Is virtual reality just hype?

VIRTUAL reality has never before been so, well, real – but is it worth all the hype? Check out the latest prototypes.

I STRAPPED on two new VR headset prototypes at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco recently: the Vive from HTC and Valve, and Project Morpheus from Sony. Virtual reality has never before been so … real.

They are competitors in a growing field that includes Facebook’s Oculus prototypes and Samsung Gear VR, which runs on Oculus technology. (A fifth potential competitor, Microsoft’s Holo­Lens augmented-reality headset, was announced earlier this year and could be used for gaming. Even Google is considering getting into the game.) I’ve worn all of the top headsets in the past year, so I could tell, trying out Vive and Morpheus, how much progress is being made in VR.

Every aspect of Morpheus is an improvement on an earlier prototype that I used at GDC last year.

Sony added extra light-emitting diodes to improve motion tracking. It also swapped a backlit LCD display for an OLED panel, which can turn individual pixels on and off as needed in milliseconds. Both changes help cut down on latency, the ability of what’s on screen to keep up with your movements in the real world. That’s a culprit of VR motion sickness.

The new Morpheus prototype uses a 1080p display for each eye, with a refresh rate of 120 times a second. Last year’s model had a 720p display rendering games at 60 frames per second. The added speed and higher resolution made for richer, smoother, more natural-looking graphics. It uses an accessory PlayStation 4 camera to track motion using light panels built into the headset and the PlayStation’s controllers.

My favourite Sony demo, called London Heist, was like living out a scene from a Guy Ritchie movie. A digital doppelganger of Jason Statham flicked a cigarette in my face as I sat in a dark, abandoned building. He handed me a smartphone, which I was able to grab and hold to my ear using Sony’s Move motion controller.

Another scene involved a lib­rary shootout in an old Victorian home. I picked up a gun and fired at four men across the room. Sony’s wireless Move controllers handled the gunplay quickly and precisely. The experience was as much fun as a console game. But instead of sitting on my couch, or only waving my arms with a motion controller, I was in that world.

Where Sony set itself apart was in ergonomics. The Morpheus sits on top of your head like a hat, rather than strapped around your head like a headband. Attached to the crown is the screen, which you can press right up against your face or leave at a slight distance so you can see your hands.

The weight was distributed around my head rather than hanging over my eyes and nose like overweight ski goggles.

HTC’s Vive also uses a 1080p screen, though it has a slightly slower 90-frame-per-second display. Even so, the visuals were smooth and kept up with my head movements. Vive uses laser tracking picked up by two small infra-red cubes called bay stations that an owner would place in front of them while using the headset.

Fit-wise, HTC’s ski-goggle ­approach is quite different from Sony’s comfortable headband. It wasn’t painful. It just seems inevitable that I’d be fatigued after a couple hours of game play.

Both headsets deliver 3-D audio, simulated surround sound pumped through headphones. That added depth to the experience — sounds came from all around, matching up with the ­virtual 360-degree field of vision.

Being in a virtual world, mind you, isn’t like being in the Matrix (despite the Morpheus reference). Neither headset delivers truly photorealistic graphics. What I saw looked like a video game and that’s fine. Still, the graphics on the Vive and Morpheus were console quality and a cut above smartphone-powered headsets such as Samsung’s Gear VR. The displays were packed with pixels, though slight dotting was still visible. While not disruptive, it’s a reminder that you are indeed looking at a screen.

Virtual reality still has hurdles to clear, one of the taller ones being motion sickness. Neither Sony nor HTC claim to have found a cure. But after playing through about 20 minutes of demos on each, I wasn’t queasy or disoriented as I’ve been with other headsets in the past. It’s still pos­sible I’d get woozy if I used either headset longer, though.

Sony says Morpheus will go on sale globally in the first half of next year, playing games powered by its 20-million-unit strong Play­Station 4 console.

Pricing and launch titles have yet to be announced.

HTC is in a similar boat. The Vive, announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, will be released before the end of this year at a to-be-announced price. It will play some PC games distributed through Valve’s incredibly popular Steam platform. A new headset from Samsung using its VR technology will launch later this year.

Samsung’s Gear VR headset is available for $249 but you need a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 smartphone to use it, while LG’s VR for G3 (for its G3 smartphone) headset is available to select customers.

Despite the unknowns, the hardware is starting to feel ready for prime time. Now it’s up to the developers to show off their best ideas, so that we can tell whether virtual reality has a chance of living up to the hype.