The number of rivalries in the gaming industry grew by one with this week when Sony unveiled its Project Morpheus virtual reality helmet to take on the Oculus Rift VR headset.
With two pre-production virtual reality helmets now out in the public realm the arguing can begin in earnest over which will dominate the industry. Despite only being introduced this week, Sony should have the early lead as it has the entire stable of PS4 games to match with the helmet. Oculus, which came out first showing an early developers kit for its model last year, may have a harder time getting game developers to incorporate its hardware. However, the release of a new developers kit this week could help in this regard.
All of this week's action took place at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Sony showed Project Morpheus during the early part of the show and Oculus did not waste any time firing back. One day after Sony's unveiling Oculus announced that its second-generation development kit, DK2, would become available this summer. The kit will cost $350, but once in the hands of developers it will give Oculus a better chance to compete with the 800-pound gorilla that is Sony.
The Oculus DK2 kit has high resolution, low latency, 1080p displays - one for each eye - that should dampen jitter and according to several reports is a major improvement over the earlier model that was first shown during International CES in January.
After giving the Oculus version a look PC Magazine had this to say about its future chances on the market.
"After a brief run on the exclusive-to-Rift, sci-fi dogfighter demo EVE: Valkyrie from CCP Games, my answer to the "Is it ready for primetime?" question is ... yeah, maybe. Sure ... why not? Who knows? A lot still needs to fall into place for Oculus before it brings the Rift out as a finalized product for general release. One thing's for sure-this is a much more mature system than it was a year ago. " the site said.
The specs on Sony's goggles are 960 by 1080 resolution per eye, a 90 degree field of view, 3D audio, an accelerometer and a gyroscope. The goggles are already starting to gain some interest from game developers with Crytek and Epic Games expressing interest in developing for Sony.
There are also other companies taking a hard look at virtual reality. Earlier this month Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson said his company has an eye on the technology.
And as to be expected, Microsoft is looking into the matter too.
