definitely gave me the itch to keep on going for who knows how long again. But I think it's better to wait for the next patch, hopefully improving flight controls and other options as well as proper foveated rendering. It definitely works in its current state, but there is lots of room for improvement. In this case I would rather have had a paid upgrade with the kinks ironed out and full HDR foveated rendering added.