Sony's Project Morpheus Asks That You Take the Red Pill

Virtual Reality Gaming is a hot topic these days. Nintendo, Sega, and many others were trying to bring Lawnmower Man tech to our living rooms in the 90's... but without success. Then, two years ago, Kickstarter and a guy named Palmer Luckey rekindled the VR dream using modern components. After raising $2.4 million on Kickstarter, the Oculus Rift secured over $100 million in funding, as well as snagging John Carmack as their CTO.

VR was the next big thing, so naturally console makers could smell the money. Both Sony and Microsoft were quick to mimic Nintendo's successful motion controls, so it was expected we would be seeing their answers to the Oculus. Sony's answer was revealed yesterday in the form of Project Morpheus... but a half-assed cash in this is not. Sony is not only a console developer, they make televisions... so they know a thing or two about displays and optics. In fact, Sony has had a $1,000 wearable HDTV headset on the market for a while now.

Rather than just slapping a PS4 logo on that headset, some serious R&D is going into Project Morpheus. There are LEDs on the front of the headset that the PlayStation 4 Camera uses to track your head movement. Project Morpheus is also reported to suffer from less motion blur than the Oculus, greatly reducing the risk of motion sickness. Also Project Morpheus still displays an image to the television screen while in use, so other people can observe or participate in asynchronous gameplay. There is no price or announced games supporting the headset, but it is currently being demoed at GDC on a build of SquareEnix's Thief, and Eve Valkyrie.. which is surprising, considering that Oculus has been a development partner on the PC version of that title.

Speaking of the Oculus Rift, in a totally not in any kind of reactionary sense, announced that their next round of dev kits will be shipping out in July. Dev Kit 2 can be pre-ordered now for $350 and is said to be about on par with Project Morpheus... even including a similar camera for head tracking.

Sony has definitely been working on the tech for a while, and unveiled a large list of devlopment partners. They already have VR support in the latest versions of Unreal Engine, Unity, and CryEngine. It is safe to assume that Driveclub was delayed from being a PS4 launch title to add VR support... Gran Turismo 7 is also a shoe-in. It's not too much of a stretch to even think perhaps Ubisoft delayed their next-gen racer The Crew, when approached with early VR prototypes late last year.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft has their own VR technology in the works... it wouldn't be surprising if that is shown at E3. Valve also added a Virtual Reality Mode to the latest Steam beta client update. Valve has also been working on a VR headset of their own, as well as assisting in the development of the Oculus Rift.

So it seems the entire industry has caught VR fever (except for those weirdos at Nintendo) and whether you like it or not, it is coming to your console or PC. Whenever a technology can create a new genre of porn... we know we're on the right track.