PSVR2 - out now!

[geldra]

Soooooo, can’t help but sense a touch of peeps being a little underwhelmed, specifically those who may have PSVR1 already?

 

Whats the general image quality like?  That’s the biggest upgrade I was hoping to see. 

[amc]

20 minutes ago, geldra said:

Soooooo, can’t help but sense a touch of peeps being a little underwhelmed, specifically those who may have PSVR1 already?

 

Whats the general image quality like?  That’s the biggest upgrade I was hoping to see. 

It's much better than PSVR1. It still has certain image quirks but that seems to just be what sticking screens close to your eyes brings, for now. GT7 looks incredible to me. I have a Quest 1 hooked up to a 4090 and although I've only played a couple of sessions with Assetto, I'd say GT7 is a fair bit better in the image stakes. Could be due to it being a Quest 1, mind.

 

Horizon is nice but I've already been wowed by Asgard's Wrath et al.

 

Its QoL is way beyond PSVR1. I'm liking it, a lot. Fuck them Dildos.

 

For the money, against the competition and what it would cost to be able to graphically compete, it's a steal. 

[FozZ]

 

I am making excellent use of my day off! 

[PaB]

Observations.

 

1. It’s a massive step up from psvr1 in every way. The integration, the headset, the set up options, the controllers everything.

 

2. it’s not the mind bending thing psvr was . In the same way 4k telly is not the mind bending thing the first colour tv was. 
 

3. there is pretty much no screen door 

 

4. pulse 3D headset works absolutely fine. Havent even taken the buds out of the wrapper.

 

5. try with and without glasses if you are short sighted . It works better than you might think with them on. 
 

6. gt7 is just perfect. I mean absolutely everything you could want

 

7. Horizon proved my vr legs are not what they used to be 

8. charging station takes a bit of a knack to seat the controllers right 

 

 

[thesnwmn]

47 minutes ago, geldra said:

Soooooo, can’t help but sense a touch of peeps being a little underwhelmed, specifically those who may have PSVR1 already?

 

Whats the general image quality like?  That’s the biggest upgrade I was hoping to see. 

 

This seems nothing like my take on impressions in here. A few discussions around expectations maybe overly heightened but in general people sound like they're loving it. Oh, and maybe people finding out it's killer app of Horizon might not be quite the right poster boy for it.

 

I think this VR headset suffers two issues on launch. First, like with all VR the slightly limited time you can spend in it means it's hard to really offer the deepest of takes in one evening. And two, you can never experience VR for the first time again. The PSVR1 thread can never really happen again. For many it was the first time and as stunning as another experience can be it's not your first.

[CheekyMonkey]

Went to pick mine up early yesterday (retailers sold it here in Australia) and got a massive kick in the nuts when I got it home to find it didn't work (it wouldn't power on). Cue a lot of swearing as I jump back in the car and drive back to JB Hifi. Luckily they had enough stock to give me a replacement though, so only an hour of the day was lost.

I'd say on loading up Horizon, I was pretty impressed, but ever so slightly underwhelmed - it is a lot cleaner than psvr1 and the quest2, the haptics are nice touch and the eye tracking is some sort of wizardry, as it just works pretty much flawlessly. Maybe it was just the sedate pace of the game I don't know...

 

Then I fired up Resi 8 and I was totally and utterly blown away. Forget Horizon guys, THIS is the benchmark game so far. The feeling of the handgun is amazing I spent 30 minutes just shooting the targets in the training section - fantastic! Then the main story began and holy hell it is just so crisp and the level of detail is insane - I was just walking around the house (in game, not my house) with my jaw practically on the floor. I'm only disappointed in the fact this wasn't released as a VR game in the first place and I know what's coming due to playing through it twice before. All I can say is - if you have VR2, definitely pick this up Capcom have done an outstanding job.

I just saw No Man's Sky VR2 has been released so I'll be downloading that today.

Also tried:

Fantavision: Seems good so far, but only played for 5 minutes, so I hope the firework effects get a bit crazier later on.
Kayak VR: Really nice and relaxing, controls almost perfectly I think the missus might even be able to play it without getting motion sickness.
Thumper: I had this on psvr1, but it is SO much clearer on psvr2 and it's such a top game.
Rez: Also had this on psvr1 but again it's beautifully sharp on vr2 and its an awesome spectacle.

Overall opinion so far - amazing! Very glad I took the plunge... 

Any negatives? Well, it's desperately missing an Astrobot game, I honestly can't believe they launched it without one - even a mini version like Astro's Playroom would have been brilliant! I'd also say if you are a VR veteran and have other devices such as Quest2, a little of the impact is lost eg, the controllers arent quite as exciting as they are very similar to Oculus touch ones. But that's it really!

