Sony's PSVR2 has some really cool tech that's not in most consumer level VR HMDs

As one who's been gaming in VR since the Oculus Rift DK2, I've had a wide range of headsets over the years to try out. My various headsets have mostly the same features in varying degrees, but I'm glad to see that the Sony PSVR2 will finally add something I've been wanting in main stream headsets.

A Twitter Thread by Zuby_Tech outlines some of the new features coming to the next generation VR HMD. The one that stands out for me is the eye-tracking. I've experienced eye-tracking VR headsets at CES and they are pretty damn slick. One tracked my eyes to judge how well I did at giving a speech to a virtual audience, letting me know how well I was making eye contact with the people and where my eyes went as I was speaking. Another cool feature I experienced was foveated rendering where only the parts of the screen I was looking at would be rendered at full resolution versus the area in my peripheral vision. Theoretically, this could help produce a better image in a VR HMD without using as much GPU power. With the PSVR2 having eye-tracking, I am hoping not only to see games take advantage of where I am looking at, but the hardware to offer better visuals from the console as hopefully it can implement foveated rendering to lessen the load on the GPU in certain situations.

Having a headset vibrate is something I didn't even think of, yet the PSVR2 will have haptics not only in the controller but in the head mounted display as well. The example of feeling something fly over your sounds really cool and we'll have to see how many haptics there will be in the unit and where they are located. If it's anything like the controller haptics where I didn't think such a feature would make the gaming experience so much better, then VR users are in for a real treat.

3D Audio will be a given, but we've had that in various techs so I'm not going to go too much into that. It does help add to the overall immersion of VR when you have 360 audio and something I expected given the 3D audio is already present on the PlayStation 5 when used with such headsets at the Sony Pulse 3D and the Steelseries Arctis 7P.

The controllers will have some capacitive touch capabilities where it'll know if your fingers are resting on the controller and maybe movement as well for finger gestures. The Quest 2 controllers have finger sensing on the controllers and the biggest example of really well done finger tracking using this technology are the Valve Index controllers. I personally love the Index controllers and use that when I was reviewing the Vive Pro 2 and Vive Cosmos because of how comfortable they are as well as providing a wider range of controls than the wands the Vive HMDs used. What the PSVR2 controllers do offer that the Index controllers don't though are the awesome adaptive triggers found on the DualSense controller. Those are game changers.

There will one USB cable for you to connect to the console, which makes setting up a lot simpler than the previous version. Bandwidth on the PlayStation 5 USB ports both on the front and back are 10 Gbs. Compared to DisplayPort 1.4 which has 32.4 Gbs, we're talking 3X less amount of data to pass through to the PSVR2. Right now in my collection, the HMD with the highest resolution is the HP Reverb G2. It has LCD screens 2160x2160 per eye. The PSVR2 has OLED screens with a resolution of 2000x2040 per eye, slightly lower than the Reverb G2.

Some folks have done some quick math and the Reverb G2 would need around a 26 Gbs bandwidth to drive the screens at full resolution. Now, we know that the PlayStation 5 doesn't have that capability with the USB connections, but with the previously mentioned eye-tracking tech, maybe they are going to use foveated rendering to achieve really great picture quality where you are focusing on and take advantage of those sweet, sweet OLED microdisplays.

I'm also intrigued that it just takes one USB cable to drive and power the PSVR2. My Samsung Odyssey+ HMD needed an HDMI cable and a USB cable for display and power while my HP Reverb G2 and Valve Index needed both a DisplayPort and power adapter to drive them. We'll know more once the PSVR2 is in reviewer hands.

From what I've seen, Sony's PSVR2 looks to be really slick and a big leap over the PSVR. There are some features that make it a big leap over consumer PC VR HMDs as well. I wasn't considering a PSVR2 before as I do my VR gaming on my PC either through a Valve Index or wirelessly through a Meta Quest 2, but what Sony has put into this package has made me reconsider and really interested in what they have to offer in the VR space.