5 ms·

That's an 8 millisecond frame time! I've seen physics simulations that take longer, never mind graphics intensive systems like post-processing (think Depth-of-F

That's an 8 millisecond frame time! I've seen physics simulations that take longer, never mind graphics intensive systems like post-processing (think Depth-of-Field, Tonemapping, 'HDR'/Bloom). I'm skeptical at how this will affect the quality of upcoming VR games since less time to render generally means a scene that is less photorealistic. Then again, maybe the immersion (presence) factor will overcome the graphical drop in quality?

teej 11y ago
Photo realism isn't going to happen in the first generation. Game developers are going to have to be creative in art direction and gameplay instead. And for games that do this well you won't ever notice a drop in quality. To me, that's one of the most fascinating things about games. Breakout hits make the right trade offs to push the platform further than you thought it could go. This stands true since games were put on computers.
- rubber_duck 11y ago
  And also stuff that's not games (like say interactive stores, presentations, etc.) can easily hit that frame rate because of simpler scenes
- mortenjorck 11y ago
  At this point, photorealism isn't so much a question of hardware limitations as one of scene complexity and interactivity. If you have a simple enough subject to start with, and bake enough lighting and shadow mapping into the textures, you can make a photorealistic scene on even previous-generation console hardware. Once you start adding more objects, and allowing more things to move, you start needing to calculate more in real time, and you need more processing and rendering power. A room with a table and a teapot could probably be made photorealistic on a PS3, even at 90 FPS. A densely populated street with moving cars and pedestrians, however, would have to be fairly visually abstracted to hit that target even on a PS4.
Dylan16807 11y ago
It's okay if the physics run at 30fps, the key is that head movement is instantly tracked with a new frame. It'll be interesting to see what quality the PS4 can support on this, but we already know good games are possible with simpler graphics.
- Caprinicus 11y ago
  So you're saying we can't tie physics to the framrate?
  - setra 11y ago
    you should never tie physics to frame rate.
EpicEng 11y ago
The refresh rate does not necessarily match 1:1 with the frame rate. You can display the same frame multiple times, and this is actually what Sony is doing.
seanwilson 11y ago
> I'm skeptical at how this will affect the quality of upcoming VR games since less time to render generally means a scene that is less photorealistic. Then again, maybe the immersion (presence) factor will overcome the graphical drop in quality? For now, by definition VR graphics (which mandate high FPS, high resolution, rendering for each eye) are always going to be behind state of the art graphics for non-VR games. Personally, I find the idea of non-photorealistic VR environments much more interesting as well.
rybosome 11y ago
They compensate for this with reprojection. If the off board hardware hasn't received a new frame within 8 milliseconds of a move event, they reproject the existing frame moved over by the delta of the move event. I assume the thinking is that you're mostly focusing on one spot, so this ends up "moving" correctly even if the image as a whole isn't quite right (edges cut off or whatever).
- cubehouse 11y ago
  This is mostly correct. The games actually get a choice about how they want to render Most games will choose to render at 60fps, the game reports this to the OS and then the headset will know to reproject between each frame, so the game gets plenty of time to get the next actual frame ready. Some games will do 120fps though, not sure who will pull that off voluntarily though!!!
  - Narishma 11y ago
    I believe reprojection is always active on the PSVR, whether you're rendering at 60, 90 or 120 fps.
baxter001 11y ago
Most pixel shader post-processing doesn't work too well with VR to start with, certainly any current implementations will look a little freaky when viewed through two eyes depending on shortcuts that are only convincing from a single camera perspective.
TrevorJ 11y ago
I think the smart move for the time being for VR is to put realism to the side in favor of strongly art-directed stylized content that focuses on the strengths that the platform has right now and worry about realism later. I think films are a great example of demonstrating that realism =/= immersion. Movies like Lego Movie, The Incredibles, etc can be just as immersive as live action. The secret sauce isn't realism, it's choosing the right style for the content, gameplay and theme you are going for.

teej 11y ago

Photo realism isn't going to happen in the first generation. Game developers are going to have to be creative in art direction and gameplay instead. And for games that do this well you won't ever notice a drop in quality. To me, that's one of the most fascinating things about games. Breakout hits make the right trade offs to push the platform further than you thought it could go. This stands true since games were put on computers.

rubber_duck 11y ago
And also stuff that's not games (like say interactive stores, presentations, etc.) can easily hit that frame rate because of simpler scenes
mortenjorck 11y ago
At this point, photorealism isn't so much a question of hardware limitations as one of scene complexity and interactivity. If you have a simple enough subject to start with, and bake enough lighting and shadow mapping into the textures, you can make a photorealistic scene on even previous-generation console hardware. Once you start adding more objects, and allowing more things to move, you start needing to calculate more in real time, and you need more processing and rendering power. A room with a table and a teapot could probably be made photorealistic on a PS3, even at 90 FPS. A densely populated street with moving cars and pedestrians, however, would have to be fairly visually abstracted to hit that target even on a PS4.

Dylan16807 11y ago

It's okay if the physics run at 30fps, the key is that head movement is instantly tracked with a new frame. It'll be interesting to see what quality the PS4 can support on this, but we already know good games are possible with simpler graphics.

Caprinicus 11y ago
So you're saying we can't tie physics to the framrate?
- setra 11y ago
  you should never tie physics to frame rate.

EpicEng 11y ago

The refresh rate does not necessarily match 1:1 with the frame rate. You can display the same frame multiple times, and this is actually what Sony is doing.

seanwilson 11y ago

> I'm skeptical at how this will affect the quality of upcoming VR games since less time to render generally means a scene that is less photorealistic. Then again, maybe the immersion (presence) factor will overcome the graphical drop in quality? For now, by definition VR graphics (which mandate high FPS, high resolution, rendering for each eye) are always going to be behind state of the art graphics for non-VR games. Personally, I find the idea of non-photorealistic VR environments much more interesting as well.

rybosome 11y ago

They compensate for this with reprojection. If the off board hardware hasn't received a new frame within 8 milliseconds of a move event, they reproject the existing frame moved over by the delta of the move event. I assume the thinking is that you're mostly focusing on one spot, so this ends up "moving" correctly even if the image as a whole isn't quite right (edges cut off or whatever).

cubehouse 11y ago
This is mostly correct. The games actually get a choice about how they want to render Most games will choose to render at 60fps, the game reports this to the OS and then the headset will know to reproject between each frame, so the game gets plenty of time to get the next actual frame ready. Some games will do 120fps though, not sure who will pull that off voluntarily though!!!
- Narishma 11y ago
  I believe reprojection is always active on the PSVR, whether you're rendering at 60, 90 or 120 fps.

baxter001 11y ago

Most pixel shader post-processing doesn't work too well with VR to start with, certainly any current implementations will look a little freaky when viewed through two eyes depending on shortcuts that are only convincing from a single camera perspective.

TrevorJ 11y ago

I think the smart move for the time being for VR is to put realism to the side in favor of strongly art-directed stylized content that focuses on the strengths that the platform has right now and worry about realism later. I think films are a great example of demonstrating that realism =/= immersion. Movies like Lego Movie, The Incredibles, etc can be just as immersive as live action. The secret sauce isn't realism, it's choosing the right style for the content, gameplay and theme you are going for.