Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “PSVR 2 Review: Best VR Experience I’ve had”.
Seven years ago, Sony debuted the PlayStation VR on Playstation 4. 2016. It has been a long time, but now the PlayStation 5 has its own VR accessory the PlayStation VR2. Let’S put this in perspective because VR has been here for a while and VR in 2023 is about to reinvent itself. First of all, a lot of the VR headsets that we see right now are Wireless.
Look at the meta Quest 2 and the upcoming Quest 3. Apple’s expected headset is going to go in that direction. I’M so used to wireless that it’s surprising that the PlayStation VR2 has a wire, a big, long, cable that connects to your PlayStation 5.. That could seem like a turn off, but wait there’s a lot of benefits that this headset has to offer you. Yes, it’s 550, which is the cost of a PlayStation 5 on its own, but this headset is probably the best quality VR experience at the moment that I’ve had serious, and this is why, first of all the PlayStation VR2 headset has a really nice display. It’S OLED. It’S HDR: it’s got a high resolution that feels super crisp and it makes a lot of the gaming Graphics. Look really Vivid.
Everyone who showed into the office has been really impressed. It has great black levels, it feels more vibrant as a result and because it’s Tethered to a PlayStation 5. The graphics on this are a lot better, that you’re going to get on a standalone headset.
This thing can pump out gaming Graphics that when optimized look really fantastic, there aren’t that many games right now that are super optimized and that’s something I’ll get into in a moment. But PlayStation has one horizon. Call the mountain in that game. If you get up close and look at the details in that game, it feels like you’re playing a PlayStation 5 game, but in VR it doesn’t feel like there’s any Gap in graphics anymore. That’S really cool. The other thing this has is eye tracking, which right now may feel more like a gimmick than a necessity, but it does do one thing that helps those Graphics look good and it’s called foveated rendering it’s basically looking at where your eye is and just sending the High-Res, graphics to that area, with eye tracking to potentially bring out even more detail through a PlayStation 5 to maximize gaming Graphics. There are also some ways you can actually look around and see things and select menus or even do controls like in games like res infinite, where tentacular has it too, I’m sure a lot of games are going to play around with that. It’S super cool and interesting technology, but it’s not something I’d say you necessarily need the other thing. This headset has that’s fantastic.
Are these controllers? The PlayStation sense controllers are what the PlayStation VR should have had all along. These are dedicated motion. Sensing controllers, similar to other VR headsets, two things make this really nice, though. Basically the haptics and the force feedback, the vibrating haptics and the Adaptive trigger in here are like the PlayStation dual sense controller. They have really Advanced kind of vibrational Ripple feelings, and this trigger will actually give feedback depending on what game you’re playing. So if you’re, using like a bow and arrow it’ll, actually have resistance, that’s something I haven’t seen in any other VR headset and it makes an impact when I’ve been playing a lot of the games.
So to me, these haptics on here blow the pants off other VR headsets that I’ve used they’re really lightweight too. The one thing is they don’t have a d-pad, so they’re not exactly the same as a regular PlayStation controller. So they work with VR games, but they don’t work with all of your PlayStation 5 games. Speaking of games, the game library for the PlayStation VR2 is actually pretty large at launch.
It’S like over 30 games and looks like more and more are being added, but that doesn’t mean you can play any PlayStation 5 game in VR. Obviously, although there are some games that are getting VR modes, no delete Gran, Turismo, 7 and Resident Evil Village, I played Resident Evil. Village looked awesome, haven’t played Gran Turismo 7 yet, but I’m going to soon those are ones that you probably want to pick up. I’M hoping there are going to be even more.
No Man’s sky is also one of those on the list, but you have to sort of check and seek for compatibility. The other thing that’s a bummer is if you’ve had a PlayStation VR from the past. Those older games are not automatically backwards compatible here, in fact, I tried launching them. They do not play unless the company decides to Port over a specific adaptation.
There are some games already that offer free updates or paid updates to get those games. It’S a shame, though, because there are a lot of great PlayStation VR games in the past. A lot of exclusives and I’m thinking about astrobot astrobot is an awesome little cute robot.
That would be an introduction to a lot of PlayStation, VR and PlayStation tech. It’S built into the PlayStation 5.. There was an astrobot game.
