During a panel, at the Game Developer’s Conference, Sony announced and showed off their foray into Virtual Reality.  Shuhei Yoshida, President of Sony Worldwide Studious, had the honor of presenting Sony’s latest product. The device is in the prototype/dev kit stage and is currently called “Project Morpheus.” It is being developed for use with the PlayStation 4. The dev kit features a 1080p display, as well as a 90+ degree field of view. It also features forward prediction which will help get rid of latency, which is virtual reality’s biggest issue. Poor latency has led to devices like this making the player feel nauseous and motion sick, in the past.

Morpheus will seamlessly work with the PlayStation camera to track the player and is compatible with PlayStation Move, to utilize motion controls. The device is currently on display at GDC, so developers can familiarize themselves with the tech.

The device is not going to be limited to gaming either. Playstation’s, Richard Marks, the man who lead research and development on PlayStation Move and the PlayStation Eye is currently working with NASA on the “Mars Demo” which simulates how it feels to be on said planet. Sony wants this product to birth a “mass market industry.”

No release date or price point is set for the device but Sony has confirmed to The Verge, that it will not be released to consumers in 2014. Sony plans to make a software development kit available to game creators’ soon.

My Opinion: 

I have been excited for Virtual Reality after seeing various people showcasing the Oculus Rift via YouTube. The only thing holding me back has been the lack of funds to build a PC. The key to this device will be how well it works. how low can they get the latency down and the price point. Personally, I’d be willing to pay no more than $400 for this, given it has enough games and experiences available.

The future is here .

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Jason Patrick is a review/editorial writer for MONG, who lives within the PlayStation ecosystem. You can follow him on Twitter.

Sources: IGN & The Verge