PSVR 2 development can be tough, a report shows
In its first year, the Playstation VR 2 has had a notable number of botched game launches. An investigative article explores the possible reasons.
Diego Argüello spoke to several VR studios for the online magazine Inverse to find out what developers think of Playstation VR 2 and what their experiences have been like. Among them are the creators of Hellsweeper, The Light Brigade, Among Us VR, Vampire: The Masquerade - Justice and Paper Beast.
Unity, whose Standard Render Pipeline does not support foveated rendering, seems to be a big hurdle in development. Some studios were faced with the difficult choice of either porting their game to the newer Universal Render Pipeline, which reportedly is very time-consuming, or forgoing foveated rendering. Some titles such as No Man's Sky and Switchback VR only received updates to support the rendering technology months after launch.
According to some developers, another big obstacle is Sony's strict requirements, called Virtual Reality Checks (VRCs), that studios must pass before they can release their VR game for Playstation VR 2. For example, the Hellsweeper Studio had to disable a signature movement feature by default because Sony feld it would cause discomfort.
The developers' wish list includes better tracking, beta access for patches and updates to gather feedback from players, and a QA team to help small VR studios.
Conclusion: The Inverse article sheds a new and rare light on the development process for PSVR 2 and is a recommended read if you are interested in the topic.
The Playstation VR 2 is now almost a year old.
During this time, a couple of poorly optimized titles have been released. Many games forgo PSVR 2's unique features like foveated rendering or use Sony's controversial reprojection technique to improve performance, which causes artifacts and can even cause nausea in sensitive people.
The article makes it easier to understand the difficulties and decisions that studios make in some cases. However, it is unclear how much of the blame lies with the studios themselves. Sony declined to comment to Inverse.
Note: Links to online stores in articles can be so-called affiliate links. If you buy through this link, MIXED receives a commission from the provider. For you the price does not change.
