New details on the PSVR2 are beginning to trick through, though Sony has kept awfully quite about the next-gen VR headset by and large in recent months. That said, some of its most crucial specs have been revealed, and foveated rendering and eye-tracking have been lauded as some of the highlights there. As you’d expect, developers, too, are excited about what those features will enable behind the scenes.
Speaking recently with Play Magazine (via GamesRadar), Brendan Walker – principal engineer at VR developer Polyarc, the developer of the recently-released Moss: Book 2 – explained that on the current PSVR, game developers are “wasting a lot of rendering horsepower and putting detail where there actually doesn’t need to be as much” due to the lack of foveated rendering.
As Walker explains, the human eye can only focus on “a narrow window” in the visuals being rendered by the games, and with eye-tracking on the PSVR2, developers will be able to prioritize that. According to Walker, that, in turn, will “improve performance and increase fidelity.”
According to Walker, this will also increase the PSVR2’s longevity. He said: “It was smart of Sony to lean into this console because, you know, you have this hardware that hopefully is going to be around awhile. And in order to eke out as much lifetime out of it, you need to be able to optimize where you can.”
Of course, given that Sony hasn’t announced a launch window for the PSVR2, there’s no clarity yet on when users will be able to get their hands on the headset and experience its new games. Recent reports, however, have repeatedly suggested that it will launch sometime in 2023.
