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[mrklaw]

If we're speculating, it's easy to construct scenarios where VR support on PS4 would require some significant re-engineering. Like if the minimum PC CPU requirements referred to 30 FPS, and the engine did not scale well to multiple CPU threads. For this particular game it does seem hard to imagine a scenario where it would not be possible to port it at all, but not so difficult to imagine one in which the effort required is non-trivial.

Absolutely fair enough

So in short, VR support can be brute forced on PC processing wise.

PSVR game needs to be optimized to hit minimuim VR rendering rate [1080p60@3D], and he did not create assets for that kind of console rendering.

I still think PSVR support will happen one day.

"Brute force" isn't a get out of jail card on PC for VR like it might be for other types of games. I don't know how strict Oculus are being about their GTX970 spec, but there will certainly be pressure to have that as a 'minimum performance' threshold. And by minimum that still means 90Hz no drops, unlike minimum on monitor-based games which may accept frame drops etc.

Obviously a quad core i5 and GTX970 is a heck of a lot more headroom than a PS4 though.

I also think if he does an oculus rift version he'll do a PSVR version eventually too.

 

[elyetis]

"Brute force" isn't a get out of jail card on PC for VR like it might be for other types of games. I don't know how strict Oculus are being about their GTX970 spec, but there will certainly be pressure to have that as a 'minimum performance' threshold. And by minimum that still means 90Hz no drops, unlike minimum on monitor-based games which may accept frame drops etc.

I doubt Oculus can be really strict about it outside of games using their own store.

 

[kharak]

Under all of this "salty" I find disconcerting the comments of Drive Club VR like it was a game/update. The last time i saw, it was a prototype/tech demo. They announcement something about that?

 

[Dragon Puncher]

So is this going to be VR capable on release (of the Oculus)? To me this sounds more like a down the line thing.

 

[mrklaw]

I doubt Oculus can be really strict about it outside of games using their own store.

Then I hope consumers are strict about it. I realise it probably cannot be enforced for games bought from steam for instance, but I have a 970 and I would like some reassurance that anything I buy will work well without frame drops

 

[Ninja Sharingan]

Was always buying on pc and will look forward too walking around this incredible looking island in VR

 

[dsk1210]

I suppose that this is not going to be compatible with the DK2 when it releases tomorrow?

 

[mrklaw]

I suppose that this is not going to be compatible with the DK2 when it releases tomorrow?

I doubt it.

Actually, have Oculus said anything about DK1/2 support when the retail product launches? Is there a risk that they'll remove support for those from SDKs etc?

 

[Durante]

I doubt Oculus can be really strict about it outside of games using their own store.

You can go further than that: Oculus has absolutely no control over anything not sold on their store. It's the beauty of the PC platform.

 

[FantasticMrSnake]

That's disappointing =(, I think i'm not getting this game then.

Not to mention that it's already confirmed that Driveclub VR operates at a lower visual fidelity than the game normally does, and even has a reduced car count. Something has to give on the PS4 when it comes to VR.

That's also more disappointing, doesn't Driveclub runs at 30fps?

 

[googleplex]

Even if they wanted to Support PSVR or any VR. They'd have to figure out how to let people move around in their game without throwing up. Any first-person free roaming VR game would have to have their locomotion solution figure out first.

This is also the reason why I'd be surprised if No Man's Sky actually supported VR. The way you move about in that game currently is not conducive to a comfortable VR experience.

 

[Huggy]

You can go further than that: Oculus has absolutely no control over anything not sold on their store. It's the beauty of the PC platform.

And Sony has all the control. The Witness is probably not made for VR, and won't see a PSVR release unless the game is redesigned for it.
The PC version "might" have "support", but I have played regular games with injected VR and it's not for me.
Maybe if Blow gets some cash back or/and gets subsidized he can invest in a proper VR edition.

 

[bj00rn_]

PSVR is rendering once per eye at HALF the pixels it's rendering at normally on PS4.

it's roughly the same as just running the game regularly. Strictly from a power standpoint.

Not really. The consensus is that stereoscopy adds about 25% (varies) because you have to render the scene twice from two different viewpoints.

 

[Zepp Twofist]

And Sony has all the control. The Witness is probably not made for VR, and won't see a PSVR release unless the game is redesigned for it.
The PC version "might" have "support", but I have played regular games with injected VR and it's not for me.
Maybe if Blow gets some cash back or/and gets subsidized he can invest in a proper VR edition.

