On November 10th 2016, Sony released the latest product of their playstation series, ps4 pro. It is an advanced version of ps4, their previous product, with some improvement on the quality of hardware. The purpose of ps4 pro is to optimize the function of Playstation VR, which is a device that is used to play video games in virtual reality. Since last year, virtual reality has become one of the most popular words in the area of video game. So here comes the question: what is virtual reality and why the video game industries and players are excited about it?
Virtual reality (VR) typically refers to computer technologies that use software to generate realistic images, sounds and other sensations that replicate a real environment (or create an imaginary setting), and simulate a user’s physical presence in this environment. This is experience is generally achieved with the help of specialized equipment such as VR google. In general, it is a technology that can generate any artificial three-dimensional environment within your imagination. After having a basic idea of what virtual reality is, it is easy to understand why video game lovers are so thrilled about it because video game is the most typical example of artificially-generated environment. Before the presence of VR, all of the games were produced in 2D, and players were never able to experience the world within the games personally. This situation changes after the existence of VR googles that are specified for video games. Besides having a better experience on games, VR can be applied in many practical areas too, such as military, engineering, and education. If the technology is matured enough, it is possible that VR can be applied in our chemistry laboratory work, which would be time and money efficient.
Play station VR, a device used to play VR games https://www.playstation.com/en-ca/explore/playstation-vr/
So how dose VR work exactly. In general, I would summarize the working principles into three main areas: head tracking, motion tracking and eye tracking. Head tracking is the system that monitors the position of your head, so that the image you look will change if you move your head into another place. This is important because in reality, the image in front of us changed when we look at a different place. The second part is motion tracking, this is required because a game usually has a set of movements, and these movements must be achieved by the motion of the player. The final puzzle is the eye-tracking, this is a technology that tracks the movement and focus of your eyes. In reality, when your eyes is focused on a point, its surrounding will be a piece of blur to you, and this is what the system does, the appearance of images will change based on where your eyes are focused.
Although VR is an outstanding technology, there still some challenges now. The motion and eye tracking systems are still not very mature now, so the environment that is simulated by the equipment is actually not very realistic. Besides, it has very high requirement on hardware, therefore the cost is high. In order to have a decent experience on VR games at home, a person needs at least a piece of VR google, a video game player, and a television with resolution up to 4K, the cost of them is incredibly high.
The popularization of VR games is becoming inevitable now because most players are very curious to know what a 3D video game fells like. And hopefully, in the future, VR will be applied widely in areas other than video games, which will make a evolutional change to our life.
References:
1, WAREABLE, URL: https://www.wareable.com/vr/how-does-vr-work-explained
