PlayStation VR is different — there's practically no screen-door effect even though the display's resolution is lower than Rift's and Vive's. How is that possible? Let's explore the screen-door effect and how Sony managed to remove it from their upcoming foray into virtual reality.

Screen-door effect: that dreaded grid between you and losing your life to virtual reality. OK, maybe that's a bit drastic, but anyone who has tried VR knows what we're talking about.

To put it simply, screen-door effect (SDE) is a grid of fine lines you sometimes see when you have your face in VR; it happens with all current versions of VR, incuding Vive, Rift, and Gear VR.

That grid is actually the space between pixels — that's how close your eyeballs are to the display. You can't see those lines if you, say, mash your phone against your face because your eyes go out of focus.

With VR optics, however, your eyes don't go out of focus and the pixels become apparent. It's actually pretty cool if you think about it, at least until it removes you from the immersive qualities of VR. That's a big no-no for every VR Head.

Why should you care about screen-door effect?

Imagine walking around every day wearing a beekeeper's hat and mask. While it wouldn't be a nuisance for only a few minutes and would be quite welcome if you were actually working with bees, going about daily activities, like working in an office, would become quite tiresome.

This is essentially why you should worry about SDE. Gamers know how long they can extend their gaming sessions — why would they want to look through a grid of lines while they play? Not to mention how working on a computer within VR, using apps like BigScreen or Virtual Desktop, becomes quite tiresome after awhile.

Right now spending long periods of time in VR is novel, thus people put up with SDE. In the future, however, there will need to be a complete removal of SDE if VR is to be adopted by the masses.

Screen-door effect has already been reduced drastically — anyone who used the Oculus Rift DK1 knows what I'm talking about. It was hard to see much else for the screen door, but, again, it was so cool it didn't really matter.

Reducing SDE has apparently come even further, as is evident in PlayStation's first foray into VR.

Why does PlayStation VR have no screen door?