Are you talking about injected VR as in third party injection drivers or games that have added support for VR after release?

 

[mrklaw]

You can go further than that: Oculus has absolutely no control over anything not sold on their store. It's the beauty of the PC platform.

Its the Beauty and the Beast

In the case of VR, I would actually want developers to be a little stricter on quality control. Even if they literally only guarantee 90fps on eg a GTX970 with Nvidia drivers 123.456 that would almost be ok.

Fiddling around in the options menus to adjust to get the framerate right is absolutely not something I want to do.

 

[Protocol7]

I didn't really see this game as VR material to beginning with, it's ""only"" a puzzle game with beautiful environnements. Also seems that your movements are limited aren't they?

So people would want that in VR? I want real VR experience not "VR compatible"... Is this going to be some misconception at first, people thinking VR should be applied to anything?... This is going to be interesting...

Anyway, don't see this as a problem for this title.

PS: I have PC and PS4 FYI.

 

[DavidDesu]

This is a bummer. It sounds like he's talking about it more as a gameplay thing though, and maybe because Sony make it clear the game needs to be designed with VR in mind. The PC VR implementation he talks of sounds like, "well since we can mod it in and it will work we'll let people do that". The PSVR implementation sounds more like he'd need to redesign the control method etc to make it pass Sony's litmus test of what's acceptable. I can't see why the graphics are what the issue is here.

 

[KORNdoggy]

guess i won't be buying this then...

 

[xenorevlis]

This is a bummer. It sounds like he's talking about it more as a gameplay thing though, and maybe because Sony make it clear the game needs to be designed with VR in mind. The PC VR implementation he talks of sounds like, "well since we can mod it in and it will work we'll let people do that". The PSVR implementation sounds more like he'd need to redesign the control method etc to make it pass Sony's litmus test of what's acceptable. I can't see why the graphics are what the issue is here.

Playing VR titles with a gamepad is fine, but restructuring the engine and all of the assets to properly display two different renders of an environment at 60fps is a heck of a lot of work for a studio as small as Blow's. Remember, they didn't even check to see when they would need to submit the game for pre-loading on PS4 until a few weeks before and thus it will only have preload on PC. They are busy as it is and the costs and time to convert to a PSVR pipeline is probably out of the picture, for now.

 

[Huggy]

Are you talking about injected VR as in third party injection drivers or games that have added support for VR after release?

I played Quake with support for the DK2 modded in.
I also used the supplied Unity packages to expand a project I was developing.
Both are a bit more involved than just injecting, that's true.

 

[mrklaw]

Playing VR titles with a gamepad is fine, but restructuring the engine and all of the assets to properly display two different renders of an environment at 60fps is a heck of a lot of work for a studio as small as Blow's. Remember, they didn't even check to see when they would need to submit the game for pre-loading on PS4 until a few weeks before and thus it will only have preload on PC. They are busy as it is and the costs and time to convert to a PSVR pipeline is probably out of the picture, for now.

but if they are doing all that hard work for PC, then it becomes more of a porting exercise - the difficult part (the VR adaptation) is already done and paid for. If Sony's tools for PSVR are decent, then they should be designed to make it relatively painless to bring VR ready games across from PC - especially oculus rift games which will be designed around a non-motion controller. Fundamentally its some movement reporting done by the headset, and then some warping done to a stereo image.

if its just a hack job then I wouldn't be interested at all - but it does look like an environment worth experiencing in VR, and the slightly abstract nature of the environment may suit a simple teleportation mechanic for locomotion. So hopefully they do it properly.

 

[iceatcs]

Of course PC will have lot of official or unofficial VR support, which where is the main VR sickness coming from.
Can't wait but already bought bunch of sick bags in case. Real paper bag like some can be found in the plane.

 

[MUnited83]

Maybe only has money for one and placed his bets on Occulus?



Cutbacks were to get DriveClub to run at 60fps. (I put the quote in above someplace)



So doesn't that make it the logical conclusion as opposed to not building with VR in mind from the get-go?



Doesn't mean it can't be done though, just time and money are the factors.

Time, money and cutbacks. Cutbacks that affect the experience and quality of the game. Not everyone is willing to cut up their game to pieces you know.

