Rumour: Sony Targeting AAA Titles for Stunning Next-Gen PS5 VR Headset

Sony is eager to propel virtual reality into a new era, as it targets AAA content for its next-gen PSVR headset, which sounds both incredible and seriously expensive. As part of a developer presentation earlier in the week – which we can corroborate did take place – the Japanese giant introduced its new technology to major studios around the globe.

Many of the details coming out of the event have been reported before: the headset features Fresnel OLED screens (not Samsung) with 2000×2040 resolution per eye, although there is now talk of HDR, which should help with contrast and colour clarity. The field-of-view is 110-degrees – an increase of 10-degrees on the existing PSVR headset – and it has haptic feedback built in to help reduce motion sickness.

Research has proven that mapping a slight vibration to, for example, footsteps can “trick” the ear canal into thinking that you’re walking, which in turn can help to reduce that lurching feeling that’s common during virtual reality locomotion. Don’t expect the headset to buzz like crazy – this should be a more subtle feature to help ground you in the experience.

Perhaps most exciting is the continued talk of foveated rendering. This technology uses eye-tracking to detect where you’re looking and divert computational power to that part of the scene. The theory is that anything in your peripheral vision doesn’t need to be rendered at full resolution, thus reducing the strain on the PlayStation 5 hardware and allowing developers to squeeze more out of it.

There’s more, though: it looks like Sony is also using something called Flexible Scaling Resolution, which sounds a little bit like an upscaling solution – again, built with reducing resources while maintaining good image quality. Put all of this together – including the high-resolution, HDR screens – and in theory we should end up with much, much better looking games.