Hands On: Sony's PlayStation VR Isn't Quite As Good As Oculus (Yet) - Wired ~ Electronic Gadgets

The author takes Sony's Project Morpheus for a test drive at GDC. Photo: Josh Valcarcel/WIRED

Having tried both Sony's new Project Morpheus virtual reality prototype for PlayStation 4 and the latest development kit from Oculus, I have to give the slight edge to the young upstarts.

For now, I mean. It's important to realize that neither of these machines, in their current forms, are going to be sold to consumers. In interviews, Oculus and Sony reps both stress that their virtual reality headsets are not ready for prime time — they just want developers to be able to work on content while the hardware is still being refined. So there is every reason to expect that both of these machines will change significantly before gamers are ever asked to buy one. Still, at the moment, the boxy, plain new Development Kit 2 from Oculus was a more refined experience than Sony's slickly designed Morpheus set.

Both sets have high-resolution displays that look significantly prettier than the first Oculus dev kit that shipped last year. But the new Oculus had a larger field of view than Sony's prototype. If you look far to the left and right on either headset, you'll just see the blackness of the plastic casing. But I perceived it as being significantly more obvious on Morpheus. After the wider field of view offered by the Rift's new devkit, Morpheus felt a bit like staring down a cardboard tube.

The first demo was EVE Valkyrie, an outer space dogfighting game. Sitting in the pilot's seat of my fighter craft, waiting for the match to start, I noticed something else that was jarring about Morpheus. I looked down expecting to see the body of a guy in a flight suit. Instead I saw a guy in a hoodie wearing my GDC badge. You can see out the bottom of Morpheus. There's a constant reminder that you are not really where you're supposed to think you are.

What surprised me is that Sony said that this was actually by design. Apparently there are two kinds of virtual reality players — those who want to be totally cut off from the real world, and those who constantly want to be able to check that the real world is still there. Sony's design teams are working on a way to accommodate both, representatives said.

Either way, all these things added up to leave me without that all-important sense of presence, of actually being there, that Sony stressed so much in its announcement of Morpheus on Tuesday. Playing EVE felt like watching Star Wars on a circular television. Going down into the ocean in a diving cage in Sony's demo "The Deep" filled me with no sense of dread.

There was one demo that got a lot closer, though. Shockingly, Sony almost didn't even have me play it, even though it was clearly the best proof of concept for its own implementation of VR.

Thankfully, some quick negotiation by a PR pro got me onto one of the demo stations "The Castle," a demo that uses the Morpheus in combination with two of Sony's PlayStation Move motion controllers. Sony released this controller, basically a souped-up Wii remote for the PlayStation 3, back in 2010. It's also compatible with PlayStation 4. The PlayStation Camera accessory for PlayStation 4 will be used to track the positioning of the Project Morpheus headset and the PlayStation Move and DualShock 4 controllers, simultaneously.

The Castle showed this in action. With Morpheus on my head, I was handed one Move controller for each hand, and instantly my two virtual hands sprung to life in front of me. Looking down, I could pick up a sword by moving my hand over it and squeezing any button on the Move. (Looking back, it didn't feel weird at all to hold the Move in my hands but have my hands empty in the virtual world, or have holding down a button with my thumb stand in for gripping something in my hand. It made sense, or at least it didn't feel wrong.)

The demo dropped a training dummy into the castle courtyard I was standing in, and the Sony reps told me to slash at it with the sword. I responded that I had no idea why they were trying to force me to be so violent. Instead I attempted to make friends with the dummy. I reached out and shook his hand. I patted him on the back. We were getting along just fine. But it was also clear that I wouldn't be allowed to proceed unless I sacrificed my new friend. I slashed at him with a sword. But I felt bad about it.

At this point, I was pretty much fully committed. I actually had to stop myself at one point — I wanted to leave the confines of the little square I was standing in, and go exploring the rest of the courtyard. I had to remind myself that in real actual life I was standing inside Sony's booth in the Moscone Center and that I couldn't just run over to the fountain behind me and jump in.

So there was that great sense of presence. I think using the two Move motion controllers to give myself hands in the real world was a major contributor to that. In "The Deep," you could see your virtual hands, but they just stayed stock still even if you swung your arms. Actually, one of my "hands" was constantly pointed forward holding a flare gun, but owning to the general jankiness of the demo and the fact that I could see out the bottom of the glasses, it looked like that arm was approximately one foot long and came out of my ribcage.

But with two working hands, the illusion was much stronger. I guess it'll be time to dust off the ol' PlayStation Move controllers, if and when Morpheus approaches an actual release date for consumers. Until then, I'll be keen to see what improvements both Sony and Oculus make to their respective works in progress.

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