And no, it's not "he only has money for one" There's standard APIs he can use, you know? The game won't be just compatible with Oculus, with will be compatible with almost every single PC headset there is.

 

[Chû Totoro]

So for the people who knows VR and understand what Jonathan Blow says. Is it true that Oculus can be added later while PS VR is more complicated?

Or is it that PS4 is not powerful enough to handle the target graphics they had from the start with VR?

Maybe we'll see when the VR specs of the game will be communicated.

 

[fastest finger]

So for the people who knows VR and understand what Jonathan Blow says. Is it true that Oculus can be added later while PS VR is more complicated?

Or is it that PS4 is not powerful enough to handle the target graphics they had from the start with VR?

Maybe we'll see when the VR specs of the game will be communicated.

What I don't understand is, there are plenty of PS4 games being retrofitted for PSVR (Project CARS, Futuridium, Surgery Simulator, War Thunder etc) so I don't get why this game is different.

Also, it's been said a number of times, by different devs, that PSVR is capable of supporting anything that runs on a 970. So as long as The Witness on PC meets Oculus Rift's minimum standards I don't see why there should be a problem.

 

[mrklaw]

So for the people who knows VR and understand what Jonathan Blow says. Is it true that Oculus can be added later while PS VR is more complicated?

Or is it that PS4 is not powerful enough to handle the target graphics they had from the start with VR?

Maybe we'll see when the VR specs of the game will be communicated.

Without knowing how he is developing and where the bottlenecks are, it's difficult to say. Power shouldn't be an issue, as the PC specs are very scalable. But maybe his PS4 engine isn't for some reason. Durante explains more a few posts up.

As for the design - that shouldn't be a blocker. Putting aside power for the moment, any game that works on oculus rift should translate just fine on PSVR. Same camera based tracking with LEDs around the headset, similar standard controller (Xbox one vs DS4), targeting seated experiences initially.

 

[iceatcs]

So for the people who knows VR and understand what Jonathan Blow says. Is it true that Oculus can be added later while PS VR is more complicated?

Or is it that PS4 is not powerful enough to handle the target graphics they had from the start with VR?

Maybe we'll see when the VR specs of the game will be communicated.

I feel that because PC VR have no rule/control because there is always mod, whereas PSVR title got to approve first from Sony. So it might need more time to make it approved level for PSVR.
I don't think it mean PSVR is hard to make a title than PC. Just more strict control than PC.

 

[mrklaw]

I feel that because PC VR have no rule/control because there is always mod, whereas PSVR title got to approve first from Sony. So it might need more time to make it approved level for PSVR.

Mods are one thing, but I don't want developers of games taking any shortcuts. That could be the quickest way to kill VR.

 

[cheezcake]

So for the people who knows VR and understand what Jonathan Blow says. Is it true that Oculus can be added later while PS VR is more complicated?

Or is it that PS4 is not powerful enough to handle the target graphics they had from the start with VR?

Maybe we'll see when the VR specs of the game will be communicated.

The devs don't need to target specific performance optimisations for PC. They implement VR and smooth out most of the issues, people with good enough PC's get VR level performance easy.

On PS4 the devs needs to adjust the game to have appropriate performance for VR (which Sony has recommended to be 1080p@90fps not 60fps). Couple that with the fact that PSVR devkits are not freely available and the software stack is probably unfamiliar to the devs. In comparison the Oculus devkit has been available for pretty cheap for quite a long time now with a free SDK. It's not hard to see why a developer with limited resources would choose to target only a single VR platform, and choose Oculus over PSVR at that.

 

[iceatcs]

Mods are one thing, but I don't want developers of games taking any shortcuts. That could be the quickest way to kill VR.

Feel that will be quite common on PC. Most FPS games likely will have simple mod patch. That's why I bought some sickbags in case.

 

[cheezcake]

What I don't understand is, there are plenty of PS4 games being retrofitted for PSVR (Project CARS, Futuridium, Surgery Simulator, War Thunder etc) so I don't get why this game is different.

Also, it's been said a number of times, by different devs, that PSVR is capable of supporting anything that runs on a 970. So as long as The Witness on PC meets Oculus Rift's minimum standards I don't see why there should be a problem.

It's not a power issue, the graphics can be toned down to any extent to get appropriate performance levels. It's a resource issue. The game is just coming out, they will have to support it in the future, they are likely totally unfamiliar with PSVR development. They feel that with their limited resources this is the best course of action, and it's pretty understandable.

