Sony pushes for 90FPS as Standard for VR

Sony pushes for 90FPS as Standard for VR

 

Sony deems a stable 60fps as a Minimum for VR gaming, but is pushing for 90fps to be the Standard for play as even a stable 60FPS can cause users discomfort while using VR.

These findings are very similar to the findings of Oculus and HTC/Valve, since both the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive headsets use displays which run at 90Hz, though with such a high refresh rate it can be argued that the PS4 will likely be unable to run many visually demanding games while using VR headsets, especially given how few 1080p 60FPS games that are currently available. 

 

  

 

As Sony say in the picture below “Going fast is not optional” when using VR, as a higher framerate and display refresh rate will counteract the side affects of motion sickness and other side effects of using VR. In VR you will notice the disconnect between your movement in real life and your movement in-game, so lowering the delay between action and visual response is crucial, making increasing the framerate a vital step when moving to VR.  

With both the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift using dual 1200×1080 displays, the hardware requirements of running modern games in VR are very intense, with Oculus recommending a  Intel Haswell i5, 8GB+ of ram and a Beefy GPU setup. 

Right now Playstation VR is reported to use a 1920×1080 display, which is split to 960x1080p for each eye and can run at 90Hz and 120Hz. This gives the Playstation VR headset a lower resolution, but a potentially higher max refresh rate, though it is unlikely that we will see many 120Hz games given the PS4’s low-end specs when compared to even the Oculus Rift’s minimum requirements. 

 

Below are the requirements for the Oculus Rift

• – NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or greater
• – Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
• – 8GB+ RAM
• – Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
• – 2x USB 3.0 ports
• – Windows 7 SP1 or newer

  

  

2016 is likely going to be the year that VR finally takes off, with the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive finally releasing to consumers. Sony is making great progress with their Playstation VR headset, but right now it is very concerning that they have listed a steady 60 as a minimum, regardless of the fact that the same slide says that this will cause discomfort to users. 

 

You can join the discussion on VR Headsets on the OC3D forums.