GDC 2014: Hands-On with Project Morpheus - The Deep & EVE: Valkyrie

GDC 2014: Hands-On with Project Morpheus - The Deep & EVE: Valkyrie

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Lee Bradley

It’s difficult to describe what it's like to experience virtual reality for the first time. I can’t quite capture the completely immersive nature of it. Not well enough anyway. So instead I’ll tell you what I said when the Sony rep strapped Project Morpheus to my head. I said, “Ohhh, shit!”

It transported me. A few seconds before I was in Sony’s moodily lit, bustling booth at GDC in San Francisco, preparing to try a demo called The Deep. Then suddenly I was beneath the ocean, locked into a descending diver’s cage, as shoals of fish swam lazily around me.

That’s the key word, I think. They swam around me. Looking above, below, to the left and the right just reveals more of your environment, which sounds obvious, but is actually a revelation. The gap between knowing what virtual reality is and understanding how it feels is huge. It’s brilliant.

The first demo I played was called The Deep and its star was a shark. The Great White emerged from the murk at first, circling around me in the distance. But when it struck, swooping at my cage and gnawing at a flotation device less than a meter from my head, it was properly scary.

I genuinely believe that the first proper horror game, the first jump scare provided with this tech will be more terrifying than the equivalent in any other medium. I’m also certain that I’ll never want to play a game like that. These experiences are already available on Oculus Rift, but screw it. I value the whiteness of my boxer shorts.

Later in the demo, the shark swam straight at me, charging towards an area of the cage roughly level to my testicles. As it struck, I stepped back to shield my nuts. In that moment I truly believed that a Great White was trying to chew on my crown jewels, despite being in the middle of a massive hall in San Francisco. It's genuinely unsettling.

I did have some problems with the headset. At first it was quite blurry, but a bit of fiddling with the positioning improved the clarity. It seems that finding the right set-up is massively important. Slight adjustments to the part of the device which houses the LCD screens can make a massive difference. But it still wasn't as clear as a traditional HD TV. Not for me, anyway.

There are other problems too. In The Deep your character has a flare gun, which you can fire at the shark. You aim the gun by moving the DualShock 4 unit around, but the PlayStation Camera’s tracking is poor. At one point a Sony rep had to recalibrate the setup because it became completely unresponsive.

Also, because Project Morpheus is wired to the PlayStation 4, you don’t feel like you can turn fully around. It’s a limitation that will likely never be overcome. During the announcement of the headset earlier this week, Sony said it has no current plans to develop a wireless version.

The next demo I played was for EVE: Valkyrie, a multiplayer space shooter in which players zip around in little fighter ships. It’s a cleverly conceived game, the setup for which immediately sidesteps a number of the minor problems I had with The Deep. 

So because you’re in a ship, you don’t have to look behind you, negating the physical limitations of the wired tech. And because it’s controlled with a DualShock 4 in the traditional fashion, there's no need to worry about wonky PlayStation Camera tracking for your hands.

Again though, it was the immersion of the experience that struck me. Even sat waiting for the game to begin was fantastic. You really feel that you’re strapped into the cramped confines of a cockpit, the instruments on the panels and glass of the enveloping cockpit just centimetres away. Even when you look down, you can see your arms, hands, legs and body.

Beyond your tiny cockpit: the infinite expanse of space.

In pure gameplay terms, Project Morpheus offered advantages over playing a space shooter on a TV. While in similar experiences like say HAWX, when you’re in a dogfight you spend most of your time chasing a tracking arrow on the side of your screen, only for your target reticules to zip straight past once you finally catch up with the orientation of your enemy.

But in EVE: Valkyrie, there’s no need for that. You still use the on-screen arrows that indicate your enemy’s relative position, but you can actually look up and around to see if they are above or to the side of you. That may not seem like a huge thing when written in black and white, but it’s thrilling in (virtual) reality. 

So yeah. Again I’m failing to communicate just how impressive Project Morpheus is. It was my first virtual reality experience, my first taste of what is sure to be a fascinating slice of the industry’s future. But really you’ll have to try it for yourself, something that I implore you to do whenever you get the opportunity. Then maybe you’ll say the same as me. Ohhh, shit!

For more on the nuts and bolts of Project Morpheus for PlayStation 4, click through here.

Comments
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  • Sounds juicy, cant wait! I just hope a lot of Devs get onboard with it, content is king.
  • I want to play Alien: Isolation with this.
  • @3 No. Way. Alien is utterly terrifying as it is. With Morpheus? I'm scared just thinking about it.
  • @2 You are crazy.....!!
  • The Evil Within would be EPIC
  • I bet there were a lot of bright lights which could be why the camera was not tracking well . Sony needs to get developers on board for this and for the camera , I have my fingers crossed .
  • Any price tag yet? If it's a 300 bucks thing, I'll pass. $200 max I hope.
  • Im just worried it won't work well with people who wear glasses. I don't wear contacts and I have trouble putting the 3d glass over them at the theater.
  • I would NEVER play an underwater game where sharks were swimming around me. They freak me out! LOL!! I'd be crying like a BIG BABY!
  • so...i'll wait until there's a wireless version (because i hate stepping on my headphone cords and getting hurt at how fast it shoves me, i'd assume this would be FAR worse)...and until the bugs get shoo-ed out, then...yeah =] i mean, i've been on board with this since i heard the rumor bout a year or two back (nice step towards the future here), but having too many wires around will destroy me and everything i cherish (my ps2 broke cuz i tripped on the controller cord and it fell, disc tray won't open, disc doesn't work) so....i'll be safe and wait ...still pretty cool though any idea on a release date (or round-about time)?
  • @#5 I beg to differ. This is great idea and I can't wait to try it out myself, but I can only see this being used with FPS games for max immersion. Evil Within is 3rd person game and as such, not even sure how it would work on VR hardware like this... I do hope they make the price accessible though. Don't want to fork out another $400...
  • Dead space 4. Release them both on the same day. And go back to dead space 1 style of play. LOL. That would get me to buy it day 1, allmost regardless of price. Within reason of course.
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