 

[slavesnyder]

This comes as a surprise. No good news for PSVR.

 

[N30RYU]

They will make Kojima sad....

PD: Kojima is the first one with a VR helmet not looking like an asshole...

 

[blastprocessor]

He confirmed in a responding tweet to me that it runs 60FPS on PS4.

Don't understand the no VR then?

 

[Betta Lines]

What I don't understand is, there are plenty of PS4 games being retrofitted for PSVR (Project CARS, Futuridium, Surgery Simulator, War Thunder etc) so I don't get why this game is different.

PCARS = cockpit sim
Futuridium = abstract/trippy as balls
Surgery Simulator = standing sim
War Thunder = cockpit sim

The Witness = walking sim.

Walking is the problem. Then why is PC a possibility? Because it probably already has a working VR mode that they could enable if the demand was high. Not much work involved for what would be a shitty (nauseating) experience for many. PSVR on the other hand, would require plenty of optimisation to hit the performance requirements - a lot of work to deliver a shitty-experience-for-many is much harder to justify.

 

[mrklaw]

It's not a power issue, the graphics can be toned down to any extent to get appropriate performance levels. It's a resource issue. The game is just coming out, they will have to support it in the future, they are likely totally unfamiliar with PSVR development. They feel that with their limited resources this is the best course of action, and it's pretty understandable.

This is the simplest explanation, but then I get hung up in the language he used, which seems quite definitive. Why not be more open, something like 'no plans yet, focusing on launch, but let's see what the future brings'

 

[mrklaw]

PCARS = cockpit sim
Futuridium = abstract/trippy as balls
Surgery Simulator = standing sim
War Thunder = cockpit sim

The Witness = walking sim.

Walking is the problem. Then why is PC a possibility? Because it probably already has a working VR mode that they could enable if if the demand was high. Not much work involved for what would be a shitty (nauseating) experience for many. PSVR on the other hand, would require plenty of optimisation to hit the performance requirements - a lot of work to deliver a shitty-experience-for-many is much harder to justify.

Random guy on the internet makes crappy VR mod for FPS - whatever, I'll just ignore it.

Actual developer of game releases crappy mod for their own game that makes people sick - stupid and irresponsible.

I know it might sound silly to talk about responsibility, but you won't need many puke-inducing games to damage VR uptake. Unofficial can be filtered out as an enthusiast only thing, but official dev ones really need to be careful IMO.

 

[hodgy100]

In what way? Logically speaking, it shouldn't be that much more demanding, not when you're rendering at half resolution, especially on a console since you don't have so much overhead to worry about (double the drawcalls will hit PC harder pre-DX12).

you are rendering at a lower resolution but you are still rendering the scene twice, and the number of pixels being rendered isn't the sole performance variable when rendering a scene. you have all the data to crunch so transformations that have to be computed twice for the two different views. polygon Culling has to be performed twice as you are taking the second shot from another angle you have to render all the polys twice. These are of course all upper limits and "in the worst case" scenarios as there are plenty of ways to optimise these things, but you won't ever get it to the same performance as rendering the scene once for one viewpoint.

 

[Betta Lines]

Random guy on the internet makes crappy VR mod for FPS - whatever, I'll just ignore it.

Actual developer of game releases crappy mod for their own game that makes people sick - stupid and irresponsible.

I know it might sound silly to talk about responsibility, but you won't need many puke-inducing games to damage VR uptake. Unofficial can be filtered out as an enthusiast only thing, but official dev ones really need to be careful IMO.

Agreed, although I think people will soon learn how horrible traditional movement controls are for walking in VR and will avoid them at all costs. Oculus are going to have a 'comfort rating' on every game sold through their store, so I suppose Sony could do the same... but I doubt The Witness would even get on the Oculus store if they simply enabled 'VR headlook' and kept everything else the same.

 

[RoadHazard]

Actually, the CPU impact depends greatly on the details of your implementation. If it does support instanced stereo rendering it should be rather small, if it doesn't it can be very significant. Instanced stereo could be hard to retrofit on a custom engine for an indie dev. (Of course, this is all speculation)

Yeah, you're right that CPU cost will go up at least a little bit, but it shouldn't have to be significant. Most heavy tasks normally running on the CPU (in a well-programmed game, at least) have nothing to do with whether you're rendering one or two cameras.

