Things have been heating up in the VR world for some time now, what with the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift already household names in the VR gaming market and now PlayStation VR
The Oculus Rift, funded through KickStarter and then purchased by Facebook, has been under development for a long time now. This was the first VR headset to really prove that it could be taken seriously.
On the other hand HTC’s Vive is rapidly proving to be the weapon of choice for anyone wanting to venture into the VR world. The differences between these two big hitters isn’t the resolution or the obvious design differences but instead how HTC’s Vive separates itself from the Oculus Rift is the room-scale tracking system it uses and the motion controllers that are bundled with the Vive. This enables you to lean, jump, lay, crouch, walk around the room or whatever else you may fancy doing so. This allows full, immersive gameplay, whereas this cannot be done with the Oculus Rift.
At least not until now, however, as Oculus is planning to add room-scale VR to its Rift product by the end of the year. These extras that will be required have no confirmed price as of yet but Oculus have released an image of these components that are essentially two motion controllers and two room laser tracking boxes, much the same as the Vive setup.
Now here comes a new contender in the shape of Sony’s PlayStation VR, also known simply as PSVR. This headset comes at an advantage as many people already own over 50% of the hardware needed to use the PSVR. This system requires the obviously essential PS4 and the PlayStation camera along with the PS Move controllers. These are items that many PS4 gamers already own, so it further reduces the final price to experience VR gaming with PSVR. Yes the PSVR has a slightly lower resolution than both the Rift and the Vive headsets, but the PSVR unit is half the price of the two other competitors on the market. Titles already lining up to support the PSVR include: Batman: Arkham VR, EVE: Valkyrie, and Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. These titles may pull even more gamers towards the PSVR on its UK release on October 13th.
It is certainly an exciting time to be a fan of VR gaming, and with what PlayStation are offering it may be a good idea to consider this newest addition to the VR marketplace.
