On Wednesday Develop magazine hosted a Project Morpheus presentation and panel discussion at Dolby Labs in London. The speakers featured SCEE staff and two third party developers – all people who have worked on or with Morpheus hardware. Amongst them was one of the developers behind the first-party Morpheus demo The Deep – showcased at GDC and Surgeon Simulator creator Imra Jeli.

Panel:

Simon Benson, Director of WWS Immersive Tech Group – SCEE

Agostino Simonetta, Developer relations manager – SCEE

Dave Ranyard, Director of London Studio – SCEE

Patrick O’Luaniagh, CEO of nDreams – nDreams

Imra Jeli, co-founder of Bossa Studios – Bossa Studios

The presentations themselves were very much a retread of ground already well known to those who followed the news from GDC earlier this year. It was definitely an echoing of points already made there – that the primacy of “presence” makes VR a wholly different platform to what has come before and a general appeal for developers of all sizes to get involved and an assertion that developer relations have improved significantly since the early PS3 days.

This was a developer event, so nobody was expecting to hear any earth-shattering news – like a price point or a release date – but it was still interesting to witness the thoughts and attitudes of everyone involved. There was a definite sense of earnest enthusiasm coming from all of the speakers, of the kind we have come to expect from Oculus staff. Interestingly, too, was also an attitude of sober realism – a lot of issues are not yet solved; not just technically, but conceptually. I certainly did not get the impression that Sony are in any rush to ship Morpheus to consumers ahead of Oculus, as some have speculated. Some of the things said might seem seem disappointing to core gamers that are Playstation’s current bread-and-butter, but a lot of it rings true with my experience of what works and what does not on the Oculus Rift.

Dave Ranyard gave an illuminating talk about the decisions made in putting together The Deep – a demo which lowers underwater in a cage to watch sea-life pass you by, culminating in a shark attack. Ranyard stressed that VR experiences need to be made from the ground up and put forth some principles which should be considered.

– Players should have a period of acclimatisation before any real action should begin (an abandonment of one of gaming’s most beloved devices – in medias res?).

– VR experiences elicit powerful emotional responses – this is an opportunity but also something to be mindful of as a risk; for example, scares of too great an intensity could be off-putting.

– Light interaction definitely enhances a sense of presence but you can actually get away with adding it almost as an afterthought, rather than a core part of the experience.

Dave finished his talk comparing skeptical attitudes of VR today to some of the skepticism around at the dawn of the ‘Talkie’ from proponents of silent cinema. It was an evocative analogy but even as a VRvangelist but, I am doubtful we will ever see VR completely obsolete traditional gaming in the same way sound outright.

Below is a summary of some of the Q&A from the event.

“Is there a challenge in making VR more permanent that peripherals in the past?”

Imra contrasts VR with something like 3D TV’s, which felt like a top-down technological development – that executives wanted to push the technology as a way to make more money. Whereas VR is more ground-up – consumers (that are aware of it) want it. Agostino notes that peripherals die because of a lack of content, but VR is different because developers are genuinely excited to work on it. Dave cited his own mother’s reaction to The Deep, being a genuine emotional response, as a reason to have confidence that VR will be well received by a large audience. Simon talked about the fact that new kinds of content are being created for VR. Patrick added that the current climate of diversity in project budget and team sizes will fuel radical content diversity giving VR a very strong chance of finding it’s niche(s).

I asked about how Sony were approaching motion controls – particularly with regards to locomotion, given that the Playstation Move does not have an analogue stick. Simon’s response was intriguing – he pointed out that the question of lcoomotino is still to be decided, but that Sony have experimented with various different methods – including some prototype move controllers with analogue sticks. The analogy was brought up of the awkward decade or so transition from mouse and keyboard to the gamepad for first-person games. Now dual stick controllers are at least as popular as keyboard and mouse – the point being that maybe an analogue stick isn’t the right approach at all for locomotion in VR and that a whole new method is yet to be found. The panel also seemed to feel that there is still so much to be done with simply looking around, with one-to-one kinaesthetic correspondance – that maybe navigation isn’t or shouldn’t even be the point of early VR experiences. When asked later in the evening about the Omni Treadmill, Simon again suggested that locomotion was not necessarily such a big problem as many think, at least for phase one. The phrase “we’ve got to learn to look before we can learn to walk” was used. This attitude makes some sense but it may come as something of a shock to those expecting to see COD working in VR from day one.