 

[Rosur]

Getting on PS4 at launch may pick up the PC version in a sale for VR depending on how it turns out.

 

[kingkenny76]

thats a blow for psvr, or is it? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Spoiler

WITNESS ME

 

[Jack The Nipper]

You blew it.

You got that right

 

[thomasmahler]

This will be true for a LOT of games, fellas.

 

[Chû Totoro]

What I don't understand is, there are plenty of PS4 games being retrofitted for PSVR (Project CARS, Futuridium, Surgery Simulator, War Thunder etc) so I don't get why this game is different.

Also, it's been said a number of times, by different devs, that PSVR is capable of supporting anything that runs on a 970. So as long as The Witness on PC meets Oculus Rift's minimum standards I don't see why there should be a problem.

Without knowing how he is developing and where the bottlenecks are, it's difficult to say. Power shouldn't be an issue, as the PC specs are very scalable. But maybe his PS4 engine isn't for some reason. Durante explains more a few posts up.

As for the design - that shouldn't be a blocker. Putting aside power for the moment, any game that works on oculus rift should translate just fine on PSVR. Same camera based tracking with LEDs around the headset, similar standard controller (Xbox one vs DS4), targeting seated experiences initially.

I feel that because PC VR have no rule/control because there is always mod, whereas PSVR title got to approve first from Sony. So it might need more time to make it approved level for PSVR.
I don't think it mean PSVR is hard to make a title than PC. Just more strict control than PC.

The devs don't need to target specific performance optimisations for PC. They implement VR and smooth out most of the issues, people with good enough PC's get VR level performance easy.

On PS4 the devs needs to adjust the game to have appropriate performance for VR (which Sony has recommended to be 1080p@90fps not 60fps). Couple that with the fact that PSVR devkits are not freely available and the software stack is probably unfamiliar to the devs. In comparison the Oculus devkit has been available for pretty cheap for quite a long time now with a free SDK. It's not hard to see why a developer with limited resources would choose to target only a single VR platform, and choose Oculus over PSVR at that.

Thanks for the answers

Reading your posts it seems that the most logical reason behind the need to implement PS VR earlier in the dev cycle is that PC is a scalable product so adding Rift support is something you less have to take into account from the start. Maybe if you want to optimize VR a lot for the best experience possible but just making it Rift ready seems to have less barriers. On the contrary PS4 is a fixed hardware so even if it gives devs a full control on what every player will experience they still have to think things from the start so they can deliver something satisfying.

This said I'm sad that PS VR won't be supported because I hoped that this game (amongst other big ones coming is first semester) would make Sony telling us more about PS VR.

 

[bj00rn_]

Also, it's been said a number of times, by different devs, that PSVR is capable of supporting anything that runs on a 970.

..AFAIK this is often said in the context of reprojected framerate doubling (together with lower res). It's not for no reason Sony lately went out and recommended the use of minimum 90 Hz native instead (which is a good thing).

 

[quesalupa]

Sucks for PSVR but this will probably be the first full game I play on the Oculus if the compatability is out on time.

 

[MUnited83]

What I don't understand is, there are plenty of PS4 games being retrofitted for PSVR (Project CARS, Futuridium, Surgery Simulator, War Thunder etc) so I don't get why this game is different.

Also, it's been said a number of times, by different devs, that PSVR is capable of supporting anything that runs on a 970.

If you severely misquote and take away all the context from it, sure. But no, PSVR is not some kind of magical computing device.

 

[mrklaw]

Agreed, although I think people will soon learn how horrible traditional movement controls are for walking in VR and will avoid them at all costs. Oculus are going to have a 'comfort rating' on every game sold through their store, so I suppose Sony could do the same... but I doubt The Witness would even get on the Oculus store if they simply enabled 'VR headlook' and kept everything else the same.

If I were oculus I'd go one further and maintain a comfort rating for all games, even those that aren't on their store. I'm guessing most games will just continue to sell through steam and I'd want a way to understand how VR friendly they are before jumping in.

 

[GuitarAtomik]

guess i won't be buying this then...

I find it odd people are actually not going to buy the game now because of this news. The game wasn't even built for VR (on PC or PS). Were you guys really only interested in a possible VR addition, or were you not actually interested in the game at all?