As hardware, Project Morpheus doesn’t wow me as much as the Oculus Rift has. Having it on my head is very comfortable—it’s light and well padded—but it doesn’t block out the rest of the world as much as I’d like. My eyes also tire out quickly when wearing it, and I’m not yet convinced Sony’s adequately solved the technical issues that contribute to motion sickness. (I left my E3 appointment feeling pretty ill, unfortunately.)

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But when it comes to software, Project Morpheus definitely showed me this week just how wide the spectrum of VR content will be—I also left my appointment excited about the types of games we may soon see. Far and away, the highlight was Impulse Gear’s FPS tech demo, where I shot things on an alien planet with an actual physical (albeit plastic) gun. The peripheral fully controlled my movement and my virtual weapon: I moved around the landscape via its analog stick; the Move controller placed inside it tracked where I aimed; and I fired off rounds by pulling either of its two triggers. (The back trigger shot off bullets, and the front trigger unleashed plasma rockets.) Meanwhile, Morpheus changed the camera view based on where I was looking.As a result, I could glance one way but shoot in an entirely different direction. That ability added a level of realism I don’t get in a traditional shooter — when waves of magenta-streaked spiders and fire-breathing lizards piled on me, I just left my finger on the back trigger and continued murdering the local fauna while looking around for other enemies.It also felt far more natural to look up at a structure I had to destroy, and then swing up the plastic weapon to aim at it. I’ve tried head-tracking in games before, but I’ve never enjoyed having to look around physically while my hands held my controller still. Call it a personal quirk, but if I’m going to move around, I want to move around with my whole body. In Impulse Gear’s virtual world, I could glance from side to side, wave my weapon around, and take a step back if the urge struck (even though it didn’t do anything).Other demos didn’t leave as strong an impression, but they showed definite flashes of promise. Superhypercube, in which you have to rotate an ever-growing collection of blocks to fit through different shaped holes, didn’t feel like it had to be played in VR—but it was a nice touch being able to step from side to side to change perspective. And though a new chapter for London Heist sometimes got tedious because it required manually reloading your gun (you had to use two Move controllers to mow down waves of Russians chasing your getaway car, with one dedicated to holding and firing the weapon, and the other to picking up and loading clips), it was interesting to see and use hands in a more traditional-style game.For their parts, The Playroom VR and Music VR filled out the range of concepts possible. The Playroom VR demonstrated how local multiplayer could work: in a scenario of a monster rampaging a robot city, I wore a Project Morpheus headset to become the monster, while other players with DualShock controllers made their band of cute robots run away (and then later attack me). Harmonix’s Music VR project illustrated how Morpheus could be used for more passive activities—in this case, listening to music while the environment served as a visual equalizer.The only puzzling demo of the bunch was VirZoom, which used a real-life bicycle to control a simulation of being...a horse. The idea behind the bike makes some sense—the VirZoom developers believe that virtual motion should feel more natural if you’re actually moving in the real world. But my body rebelled at all the conflicting information it received. Because of how Morpheus fits, I could still see my thighs and the bicycle from the lower edge of my peripheral vision; on top of that, I still could feel that I was on a bike.So though I was fine when pedaling to speed up my gallop, I got vertigo and motion sickness at the same time when I used the handlebars to change course. My eyes saw the horse’s head stay level, while my body registered I was on a bicycle and began leaning in the direction of the turned handlebars. I almost fell off the bike, and not because I’d leaned too far—I momentarily lost all sense of where I was in space. I also got immediately ill because I couldn’t figure out why I could see myself moving on an axis that my body wasn’t actually on.If the bicycle were paired with something that fits its normal use a bit more closely—like car racing, where you do actually lean into turns—or even something more literal, like an exercise program, it could work. (Or even something far more creative that I’m incapable of thinking up myself.) In these more abstract concepts, however, I’m not sure yet if sensitive folks like me could get by for an extended amount of time.But even if some projects end up needing further refinement (after all, none of what I saw is final), it’s heartening to see a full spectrum of VR content begin to emerge. The issue with motion controllers and cameras was that no true killer app ever surfaced—nothing that proved everyone absolutely had to have something like a Move controller or Kinect. With names like Sony, Oculus, Valve, and even Google in this space, along with dozens of developers, it seems like we could get one or even many more “experiences” that make VR more than just interesting technology.

Alaina Yee is IGN's tech editor and resident cardboard fort maker. When she manages to build a lasting structure, she'll post about it on Twitter