[El Geet]

Need to spend a bit more time as only had time to set it up and try a bit of Kayak. @PaBhas it spot on in terms of it being a step up from PSVR1. But that initial go on the 1 is probably not going to be beaten until it’s like a pair of glasses or beamed into your skull Black Mirror style 

 

Kayak did look pretty amazing though. The brightness/HDR is properly good. Even found myself reflexively taking a breath and holding it before sticking my head under water. 

 

Will have to wait till Friday before I can have a proper go. 

[Stanley]

38 minutes ago, geldra said:

Soooooo, can’t help but sense a touch of peeps being a little underwhelmed, specifically those who may have PSVR1 already?

 

Whats the general image quality like?  That’s the biggest upgrade I was hoping to see. 

I didn’t own a PSVR1. 
 

It’s absolutely revelatory to me this thing. I played Horizon first, so that was my proper introduction to real VR. The moment it starts it’s just - boom - there you go, my whole lounge and head exploded into this rainforest, the scale, the detail, the sheer size of the robot creatures. It totally blew my mind, like 1 second and it had me, sold instantly. 
 

I played Gran Turismo briefly because I’m knew to this and didn’t want to become ill, but again - no pause for thought, I was there racing around this track in a sports car, anything I thought was a driving game before ceased to exist there and then. And I was fucking standing up to begin with, like I was in the Pope Mobile or something. Obviously I sat down after that like a normal person driving a car 

 

I tried Kayak this evening and it’s probably the most realistic looking of the games I’ve seen so far, I need to tinker with this one a bit I was getting the sense of movement and felt odd so I quit out. But from what I saw it’s very impressive, not quite so much as GT7 or Horizon but in terms of scale and graphical fidelity it’s incredibly effective. 
 

Tetris Effect was also revelatory, here’s a game I can sit back on the settee with and just play normally, like, huh, Tetris, but with an entire cosmos exploding everywhere. I loved it despite having played it loads in flatscreen mode already. It’s a different game, obviously designed for VR. It just make sense. 
 

And then I had to do it, I tried Resi. First off I didn’t try it properly, I was in sitting mode because I knew I needed to take it easy. And I’ve only done the tutorial, but this is going to be immense, the feeling of being there is insane, just looking around the room and taking it all in, I find the prospect of it just awe inspiring. The way you handle weapons and manipulate objects is so involved compared to the normal version, it’s the physical interaction that makes it all seem so real because it’s just natural. The forward movement freaked me out a bit I must admit, so I’ll look into what options for comfort there are there. But it’s so good. 
 

I’m blabbering but basically I’m having a ball with it, the games look stunning and everything just works amazingly well. The headset takes a bit of getting used to and adjusting, but the quality of the image is superb when you consider what is actually going on, it’s sheer magic. 
 

Had a good break this afternoon, don’t feel ill, and I’m off to bed. What a fantastic day! 

 

 

[Strafe]

1 hour ago, geldra said:

Soooooo, can’t help but sense a touch of peeps being a little underwhelmed, specifically those who may have PSVR1 already?

 

Whats the general image quality like?  That’s the biggest upgrade I was hoping to see. 

It’s good but it put my expectations in check after expecting crystal clear 4k (though to be fair I haven’t tried with glasses yet which I think will improve it), which it doesn’t seem to be.

 

Immersion wise I’ve probably been most impressed with RE village, had the most fun with Gran Turismo (especially watching windscreen wipers in the rain for some reason) and had several “holy fucking shit” moments during the opening sequence to horizon.

 

I haven’t played VR in a few years now so hard to remember enough to make a comparison. You definitely notice the foveated rendering.

 

To be fair, if this is the opening gambit then the future looks very good.

[Strafe]

If you haven’t done PSVR before it will blow your mind, if you have then you’ll still he impressed. Gran Turismo VR is like playing it on low settings if it were on PC but once you factor in the 3D audio it’s very immersive. The viewing angle is definitely better than the predecessor but not quite there in terms of ‘this is real life’ because you notice the edges.

[Strafe]

2 hours ago, Danster said:

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And much shorter than I thought she was too.

 

I thought that, then I remembered that I am quite tall. Wonder how it scales.

[Strafe]

The detail in resi village was really good for VR, I thought. It’s way ahead of 7 on PSVR1

[geldra]

Thanks for the replies. Yeah I think I was slightly surprised to see a few underwhelmed impressions in the last page or two but I guess you can never beat that first time of “holy fucking shit!” in VR. (Mine was that Eve Online space dogfighting game, always wanted to sit in the cockpit of some kind of space ship and be hurtled down a launch tube  to be spat out into space). 
 

It’s good to read a few more of everyone’s in depth impressions. Cheers! 
 

Looking forward to the HL Alyx reveal tomorrow. 

