Project Morpheus Preview - E3 2015

It’s easy to say that VR is the future of video games. One only needs to look at wild rise of the Oculus and Facebook’s acquisition of the company in order to see that VR technology is an intriguing path for video games. For years, games have tried to put players in the boots of combat soldiers, in the cockpits of space ships, and in the jerseys of professional athletes; VR offers a path to make that a reality.

After flirting with VR technology back in the 90’s video games had seemingly forgotten about their ambitions for a fully immersive sensory experience, but those dreams have been reignited in the past few years. Sony recently got itself into the VR race with Project Morpheus, a headset they have designed to run on the PlayStation 4 and provide a whole new experience for the players.

The latest version of the Morpheus is equipped with a 5.7-inch 1920 x 1080 resolution RGB OLED display which expands the field of view and removes motion blur. The new OLED supports 120fps output, rendering 120 images per second. An update to the PS4 will ensure that all systems can handle native 120fps when connected to Morpheus. Suffice it to say that the latest Morpheus is an impressive piece of hardware and is another evolution in the progress toward commercial VR.

When I sat down to experience the Morpheus, I was impressed by the way the system felt. I had used the Oculus about two years ago and while it’s hard to know how the hardware has evolved, the Morpheus felt considerably lighter than its competitor. With no glasses to interfere with the system, the Morpheus fit snuggly around my head without any discomfort.

The Morpheus acts almost more as sensory deprivation than a heightening of immersion. With headphones on, I could barely hear anything around me and with the goggles on I couldn’t see anything outside of the game.

To demonstrate the immersive qualities of Morpheus, Sony had built a space fighting game. With very simple controls and relatively low tech, it was far cry from games like EVE: Valkyrie which is designed to be a more realistic interpretation of spaceship dogfighting. In this game, I had to shoot blue boxes to reveal white boxes which would replenish the energy my ship was constantly consuming.

While shooting these blue boxes, turrets and a giant mechs were firing at me; also I had to dodge my way around obstacles to get these blue targets in my sights. This wasn’t a particularly large area in which to maneuver. I was simply skimming the surface of a small ship and when I got to the end I would press a button and the ship would turn around. You might be thinking that this turnaround would be a sweeping 180 turn which could give one motion sickness, but it wasn’t. With the press of a button I would suddenly be facing the other way, without any turn around animation; again dodging and firing my way forward.

You would think that a first-person VR space ship shooter would be a great way to show off VR, but I didn’t get a great sense of an improved experience. The biggest reason the game didn’t show off the technology was the fact it didn’t encourage me to look at my surroundings. Given that I was flying a ship back and forth over the same strip of space means I rarely had to check my 3 or 9 o’clock for any incoming threats. It was all very straightforward and felt like it was similar experience to what I would have had on a TV, just that my face was closer to the screen. Furthermore, VR more readily points out the bizarreness of pixelated game design. Because the experience didn’t look authentic with a bunch of giant cubes needing to be shot and returning fire, my brain didn’t feel any authenticity. Again, it was like playing any other video game, with my nose pressed against the screen.

There were moments where the tech got to be impressive. When I swooped under the legs of the giant pixelated mech turret in the middle of the ship I felt a sense of space, and the closeness of my collision. Likewise, when I would occasionally skim off the surface of the ship, I could feel that same sense of how near I was to failure. These are cool moments, but they didn’t revolutionize my feelings about the experience, and they didn’t last throughout the entire demonstration.

The next level was very similar to the first. This time nothing was shooting at me, but there were many obstacles that were between me and the blue boxes which I needed to shoot. Here the tightness of the space was harder gauge in a first-person view and I had become acquainted enough with the tech so that the near misses or collisions weren’t as impressive. After a few failures, my time was up with the Morpheus.

In the end, it’s hard to know if the technology wasn’t all that impressive or if it was the game itself which took away from the Morpheus. It’s possible that Morpheus and VR is better demonstrated with a different game which better showcases the technology, but it’s hard to speak to an experience I didn’t have.

While the Morpheus feels lighter and like a more commercially viable product to keep in a home, there are still some glaring questions about the technology which haven’t been addressed. The biggest one is how an experience which is designed to shut out the outside world could be used in applicable living situations. Whether you have roommates, a family, or even a pizza-delivery guy on the way, entertainment needs to be shut off or quickly paused to interact with your surroundings. Is this something that will be possible with VR? But perhaps, even more important is the price point and support from Sony. It’s obvious that the tech is hard to demonstrate on a stage, but how can they present it to the public at any price point when they have no viable way of showing it off?

As a commercial version of VR moves ever-closer to launch, these are questions that loom overhead. And while it’s easy to say that these questions will be addressed in the future, Sony plans to launch a commercially available version of Morpheus in the first half of 2016, so there’s not as much time as we might think.