Yo viveks86, the PS4, used normally, can push over a billion polygons per second and tens of thousands of draw calls.
Yes, the reduction in available assets will be a comparable step back compared to what the Note 4 could do on it's own, to what it wound up doing in VR. But given the enormous numbers you are talking about to begin with, that still is going to leave you with a considerable headroom to work with.
I explained in my previous posts how this reduction in headspace manifests in games. The environments are smaller, there is less going on, you won't have games on the scale of what the PS4 or even the PS3 pushed very hard can deliver in terms of scope. What you have to work with will dictate lots of design choices for how you create your game.
But, again, you still have a considerable amount to work with. The thing with VR games is that, ideally, so much of the design is going to be dictated merely by the switch from conventional screen to VR to begin with. You're not going to get sprawling VR games where you walk through an entire city like in GTAV for a variety of reasons, not least of which being we don't know how to produce that kind of game in VR yet. There are so many questions about input and locomotion that haven't been correctly tackled yet that not having enough power under the hood to create such a world in VR in the first place is the least of your worries.
What I've envisioned the first wave of consumer VR being for a long while now are programs that make you feel like you are sitting or standing in a small environment. Sitting at a desk or on a couch or some sort of chair. You aren't really meant to get up and go and walk around. Your ability to physically traverse these VR environments is mainly limited to your ability to stretch your torso and look around, and have your hands tracked as far as they can reach. This is what the hardware available lends itself well enough to do, this is what the early understood VR design practices lend themselves well enough to do, this is generally how a lot of early VR programs are trending.
Now, look at Sony's demos, and you can see how they are building these demos around these limitations. You're in a room in the Heist, you're in a shark tank in the shark demo, you're in a luge, etc. Over on the PC side of things, you have better hardware available and it can let you do just a little bit more - your area is now about 225 square feet with Vive, and you can see devs already starting to build relocatable cockpits and platforms that mimic this area in early vive demos - but the types of games this better hardware will afford will still be limited in many of the same ways. The $1500 PC that Oculus recommends isn't going to be a world beater when it comes to VR.
When you get into the high end experimental VR stuff, you can see some really crazy stuff - redirected walking, omnidirectional treadmills, games and demos that aim to tackle very ambitious things. But the hardware to do this stuff is astronomical in price (talking stuff like dual Titan X cards in SLI), the conventions in development are very much works in progress and vary in quality, and you're overall hit with a lot more "jank" for lack of better word. When you get into really high end VR - and for the first time average consumers can actually do that if they are willing to drop the money - it honestly feels more like you're entering research and development. Because you really are.
That very high end will not come to the PS4. It will come next generation. That's when we will see these methods refined into forms that are palpitate and "idiot proof." Thats when the cost of hardware will drop enough to let teenagers buy this stuff. That is far off.
Step back from the ledge, what the PS4 can do isn't going to be so hamstrung that it's going to provide you with VR that is undercooked and snake oil.
Yes, the reduction in available assets will be a comparable step back compared to what the Note 4 could do on it's own, to what it wound up doing in VR. But given the enormous numbers you are talking about to begin with, that still is going to leave you with a considerable headroom to work with.
I explained in my previous posts how this reduction in headspace manifests in games. The environments are smaller, there is less going on, you won't have games on the scale of what the PS4 or even the PS3 pushed very hard can deliver in terms of scope. What you have to work with will dictate lots of design choices for how you create your game.
But, again, you still have a considerable amount to work with. The thing with VR games is that, ideally, so much of the design is going to be dictated merely by the switch from conventional screen to VR to begin with. You're not going to get sprawling VR games where you walk through an entire city like in GTAV for a variety of reasons, not least of which being we don't know how to produce that kind of game in VR yet. There are so many questions about input and locomotion that haven't been correctly tackled yet that not having enough power under the hood to create such a world in VR in the first place is the least of your worries.
What I've envisioned the first wave of consumer VR being for a long while now are programs that make you feel like you are sitting or standing in a small environment. Sitting at a desk or on a couch or some sort of chair. You aren't really meant to get up and go and walk around. Your ability to physically traverse these VR environments is mainly limited to your ability to stretch your torso and look around, and have your hands tracked as far as they can reach. This is what the hardware available lends itself well enough to do, this is what the early understood VR design practices lend themselves well enough to do, this is generally how a lot of early VR programs are trending.
Now, look at Sony's demos, and you can see how they are building these demos around these limitations. You're in a room in the Heist, you're in a shark tank in the shark demo, you're in a luge, etc. Over on the PC side of things, you have better hardware available and it can let you do just a little bit more - your area is now about 225 square feet with Vive, and you can see devs already starting to build relocatable cockpits and platforms that mimic this area in early vive demos - but the types of games this better hardware will afford will still be limited in many of the same ways. The $1500 PC that Oculus recommends isn't going to be a world beater when it comes to VR.
When you get into the high end experimental VR stuff, you can see some really crazy stuff - redirected walking, omnidirectional treadmills, games and demos that aim to tackle very ambitious things. But the hardware to do this stuff is astronomical in price (talking stuff like dual Titan X cards in SLI), the conventions in development are very much works in progress and vary in quality, and you're overall hit with a lot more "jank" for lack of better word. When you get into really high end VR - and for the first time average consumers can actually do that if they are willing to drop the money - it honestly feels more like you're entering research and development. Because you really are.
That very high end will not come to the PS4. It will come next generation. That's when we will see these methods refined into forms that are palpitate and "idiot proof." Thats when the cost of hardware will drop enough to let teenagers buy this stuff. That is far off.
Step back from the ledge, what the PS4 can do isn't going to be so hamstrung that it's going to provide you with VR that is undercooked and snake oil.
