I have enjoyed the opening of Spidey: Miles so far. He is his own character and has his own presence in the city without feeling like he's replacing Parker. I've just played through the opening setup where Peter has been servicing as a mentor but is leaving him as the guardian of the city in his absence allowing Miles to come into his own as a hero. So far so good. I definitely do not like the polarized tradeoff options, such as either native 4K or heavy ray tracing. Those typically run at 30 fps. The newest of the Spidey: Miles settings that uses temporal injection, light ray tracing, and still get 60 fps is what I have been wanting since before Insomniac even added that. Reconstruction or supersample upscaling are definitely the way to go given there is such a minor visual tradeoff for a huge chuck of saved power for frames, detail, or effects. I've also read a developer is getting significantly higher efficiency with ray tracing with more efficient coding. AMD's architecture is relatively new and may need some time for adjustment regarding tools and techniques. I certainly remember the Intel diehards claiming Ryzen was always doomed to be a sluggish workstation CPU that had no applications for gaming just a few years ago. I haven't heard much from those guys lately.
This game is looking pretty exceptional in terms of graphics and technology. Insomniac always seems to be a year ahead of its peers. This is probably what other top studios' games will look like in 2022 or 2023. How fast can the drive load up a new level? Pretty fast.
I made a couple of videos of recent updates of Horizon: Zero Dawn (60 fps performance patch) and Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut (PS5). The Ghost video is somewhat on the spoiler-y side; it takes place midway through the game and is my favorite part of the entire game, the conclusion of a key battle. Both videos are best viewed on as high res as possible and includes HDR if your display is HDR-capable. Horizon: Zero Dawn PS5 Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut PS5
Some more details about the PSVR2 headset, officially named Playstation VR2, were revealed at CES. Specs look quite good: Display method OLED Panel resolution 2000 x 2040 per eye Panel refresh rate 90Hz, 120Hz Lens separation Adjustable Field of View Approx. 110 degrees Sensors Motion Sensor: Six-axis motion sensing system (three-axis gyroscope, three-axis accelerometer) Attachment Sensor: IR Proximity sensor Cameras 4 cameras for headset and controller trackingIR camera for eye tracking per eye Feedback Vibration on headset Communication with PS5 USB Type-C® Audio Input: Built-in microphoneOutput: Stereo headphone jack A high resolution OLED screen with HDR is a pretty significant increase in quality over the original PSVR. Foveated rendering and eye tracking are also nice advancements. The significantly boosted specs will also be paired with the PS5's massive upgrade in CPU power from Jaguar to Ryzen to handle high frame rates necessary for a good VR experience. Sony also appears to be trying to do make a legitimate AAA version of Horizon in VR similar to Valve did with Half-Life: Alyx. They've only provided a few seconds of footage, but it looks pretty awesome:
I'm very interested in the new PSVR. The specs alone sound really good, though I am curious to see whether it'll work at all on PC. The original PS VR doesn't really work on a computer to my knowledge.
I think there is a lot of potential for high quality software for PSVR2. I've seen some speculate some of the big PC VR titles didn't make it to PSVR1 so they won't come to PSVR2, but many of those like Half-Life: Alyx and Boneworks simply were not feasible with PSVR1 and the PS4's shoddy Jaguar CPU. Stress Level Zero already hinted they've got projects on the way for PSVR2. My guess is the headset won't work on PC, but some of that might have been the other devices like the Eye camera and Move controllers that also worked with PSVR that would have also needed software support to work together with the headset and that damn breakout box that was a spiderweb of cables. A single cable might make it a bit more likely that at least someone can get it to function a lot better on PC than the previous headset.
If PSVR2 is significantly lighter than the Oculus, I’ll favor it and probably upgrade to PS5. Even though it has the cord attachment to consider, sacrificing mobility for comfort is an easy choice.
Out of nowhere I got an e-mail that I landed a PSVR2 pre-order slot, and I just purchased it. I thought I'd be waiting for quite some time. I'm supposed to get it on the last week of February 2023.
That will be a huge upgrade over the PS VR and the price seems reasonable compared to the current competition. Apple will be around $2000 to $2500. Quest 2 is $500 and Steam is $1000. I'd say it's only weakness will probably be it's small game library.
Some have been grumbling about the price, but I would think Sony is almost certainly losing money at $550. PSVR1 launched for ~$500, and adjusted with inflation plus the camera and controllers it costed the equivalent of ~$620. The $550 they are asking includes the two Sense controllers. I guessed the final price would be $500, but without the controllers, which I expect to be quite expensive separately. I agree it seems pretty reasonable compared to the other high end VR headsets. I'll have to stock up on ginger and prepare to retrain my stomach. I haven't played any VR games for awhile.
PSVR 2 reviews have been even more positive than I expected, borderline effusive at times, and from legit tech reviewers, not just Playstation-friendly or Sony-owned websites or channels like PlayStation Access: CNET: Digital Foundry: It remains to be seen how much interest there will be after the early adopters (such as myself, for instance) grab their headsets and mainstream players speculate over the price and unfamiliar technology. But there seems to be no question that it is a very high quality headset that is getting directly compared favorably to high end PCVR headsets that cost 2 to 3 times more. This would be an unfathomable situation for PSVR1, which would get brutally worked over by something like the Index, but PSVR2 seems to be more than holding its own against the best headsets on the market. The enormous upgrade from the PS4's Jaguar CPU to the PS5's Ryzen CPU is going to be huge considering how important high frame rates are for VR. Foveated rendering is being reported as very quick and effective and allows it to significantly overachieve even beyond its superb stats, and anyone viewing videos of PSVR 2 games should keep in mind those games will look considerably better through a headset given eyetracking is necessary for foveated rendering, which renders the area you are focusing on (via eye tracking) at much greater detail than peripheral areas.
I jumped online at the airport on my phone during a layover early on a trip to visit my girlfriend with the intention of preordering a standard PS5 Pro but to my surprise the 30th Anniversary Edition Pro was available. I had 3 minutes to decide because my plane was boarding, so I decided to impulse buy the bundle. Very pricey for a console, but it's a collector's item with only ~12,300 in the entire world, and I always get screwed by scalpers in these situations. I could probably squeeze at least a couple of thousand out of someone, but I'm not going to be part of the scalping problem and think it's looks quite sharp. Keeping it and using it myself.
Early impressions on the PS5 pro are positive overall, although a few developers have unsurprisingly screwed up their PSSR upscaling implementations. Stellar Blade looks absolutely fantastic with PSSR looking like what I'd expect from a PC trailer of the game. The Horizon games curiously don't even use PSSR but are nevertheless probably the best looking console games ever so far. Dragon's Dogma 2 still has technical problems, nothing new for this game, but it also looks substantially better overall and probably the most improved from base PS5 to PS5 Pro that I've personally played so far. Gran Turismo 7 looks and runs even better, including on PSVR2. Many people consider Gran Turismo 7 to be the #1 best game on PSVR2 now. Most of the detail of Avatar looks much better and runs smoothly but is spoiled by constant shimmering on water and funky behaviors of shadows. What out of character behavior for Ubisoft to push out unfinished and unrefined software. Most of the first party stuff looks very good. I've read the Pro patch for Star Wars games are trash, but I'm not inclined to buy those games. The Pro does seem capable of fixing broken, chugging games like Dragon's Dogma 2 and the blurry FSR1 trash performance modes that contaminated recent Final Fantasy games. I captured a few clips that included Dragon's Dogma 2 on Pro, which went from chugging and blurry to running pretty well and looking much clearer and UNPATCHED Final Fantasy VII Remake running much better and looking much clearer due to the combo of more power with dynamic resolution scaling.