Author: Kyle Orland

That green box in the middle of this Aperture Science scene indicates it's running right in the middle of the adaptive performance curve. (credit: Alex Vlachos)

Officially, Valve's SteamVR performance test seems to require a high-powered Nvidia GTX 970 graphics card or better for high-quality "VR ready" performance. At a GDC talk last week, though, Valve Graphics Programmer Alex Vlachos detailed how a number of adaptive quality programming tricks let him run Valve's impressive Aperture Science VR demo passably on a four-year-old Nvidia GTX 680.

That's especially impressive because VR graphics can often push even high-end graphics cards to their limits. In virtual reality, the graphics hardware has to push two separate views (one for each eye) at a rock-solid 90 frames per second to avoid a nauseating delay between head movement and the view shown on the display. That leaves the graphics card only 11.1 ms per frame to render what can be complex 3D scenes.

The VR environment also means the user can often move the first person "camera" (i.e. their head) wherever they want, as fast as they want. Unlike a standard first-person engine, which usually displays the world only at standing or crouching height, a free-roaming VR engine needs to be potentially ready to display any object from any distance and any angle, rendering it quickly at a convincing level of detail. And a VR engine can't just slow to a crawl when scenes get crowded or complicated, either. Remember, dipping below 90 fps can be literally sickening.

If game companies won't embrace emulation themselves, this kind of thing will have to do... (credit: Frank Cifaldi)

For years now, "emulation" has been a dirty word in the video game industry, regarded by many companies as nothing more than an illegal, piracy-fueling technology that represents an existential threat to the gaming business. In a passionate presentation at the Game Developers Conference this week, though, gaming historian and developer Frank Cifaldi made a well-reasoned case for the industry at large to embrace emulation as a way to capture its heritage.

"I think emulation has gotten a bad rap over the years," Cifaldi said. "I think our industry and consumers have a really bad misconception of what emulation is. Emulation is just software that makes a computer act like a different computer."

Cifaldi traces emulation's bad reputation in the game industry back to a 1999 Macworld conference keynote by the late Steve Jobs. Saying that he wanted to make the Mac "the best game machine in the world," Jobs introduced the Connectix Virtual Game Station, a $49 piece of third-party software that "turns your Mac into a Sony PlayStation."

VirZoom's VR exercise bike technology sports a sleek new look at GDC. If you don't mind looking silly, it sure beats fighting cars to pedal around in the cold and rain.

27 more images in gallery

In the midst of all the technical talks and indie game demos at the Game Developers Conference, you'll find the show floor, a place where serious companies try to grab your attention in decidedly non-serious ways. Every year as the GDC winds down, we like to make a circuit of the show floor to see what new techniques middleware companies are using to grab show-goer attention. This year's show floor, in the cavernous Moscone Center in San Francisco, did not disappoint.

A number of companies tried their best to latch on to the emerging virtual reality trend with new controllers and accessories. These aren't the well-funded, big-name head-mounted displays from the likes of Valve or Oculus, but often gimmicky prototypes trying to add a novel twist to the way you interact in virtual reality.

(credit: Aurich Lawson)

Sony has begun briefing developers on plans to release a new version of the PS4 with increased graphical capabilities, according to a report from Kotaku.

The PS4.5 (as at least one overheard developer is apparently calling it) would sport a more powerful GPU than the current console, according to the report. That new hardware would allow the system to support games running at 4K resolution (the PS4 can currently only display photos and videos in 4K) and could help power more detailed experiences on the upcoming PlayStation VR. It's unclear from the report whether the improved power would be available in the form of a new console or as an upgrade program to existing PS4 units (or both).

Kotaku's Patrick Klepek cites two trusted development sources for the information and says other staffers at the site were able to independently confirm the same hardware plans with additional sources. That said, Klepek's sources warn that the plans they're hearing about seem more "exploratory" and vague than anything concrete at this point.

We'll stop reusing images from old PSN hacking stories when they stop being fascinating to look at.

Since Microsoft announced a new policy of cross-console openness regarding online play earlier this week, we've been stuck parsing vague statements from Sony on whether the PS4 would accept the Xbox One's metaphorically extended hand. Now, Sony Worldwide Studios head Shuhei Yoshida has offered another vague statement that suggests the possibility of a connection between PlayStation Network and Xbox Live without fully committing to anything.

In a video interview with Eurogamer, Yoshida leads off by pointing out Sony's history of allowing for cross-platform play between PlayStation systems and the PC, as in recent releases like Rocket League and Street Fighter V. From there, though, Yoshida goes on to suggest that interoperability between two competing consoles is different.

“Because PC is an open platform, it’s much more straightforward," he said. "Connecting two different closed networks is much more complicated, so we have to work with developers and publishers to understand what it is they are trying to accomplish."

