Sony has unveiled its virtual reality headset ‘Project Morpheus’ designed to work with PS4.
Sony Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida revealed the company’s plans that put the Japanese electronics giant in direct competiton with the crowd-funded Oculus Rift device, also currently in development.
he headset, code-named Project Morpheus (after the god of dreams) has been in development for three years by an international team of Sony engineers.
“Virtual Reality is the next innovation from PlayStation that may well change the future of games,” Yoshida said. “Nothing elevates the level of immersion better than VR.” He added that VR “goes one step further than immersion to deliver presence.”
The headset will have its position and orientation tracked 100 times per second in a full 360 degrees of rotation within a three cubic meter “working volume.”
Tracking will make use of high-fidelity inertial sensors in the unit itself, tiny tracking markers on the surface of the headset, and the same stereo PlayStation Camera that tracks the DualShock 4 and PlayStation Move.
Sony noted it thinks VR as a whole needs to hit six areas to succeed: sight, sound, tracking, control, ease of use and content.
Yoshida said this is a prototype that’s far from finished, and the company is looking for help from the developer community to “innovate with us.”
The company is already working with partners like Unity, Epic, and Havok to develop virtual reality content, and it plans to create a content development and delivery system similar to what it already has in place for PlayStation.
Sony’s Anton Mikhailov explained that virtual reality could be used for more than just games, such as virtual tourism and interactive media. That being said, he admitted “games are still the best.”