How PS4 will power Project Morpheus

Project Morpheus creator Richard Marks discusses how Sony's foray into virtual reality will work with PlayStation 4 and its peripherals to create an optimal VR experience.

Ozzie Mejia

March 26, 2014 4:00 PM

Sony grabbed a lot of people's attention when the company announced plans at last week's Game Developers Conference to enter the virtual reality space with Project Morpheus. The peripheral is currently in its prototype stage, but creator Richard Marks took some time to discuss how the product will ultimately work with PS4 to deliver an optimal virtual reality experience.

"PlayStation 4 is one of the reasons that we can actually do this now, because the graphics horsepower it takes to drive a virtual reality kind of experience is pretty significant," creator Richard Marks told GamerHub TV. "It would have been hard to do earlier and, also, we needed the tracking technology and display technology to be at a certain point. So PlayStation 4 is the graphics driver."

Marks goes on to describe Morpheus as it's currently constituted, which includes gyroscopes and accelerometers within the unit. It also includes a camera to help track the LEDs on the front of the unit to help monitor movement. Combining the camera's trackers with Morpheus' internal sensors allow for the PS4 to create a tracking experience.

For more on Project Morpheus, including how PlayStation Move controllers work with the headset, check out the full video below.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?

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Shacknews

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March 26, 2014 4:00 PM

Ozzie Mejia posted a new article, How PS4 will power Project Morpheus.

Project Morpheus creator Richard Marks discusses how Sony's foray into virtual reality will work with PlayStation 4 and its peripherals to create an optimal VR experience.
- thejay247
  
   reply
  March 26, 2014 4:06 PM
  
  So have they said if this will be PS4 only?
  - thejay247
    
     reply
    March 26, 2014 4:07 PM
    
    Referring to if PC users can use it also.
  - Proven28
    
     reply
    March 26, 2014 5:58 PM
    
    I believe they said that it will be PS4 only for now.
- Beady
  
   reply
  March 26, 2014 4:16 PM
  
  Seems like marketing hype. Carmack already warned about expecting a console to have the power to provide 1080p at a constant 60fps, it's hardly something this new generation is going to be doing, at least with the more graphically advanced titles.
  - MamiyaOtaru
    
     reply
    March 26, 2014 6:13 PM
    
    He also said he thought it could be done at PS3 level graphical fidelity, which really isnt too bad
    - radula
      
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      March 27, 2014 6:31 AM
      
      Punchout! isn't that graphically intensive.
    - at0micgarden
      
       reply
      March 27, 2014 7:01 AM
      
      Eh, he said any game that ran at 1080p/60 on PS3 would run the same on Morpheus. But that's like 6 games, and most were PS2 ports.
  - jcupitt
    
     reply
    March 27, 2014 6:55 AM
    
    They have a set of morpheus demos they are showing which all do 1080p60 and supposedly look pretty nice. I wonder about latency though, they were careful not to put any numbers on what they've been able to achieve.
    
    They need a lower persistence display too, by the sounds of it.
  - jcupitt
    
     reply
    March 27, 2014 7:09 AM
    
    Also, I wonder if that's right? Carmack said:
    
    Calibrate PS4 VR expectations: a game that ran 60 fps on PS3 could be done in VR (stereo 1080 MSAA low latency 60 fps) on PS4.
    
    But Morpheus isn't 2 x 1080p (is that what he means?), it's a single 1080p video stream with the left side going to the left eye and the right side to the right eye.
    - Sailor of Fortune
      
       reply
      March 27, 2014 9:41 AM
      
      It's not one stream, it ends up as one effectively that you see buts it's two images one for each eye. It's basically needing to take two different halves of 1080p renderings on the same hardware. It's like needing two cameras to take 3D imagery not converting a single camera into 3D (or using one camera to do the work of two back and forth). It's not as 50/50 as it sounds. The PS4 is many times more powerful than the PS3 so it should be able to handle 3D processing at that level as well as needing to maintain the framerate. It's why the PC needs to be beefy to make OR work it's best and the current specs doesn't meet the ideal specs of high resolution and high framerate.
      - Early_Grayce
        
         reply
        April 1, 2014 9:39 PM
        
        jcupitt is saying that each eye only sees half of the 1080p real estate so it doesn't need to have two 1080p streams being rendered at once which is 960x1080 rather than each at 1920x1080.