When Facebook announced they were buying Oculus VR last month, Sony Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida was excited, telling Engadget that “for me, it was a validation for VR.”
With their own Project Morpheus in the works for PS4, Shuhei explained:
We meant to validate Oculus by announcing Morpheus, and the Oculus guys knew what we were working on. I think they were waiting for us to make the announcement, so it would be Sony and Oculus together. But now Oculus being acquired by Facebook is helping to validate our efforts.
Shuhei followed this up by saying the Facebook acquisition of Oculus means “more people will know about VR!”
As we let you know previously, VR was originally planned for DriveClub, but due to it causing motion sickness, was ultimately scrapped. That sense of motion sickness or nausea is something that was prevalent in the early days of testing, as Shuhei revealed:
VR of the past, including our own prototype, has been very difficult to use in terms of getting headaches and becoming nauseated. Those early prototypes had larger latency and the positional tracking may not have worked as well. I feel really sorry for people developing VR stuff! They have to test it! With the kit we have now, what we demonstrated at GDC, I think it’s the first time we can really provide developers with something and say, ‘You can use ours, and you’ll be alright.’
Despite the improvements made so far, Shuhei said he tries to keep his play sessions under 10 minutes or so, with Sony wanting to create age guidelines and length of play guidelines for Project Morpheus, but more testing is needed right now.
Do you think the Facebook acquisition of Oculus validates VR? Let us know in the comments below.
