PlayStation VR Is In A League Of Its Own, Says Developer

Alessio Palumbo

The advent of Virtual Reality is closer than ever, with Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive and PlayStation VR all positioned to launch in the next few months. Blair Renaud, CEO of IRIS VR and former Technical Director at Rockstar Games, has submitted a Reddit post providing his own opinions after working on games supporting all of the devices.

The most surprising part is perhaps the significant praise of PlayStation VR,  which Renaud thinks will do really well while not being in direct competition with the others.

Playstation VR on the other hand is in a league of its own and not really in competition with the other VR hardware companies. Huge install base to start, solid consumer experience, single target for developers. I think they'll do really well. Not as sure about the Move controller, but I am quite happy that the Dual Shock 4 controller is also tracked.

Certainly, being able to target a fixed hardware will be an advantage while developing a PlayStation VR game, especially to ensure a smooth experience for the final consumer. Renaud went on to criticize some aspects of the HTC Vive, mainly the complex installation and the limits of roomscale VR.

In its current state, I really can't see a lot of people buying it. For a number of reasons. Lighthouse is pretty cool, BUT, what a pain in the butt. Moving parts, lasers, mounted to the wall cables everywhere. I can't see someone going to a website, clicking "Buy awesome VR" and having the box that showed up at my place show up at theirs. Setup of the hardware is ok for trade shows, but it more that rivals Ikea furnature in the butt pain category.

To be honest, even with the 15x15 volume on the Vive, very little of that can actually be used in my opinion. As a developer, I have to target the smallest possible space and the entire game has to work well at that level. As a consumer, how much running around will you be doing in your livingroom? Do you have a cat or a child? Do you live in a small apartment? All of these add up to roomscale not really being a thing. Maybe I'm being shortsighted.. But in the short term, I really don't see roomscale VR being the first big thing in home VR.

It's hard to disagree with him about this. Very few people will have the space and the desire to setup an entire room for this purpose. Overall, Renaud currently prefers the Oculus Rift over the HTC Vive.

Though the Rift doesn't have motion controllers in the development kit, I believe the controllers are much better suited for VR in general. I don't currently have Touch controllers, but was very impressed with the demos I tried at Occulus Connect 2. Overall, everything in the Rift CV1 is of higher quality, from stability in software to overall build quality. We'll see if that changes for the Vive before launch.

IRIS VR is working on Technolust, a VR adventure set in a Cyberpunk world inspired by the likes of Blade Runner, Robocop and Neuromancer. The project was Kickstarted in 2014 and is set for release in the first quarter of 2016 for the Oculus Rift; the team is also working on a spin-off titled Technolust Scanlines, which will be available for PlayStation VR and the HTC Vive.

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