Sony unveiled the “near finished” version of its virtual reality headset Tuesday, and announced it would be available to consumers in the first half of 2016.
The headset, named Project Morpheus, has received several upgrades since Sony first announced it at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco last year. The new display is a 1920 x 1080 OLED display, significantly greater than the 1080p predecessor.
It also boasts a 120hz refresh rate, allowing games to run up to 120 frames per second -- or double what the previous version offered.
New Morpheus prototype: OLED 1920x1080 RGB display with 120hz refresh rate. pic.twitter.com/bjMSJQPiXM— Chelsea Stark (@chelseabot) March 3, 2015
The 5.7-inch display, which is larger than the previous model, has a 100-degree field of view and a 18 millisecond refresh rate. The display itself can be slid in and out as you wear the headset. Sony Entertainment Worldwide President Shuhei Yoshida said this would be useful so you could take a break to see the world around you.
The headset itself now has nine blue LED lights surrounding the faceplate and headband, which the PlayStation camera will use for positional tracking.
Yay, @yosp gives a shout-out to four-eyes, saying you can still wear glasses with Morpheus (as you can Oculus and Gear VR.)— Chelsea Stark (@chelseabot) March 3, 2015
Yoshida conducted the entire 20-minute presentation before giving press access to the headset. He said Sony has spent the last year "steadily" shipping Morpheus headsets to developers and collecting their feedback. It’s a different setup from Oculus VR, which has very few restrictions on those who wanted to order a development kit.
Sony has said in the past it wants Morpheus to be “plug and play” with the PlayStation 4 console. Already the console’s controller — the DualShock 4 — and the optional camera are ready to integrate into the system.
One of Sony’s demos, for the “magic controller”, showed how the system could detect the controller position and integrate its virtual form into the game experience.
#ProjectMorpheus Launching In... pic.twitter.com/iyW6oAMAPJ— Adam Boyes (@amboyes) March 3, 2015