Ever since the Playstation was first launched – if, like myself, you’re old enough to remember it, you may pause a moment here to consider your own age and mortality – Sony has been in the business of reinventing gaming. They often followed the Steve Jobs mantra of pushing through a vision that showed consumers what it is that they wanted, rather than waiting for people to start asking for it.

Ever since the Playstation was first launched, Sony has been in the business of reinventing gaming.
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The same seems to be the case with VR. In spite of all the investment from companies such as Oculus, the PSVR is the only hardware that has come even close to tapping that elusive jackpot of mass consumer adoption. They sold over 3 million headsets so far, and although they did have to drop its price to $200 in order to achieve those numbers, it does show that there is an appetite in the gaming community for immersive technology that manages to hit the sweet spot.

Fast-paced, graphics-rich longer games require fast GPU and no lag, otherwise you’ll just get a lot of queasy and frustrated gamers
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And with most headsets on the market now veering away from cabled tethering, that future sweet spot is increasingly looking wireless. Sony seems to think so too, if a newly uncovered patent is anything to go by.

Although these things are always caveated by the fact that companies file hundreds of patents on a routine basis that never make et to prototype stage – much less a fully-fledged commercial product – this particular one is noteworthy in the level of detail it offers, going into extensive detail about solutions it has explored in attempting to remove the bulky cable that connects the current version of the PSVR to the console.

In spite of all the investment from companies such as Oculus, the PSVR is the only hardware that has come even close to tapping that elusive jackpot of mass consumer adoption
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The patent suggests that the setup would include a breakout box to detect the position of the user in relation to the machine so it could adjust Wi-Fi signals accordingly
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So, to be clear, we’re still talking about a tethered headset, because the processing power would still reside within the Playstation unit rather than the HMD, but the connection between the two would be wireless.

Easier said than done… This isn’t your regular video streaming of course. We’re talking about enormous amounts of data being refreshed at insane rates. And any glitch would be literally in the user’s face. It’s a tricky balance to strike, to say the least, as compromising on performance is not something you can get away with for the sort of content PSVR is peddling. Fast-paced, graphics-rich longer games require fast GPU and no lag, otherwise you’ll just get a lot of queasy and frustrated gamers.

As Jeremy Horwitz explains in this Venturebeat article,

“On paper, the 60GHz signal should have the bandwidth, latency, and reliability to work by itself, but in real-world use of VR headsets, 60GHz signals are more easily obstructed by objects and more directionally dependent than lower-bandwidth 5GHz signals. In the patent, Sony pairs 60GHz WiGig with 5GHz Wi-Fi to guarantee its headset will always get a signal, shifting from higher to lower frequencies (and bandwidth) based on where the user is moving in the room.”

The patent suggests that the setup would include a breakout box to detect the position of the user in relation to the machine so it could adjust Wi-Fi signals accordingly. Whatever solution they settle upon in the end, however, Sony definitely isn’t ready to give up on consumer VR, and to be honest, I wouldn’t bet against them being first to the post in getting there.

Tech Trends’  Virtual Reality Consultancy services offers support for companies looking to enhance brand strategy with immersive technologies such as Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality

Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. You can follow @alicebonasio on Twitter, connect with her on LinkedIn or subscribe to her Inside VR/AR Newletter for all the latest curated immersive news.  

The post Could Sony’s Next Headset Finally Crack the VR Gaming Market? appeared first on Tech Trends.

It’s February 2^nd, so of course that means Groundhog Day. In homage to the greatest movie ever made, Sony Pictures Virtual Reality – the VR arm of Sony Pictures Entertainment – has developed a virtual reality game in partnership with MWM Immersive and Tequila Works that puts you in a Punxsutawney time loop.

It’s February 2nd, so of course that means Groundhog Day
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In Groundhog Day: Like Father Like Son, you’ll play as the charming but arrogant Phil Connors Jr.
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In Groundhog Day: Like Father Like Son, you’ll play as the charming but arrogant Phil Connors Jr., who grew up in the shadow of his father — a man who spent a lifetime repeating a single day until he had made it perfect. But for Phil Jr., today is the worst day of his life. He’s trapped back home in Punxsutawney, the small town he thought he’d escaped, where he can’t even get a decent cappuccino — and he’s going to have to repeat the day over and over, until he learns the true value of friends and family.

In the era of “Bandersnatch,” this is SPVR’s first foray into using branching narratives and interactive storytelling to drive an immersive VR game. It’s being developed by Tequila Works, a Madrid-based video game developer that has created award-winning games like Deadlight, RiME and The Invisible Hours.

this is SPVR’s first foray into using branching narratives and interactive storytelling to drive an immersive VR game
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“Like we did in The Invisible Hours, we are working with facial and motion capture artists to create a unique, immersive experience,” says Raul Rubio CEO and Creative Director, Tequila Works. “For this VR project, we wanted to go a step further by making the player an active, disruptive element in the story, giving them more narrative choices to have a key influence on the storyline. Not only will the player have a much stronger sense of physical interactivity, but a deeper emotional connection to the non-playable characters. It looked like the perfect scenario to create a unique experience of intertwined stories, with the player fully embedded in timeline choices. After all, time loops are like being trapped in a videogame!”

“This game contains a time loop mechanic with multiple branching narratives, as well as individual meaningful stories that we can build upon. It also includes the same dark humor of the original film, letting us play around with the inherent instinct of every VR player to mess with everything around them. James Siciliano of Rick and Morty and Joshua Rubin of Telltale lent their expertise to help us build this original story from the world of the beloved movie. We have developed an ever-changing experience through deep branching narrative gameplay and full interaction with all NPCs.”

Because what would you do with eternity if there were no tomorrow?
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Tech Trends’  Virtual Reality Consultancy services offers support for companies looking to enhance brand strategy with immersive technologies such as Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Rise and Shine Campers! appeared first on Tech Trends.