[Steven]

Just finished the first hour or so in Village and, once again, Capcom have pulled it out of the bag and delivered the game you need to play on the new shiny. Everything works so well - the flashlight positions, the feedback on the weapons (OMG!) and the lighting. The scene when the guys come into your home fooled my brain momentarily into thinking someone had come into the lounge through a door to the left. Imagine what these guys could do building a current-gen only title from the ground up for this thing.

 

It's really fucking good and I'm so happy this is my first time playing it. 

[gooner4life]

Despite having a Samsung Gear VR and PSVR1 my wife had never tried any sort of VR, until tonight, she loves Kayak, she was absolutely amazed, nothing like she imagined at all.

 

I'm really happy with it, it's exceeded my expectations, comfort, ease of use, general setup and controls are night and day ahead of where we were with PSVR, I haven't played on that for years because where my gaming setup is, it's just not convenient to leave it set up.

 

I'd love to try Batman and VR Worlds on PSVR2

[Pug]

I've boxed the headset and the charge station back up and initiated a return.

 

Just not a big enough visual improvement for me for the money.

 

The tracking was good though, but it should be, and the camera view is a good addition but I just can't ignore the mura effect that reminds me of DSE you can get on LCD TVs and the lack of sharpness further away.

 

Maybe I'll try again with the PSVR3.

 

 

 

 

[CrichStand]

1 hour ago, Fused gamer said:

Not playable on psvr2. I’ll eat my trousers if it doesn’t get announced though in some form.

Its surely got to be a shoe in for tmw’s state of play??? It’s Sony’s flagship PSVR game and for my money, one of the best games ever made, and I mean overall not just VR. Yet it mysteriously hasn’t had a PS5/PSVR2 upgrade. Yeah right! 
 

1 hour ago, amc said:

Yeah, I've been messing around with all my goggles today, couldn't say if it's better than it appeared on my PS4 Pro as that's been relegated to the bedroom over a year ago and I only set up my PSVR1 with my PS5 this afternoon. Looked nice enough.

 

Could see it being the case, mind. I'm sure WipEout Omega looked better in flat screen on my PS5 than on the PS4, despite no official upgrades. Maybe placebo?

 

Nice! Wouldn’t mind that lot myself. 😁

 

Looked into PSVR being better on PS5 and it turns out quite a few games are improved with clearer and crisper visuals. The other thing is, I had/have a base PS4 not a Pro, so there’s a pretty big jump going from that to PSVR on PS5. Astrobot looks really vibrant, clear and crisp with loads of detail. I’m currently re-downloading about 20 PSVR games to test them out. Bought Pixel Ripped 1995 in the sale too as the first one was great.

[Zombait]

Can I recommend you all to try Puzzling Places, there's a demo and I'm actually thinking of buying it. It's super chill and fun to manipulate the puzzles in 3D, when the parts click together it's sooo satisfying 😄

[Darwock]

I just woke up on the morning after and I’m reflecting on the GT7 HDR question - I watched the video @cassidy posted about the settings changes, but that was to enable HDR in cinematic mode - not for games.

 

Something that happened during the games brightness calibration (in the headset): It shows the white box and asks you to make the chequered pattern within it barely visible, which I did. Then it flips to a dark box and asks the same.

 

At this point the pattern was already clearly visible, dark grey squares on a black background. Moving the slider didn’t change it in any way, I went from lowest to highest and there was no difference. I just shrugged and moved on, but then the game reported HDR was set to OFF. Was it like this for anyone else? Is something wrong in my system?

[Strafe]

1 hour ago, geldra said:

Thanks for the replies. Yeah I think I was slightly surprised to see a few underwhelmed impressions in the last page or two but I guess you can never beat that first time of “holy fucking shit!” in VR. (Mine was that Eve Online space dogfighting game, always wanted to sit in the cockpit of some kind of space ship and be hurtled down a launch tube  to be spat out into space). 
 

It’s good to read a few more of everyone’s in depth impressions. Cheers! 
 

Looking forward to the HL Alyx reveal tomorrow. 

It’s a lot better than EVE Valkyrie but not quite the same step up you had when you first did it, if that makes sense.

[Len]

Mine finally turned up just now. Hopefully get a chance to plug it all in soon.

 

Loving all the impressions so far.

[FozZ]

2 hours ago, Zombait said:

Can I recommend you all to try Puzzling Places, there's a demo and I'm actually thinking of buying it. It's super chill and fun to manipulate the puzzles in 3D, when the parts click together it's sooo satisfying 😄

Yet more confusion with the store, with some things needing you to click the 3 dots on a games page to see there's a demo. This one just said download trial instead. 

 

Anyways, that aside, I was very skeptical as its clearly just sliced up 3d scans, but I have to say it was a nice relaxed wind down to the day (especially after noping out of Resi and quite a lengthy session on Thumper which is awesome but tense). 

 

Not sure I'd be willing to pay for the full thing, but it was enjoyable enough. I do like that you can choose how many pieces the puzzles are broken into. Audio needs some real attention though, just sounded like white noise for most of that first sample level. 

