Remember the hilariously bad PlayStation VR demo that Sony showed off at PSX last year? Well according to Sony’s Richard Marks it was due to a “hardware failure.” Speaking during the AR/VR Vision Summit a few weeks ago (which was only made available a few days ago), Mark revealed that the demonstration didn’t quite go the way it was expected to go
“This thing we worked on was called Disc Battle, the whole idea we learned about was this stage set up that we had at the PlayStation Experience. Hopefully none of you were there! (laughs) because it didn’t quite go the way it was expected to go. The hardware had a failure,” he stated.
However the demonstration was a also means to display the potential of the spectator mode. Mark believes that this mode has a future as it can be used by developers to further enhance the VR experience.
“So basically, two people on each side and each of them are going to be in VR and in the center we had another screen like the social screen would be. They could get the spectator view and then on one side we are going to show the first person view like most VR is but first person is hard to get the same feeling so we made this third person, over the shoulder view and it actually feels good as the person in VR to see themselves that way. ”
He explains that the third person view will have a more better experience as the player is able to see everything getting animated such as body movements. This methodology is a cross between IK (a termed used in the robotic field for realistic depiction) and just hands. He further revealed that they are “excited to explore the possibilities of spectator view. This person (who is spectating) can move around the camera and do anything they want. Spectating in VR has a lot of future.”
It will be interesting to see what kind of possibilities PSVR will bring in when it launches sometime this year.