All in.

When Sony finally announced a $400 price tag for its PlayStation VR headset earlier this week, that announcement was incomplete at best and downright misleading at worst. The $400 base package doesn't come with the PlayStation Camera that is required for positional tracking or the PlayStation Move controllers that are required for many of the headset's games.

This morning, Sony announced a more complete bundled package that gets at PlayStation VR's true starting price for most users. For $500 (or C$700) North American players get the PlayStation VR headset (and required cables), a PlayStation Camera, two PlayStation Move wands, and the PlayStation VR Worlds collection of themed mini-games. Even without the game, that number represents a significant savings from the suggested retail price for the Camera ($60) and Move controllers ($50 each), though both accessories often actually retail for much less than those suggested prices.

While there are doubtless some players out there who already have the Camera and/or Move controllers they'll need for PlayStation VR, we can't imagine there are a lot. For evidence, look toward Amazon, where sales for the PS4 Camera increased 3,000 percent in the wake of the PlayStation VR announcement (Move controllers and chargers saw a nearly 1,000 percent sales increase themselves). And while you don't technically need Move controllers for every PSVR game, scrimping on them means missing out on some of the system's most compelling virtual reality experiences.

Oculus says it never intended for you to be able to replicate this scene at the Rift's launch.

When the HTC Vive and PlayStation VR launch in April and October, respectively, the headsets will feature accompanying controllers that track the user's hands through space. The launch of the Oculus Rift this month, though, won't include the similar Oculus Touch controllers, which are currently slated for the second half of 2016.

Now, Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey tells Ars that the Touch controllers aren't a missing piece for the Rift's big March 28 roll out, but that the company always intended for things to be this way.

"We never planned on launching Touch with Rift," Luckey said during a roundtable discussion at the Game Developers Conference. "We're going to have a really great Touch lineup later in the year, but we really wanted to focus on the games people have been working on for years with gamepads right now."

SAN FRANCISCO—At a GDC keynote presentation Wednesday, Epic Games' Tim Sweeney showed off plenty of Unreal Engine-powered games and highlighted how developers would soon be able to build those games in a fully virtual reality editor. But the more surprising focus of his talk was the growing use of Unreal Engine 4 outside of gaming for everything from film editing to architectural planning.

"What the camera was to the 20th century, the engine is today," Sweeney said. "The media world is converging into a digital content industry... where the engine is the thing that links [different media] together in an interoperable world."

The most stunning example of this cross-media collaboration came in a gripping cut scene from Hellblade developer Ninja Theory. The highly detailed shot highlighted Celtic warrior protagonist Senua, fighting through deep psychosis and trauma on a vision quest into a Viking heartland. As Senua tried to shake off disturbing, fiery visions of hanging corpses, the camera zoomed in on her face, illuminating every tiny mouth twitch and body shiver that served as an outward sign of her internal struggle.

This image, first made for the PSN hacking case back in 2011, kind of works for this story, too. Right?

After Monday's surprise announcement that Microsoft was opening the Xbox One up to wider cross-platform play, the only thing standing between a more-unified console multiplayer future is Sony. Now, the PlayStation maker has responded to Microsoft's offer, but in an incredibly vague and hard-to-read way.

"PlayStation has been supporting cross-platform play between PC on several software titles starting with Final Fantasy 11 on PS2 and PC back in 2002,” the company said in a statement issued to Gamespot. “We would be happy to have the conversation with any publishers or developers who are interested in cross-platform play."

On the surface, that statement suggests that Sony is willing to open the doors to the PlayStation Network at least a crack, even if it's not willing to throw those doors as wide open as Microsoft. It sounds like PSN cross-platform access will be granted on a case-by-case basis—perhaps the standards will be different for niche indie titles and the big-budget shooters that really drive PSN's network effects.

Sony's Andrew House showing everything that comes in the $399 PSVR package.

SAN FRANCISCO—At a Game Developers Conference press event Wednesday, Sony announced that its PlayStation VR headset would launch in October 2016 for $399 / £349 / €399 / 44,980 Yen. That price does not include the PlayStation Move camera needed to track the headset, or the PlayStation Move hand-tracking controllers needed for many games.

The finalized announcement comes nearly two years after Sony's virtual reality headset was officially unveiled as "Project Morpheus" at the 2014 Game Developers Conference. Sony announced a "first half of 2016" launch window for the headset at last year's show, but recent statements from GameStop CEO Paul Raines had suggested that date might slip.

The price comes in well below the $599 Oculus is asking for the Rift, and the $799 HTC is asking for the SteamVR-powered Vive headset, both of which will ship to early orderers in the next few weeks. Those headsets also require a decently powerful PC that can cost $1,000 or more—PlayStation VR users only need to invest in a $350 PlayStation 4.