[SteveH]

4 hours ago, Pug said:

I've boxed the headset and the charge station back up and initiated a return.

 

Just not a big enough visual improvement for me for the money.

 

The tracking was good though, but it should be, and the camera view is a good addition but I just can't ignore the mura effect that reminds me of DSE you can get on LCD TVs and the lack of sharpness further away.

 

Maybe I'll try again with the PSVR3.

 

 

 

 

 It has made me wonder what it would look like if they had used pancake lenses. I don't have any experience with those lenses, it's only what I have read. But I think it may well have been a nice improvement to the headset.

[Escape]

I think I'd buy one if it turned out to be hackable for PC (predictions say no), to get in before they patched its firmware.

 

They'd patch GT7 instead, though!

[MagicalDrop]

Checked my bank this morning, the pending payment for PSVR2 has disappeared and hasn't been charged to my credit card, unlike everything else that was pending yesterday. I'm sure it will reappear imminently, but yet another oddity to add to the tracking number fiasco. 

Anyway I only had the chance to play Fantavision yesterday, although the set up process was entertaining enough in itself. Fantavision plays well but VR seems something of an afterthought - despite selecting VR Mode, the tutorial only references the standard controller. One 'quick go' saw me clear Easy mode in an hour long game and register my score on the local-only leaderboard. Hopefully a Friends and Global filter will get added although I think this is a bit of a niche title likely to get lost at launch among the bigger hitters. 

As for impressions of the kit - I had a PSVR1 so like others, the immediate wow factor of VR wasn't there but the removal of the camera and streamlining of cables is appreciated. A volume dial on the headset would've been nice, or at least something in the instructions that tell you how to adjust it. The controllers are comfortable if a bit excessively scifi in appearance 

Planning on playing (?) Kayak today, I prordered it on the basis of a couple of videos and not sure whether there's even a game in there or just an experience. 

Will upgrade Rez and Tetris at some point once my chemotherapy-affected eyes can take longer play sessions. I bought a wheel last week so I'll be on the hunt for a cheap GT7 too. 

I'm sort of confined to a bedroom for play at the moment so the play area will be too small to play Horizon. Upheaving everything downstairs feels like too much effort right now so impressions of that will have to wait. 

Overall its always lovely to be involved on hardware launch day and experience the excitement with everyone else. No regrets.

[Stanley]

@MagicalDropI looked at Fantavision as I enjoyed the original game. I had foolishly believed it was going to be a free upgrade or at the very least a nominal fee. So I was a bit startled when I saw it was £24.99, maybe one to pick up when it’s on sale. 
 

Someone mentioned the demos being awkward to find; there’s a separate sub section for them on the store, but yeah it’s a bit of a mess, case in point being having to click on the three dots for Moss Book II in order to select both games in a bundle, which is quite a saving over buying them both separately, and I don’t believe there’s any way to upgrade the originals either. 
 

RE Village is the game I’m looking forward to going back to the most, I don’t think it can be stressed enough just how fully fledged this feels in VR, it’s like the original was a soft launch and this is the full proper release. Perhaps they deliberately held it back for PSVR2 rather than go with the first PSVR. 
 

Imagine if Naughty Dog made a VR game 

[cassidy]

well I'm shocked that my PSVR2 has shipped and is with DPD. 

 

And annoyed cos I'm out today at a funeral and the PS5 isn't arriving till tomorrow. 

 

Ah well more impressions to read until then. 

[Calashnikov]

I assume GT7 can be played with a regular Dualsense in PSVR2, so why not Astrobot?

[Stanley]

2 minutes ago, Calashnikov said:

I assume GT7 can be played with a regular Dualsense in PSVR2, so why not Astrobot?

Yeah it can, in fact it’s the only way as far as I know unless you’re using a wheel. 

[MattyP]

3 hours ago, Escape said:

I think I'd buy one if it turned out to be hackable for PC (predictions say no), to get in before they patched its firmware.

 

They'd patch GT7 instead, though!

I was thinking the same thing however then you loose one of the big selling points  for this a smooth user experience and the plug and play aspect. 

 

I had an original PSVR and I was really impressed with it and how it all worked (less impressed with all the wires and box etc needed to drive it!). Eventually went over to the PC with an Oculus Rift S. This wasn't quite as smooth from the user experience point of view - sure fine if you stay within Oculus's walled garden but having Steam etc as a serparate app felt a bit messy and some games needed a bit of fiddle to configure etc.

 

I expect the PSVR2 is a much more seamless experience with much improved tech over the original PSVR - certainly less messy than the original with cabling, cameras and the magic box needed!  

 

Looking forward to trying this at some point. However not sure about buying one not convinved its a big enough step up from my currently Oculus however the lure of GT7 with this might make me cave in....