There were two of them on Playstation VR. There’S no astrobot here bring us astrobot, you know there is Horizon, call the mountain, which is good. I just expected more exclusives. Now this is coming out in February February is not exactly a holiday shopping time. Maybe this is kind of a soft launch and maybe over the course of the Year, Sony will have more exclusive games, maybe leading up to a fall release of even more hopefully with some sort of a bundle, because that gets into price on this headset it’s expensive. This is 550, even though it includes the controllers, you’re also going to need a PlayStation 5. That’S a thousand dollar plus bundle.
That is a lot of money to spend on VR something like the metaquest 2 as much as you may not like meta, or maybe you do that. Headset is four hundred dollars and it’s all inclusive and it’s pretty great. That’S what you’re going up against and it’s hard to beat that because the metaquest 2 is fully Standalone, it’s super fun, even if it is a few years old and the graphics don’t compete, it still has a really immersive experience. This needs that tether. This is about a 15 foot, cable, which is pretty good for most rooms, but I did feel this cable wearing down on my shoulder and I had to make sure I didn’t get tangled in it.
So it’s there and there are a few other things. I’M not wild about with this headset. The audio needs little dangling earbuds. Now they are included and they’re fine.
They offer 3D audio and they attach over here and you could put in your own, but the audio to me didn’t sound quite as good as I expected. It to, although, if you want an audio boost, you could use Sony’s own pulse 3D, audio headset. That goes right over your ears. That wirelessly connects to one of the USB ports on the front, and this connects to the other and it sounded great.
But you have to get that Pulse headset separately. The other thing is, this doesn’t have any built-in speakers so on the metaquest 2. You can actually hear the world around you and also hear the audio near you. You have to put these buds in your ears and then you’re going to close out the real world, which maybe you want, but you’re, not gon na, be able to hear people nearby.
These do fit over my glasses, which I love. These are the best glasses, friendly, VR headset design that I’ve seen there’s a large rubber gasket, and these wide glasses do not fit into the quest 2.. I need special dedicated glasses for that.
These are no problem for eye tracking. I need to push the headset really close to get the eye tracking to work, keep aware of that glasses owners, but I did feel the experience was great. One thing: that’s a little weird are the buttons on the bottom, which are your basic interface controls power button.
This shows you the real world when you press it using the pass-through cameras, which is something that’s common on VR like the quest 2., I found it a little hard to Fumble for this, but once you do, the black and white cameras offer a nice crisp. Look of what’s around you and that’s something you also use when you first set up the headset, the boundary setup for this. It can scan your entire room mesh it out with polygons, and then you set up a little play Space by sort of pushing in at the boundaries and crafting it to the space that you want. Really nice design and actually it’s a little bit better than what meta has on the quest too. So, would I buy this interesting question. I think it’s a lot of money to spend. I think if you already have a PlayStation 5 and you have the money to spend on VR and you’re thinking about spending, what’s going to be at least six hundred dollars or more, if you’re buying the games and everything else.
I think this is the most cinematic Vivid, VR Gaming experience. That’S out there, that’s a really high price bar, I mean even in PC, VR Gaming. You could find more affordable headsets and be able to connect them to a PC. The Quest 2 is 400. I’M not even going to include the quest Pro because that’s not really meant for everyday use, but this price is high.
Although the upcoming landscape of VR headsets are also going to have high prices, everything that we’ve seen so far has been pushing into that thousand dollar territory. Maybe this gets bundled in the future. Maybe it’s more affordable. Also, do you like the idea of sitting at home, Tethered to a VR headset with a game console as opposed to moving around that’s something you need to solve, although I will say one nice thing about this, headset being all self-contained something the original PlayStation VR was Not is that all of the equipment needed to run this is all here.
It doesn’t need an external camera. You don’t need some weird breakout box, you just need a USBC cable, and so, if you plug that into your PlayStation 5, once you’ve set it up, you don’t even need a TV. You could sit down and play games on this and kind of use it to off play games when somebody else is watching television – or maybe you don’t have a TV in the room at all – that’s kind of an interesting use case for this, because I found that The OLED display is definitely good enough for playing games on. Although for watching TV and movies, I would prefer still a regular television. So that’s PlayStation VR 2 right now and here’s the thing it’s going to keep changing right, they’re going to be a lot more games.
Really curious to see what comes out how this continues to raise the bar, and, I think, the graphics quality of this. The ability for it to push those boundaries is potentially going to change what VR becomes. But I would also wait because, because there are probably going to be a lot more headsets to come this year too .