“Can we make VR work for people who get sick on 3D TVs?”

The response to this question was that 3D TV is a different beast, but also covered the point that framerate must now be considered as a high priority and that development pipelines would have to change to accommodate this. Content was held up as ultimately responsible for not making users feel sick – that the creators and users should always bear in mind that even the best hardware is still going to make people sick if it is simulating an activity that is likely to make people sick in real life! Dave reiterated how much a period of acclimatisation can improve things.

“Is there an issue of breaking presence if the user has a body that is wildly different from their avatar?”

Some tricks can be used to deal with the issue of avatar dissonence – gloves get over the issue of skin colour, for example. The idea of an avatar configuration tool was floated and the optical tracking of the Playstation camera could help software make assumptions about the player’s body. Patrick contested the notion that dissonance between a player’s body and their avatar was inherently a bad thing, that actually some very interesting experiences could be built around that very idea. He also suggested that, contrary to Oculus guidelines, an avatar is not always needed or desirable – that doing away with it for actions like climbing a ladder can help prevent a kind of ‘uncanny valley’ effect of totally shattering presence.

“Is the Playstation Store really the best place for innovative, non-gaming apps, for example educational programs?”

Agostino reiterated that Sony are keen to work with anyone and that it all comes down to good ideas. Imre confirmed that Sony are much more open to innovation and working with smaller developers than they were in the PS3 days.

“Indie is traditionally developed with low budgets to be played on low budget hardward. With all the costs associated with VR, is there a tension in reaching out to indies to work in the medium?”

The panel pointed out that indies and small studios have an advantage because they can be much more agile and likely get to market much quicker than the big AAAs (who seem to be waiting and seeing a little more with VR). Early adopters will be hungry for VR experiences and willing to pay for content – meaning that install bases will not need to be huge to give good returns to indie developers.

“Is the Social Screen enough to make VR a social experience?”

The social screen is basically a mechanism by which the PS4 is able to output a single image onto the TV as it outputs stereoscopic images to the headset. This costs no extra power from the PS4 because the splitting of the video signal is handled by the Morpheus’ breakout box. The panel generally agreed that VR could be a spectator sport and that there was a lot of potential for asymmetrical social play. This could also be acheived with companion apps – Dave mentioned a haunted house demo where the other player(s) could influence when and where certain scares would occur.

“How will the the stereoscopic 3D perform on the PS4, with regards to player’s expectations of next generation graphics?”

The static nature of a console platform provides just as many advantages as it does disadvantages – yes, graphics will not compete with high-end PCs, but every developer will know what they have to work with, and Sony will be able to share useful tricks on how to get the absolute most out of the hardware. It should be noted that high-end PC gaming is still a narrow segment of that market: the biggest games on PC, like WoW or LoL run on all kinds of PCs.

“How much space can the player move around in and still be picked up by the Playstation camera?”

About 4m x 3-4m, no closer than 1m from the camera itself. When asked about the possibility of warning users about obstacles, like a coffee table, a clever hack was suggested, half in jest: get a rug of just the right dimensions so you can feel when you get to the edges of the that space!

Finally, it was raised that it only takes a few bad experiences to really sour the public on VR again, that “the success of VR relies on not just getting it right, but actually that almost everybody gets it right.” The panel agreed that Sony, as a platform holder can, and probably will enforce certain key performance requirements, for example around latency and framerate. Agostino was quick to add that they did not see themselves as Gatekeepers though; more as teachers, helping to guide developers and share learnings – not just with their developer relationships but also with the rest of the industry (e.g. Oculus) to ensure VR doesn’t fail. It was pointed out that this kind of quality assurance and consumer protection is probably something Oculus will wind up implementing in some form as well.

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