One year later, Sony’s new Morpheus prototype is still VR done right

SAN FRANCISCO—Reloading a gun in home video games is crap.

Shooting is crap, too, in a way. Moving your mouse or tilting your joystick and hitting a button doesn't really simulate the feeling of aiming and firing a gun that well, but at least there's some directionality and physicality to it (especially if you're squeezing a shoulder trigger on a handheld controller). Reloading, on the other hand, is total crap as an analog for the real-world action it simulates. All you do is tap a button, then watch a canned animation of your avatar making a complex series of motions to refill an ammo clip precisely with an unseen trove of bullets that are just sitting in an unseen backpack or something.

I didn't really realize how unsatisfying and artificial this process really was until I played with the latest prototype of Sony's Morpheus virtual reality headset at GDC today. There, in a demo called London Heist, I ducked and dodged behind a solid wooden desk as assailants fired on me from all directions, popping out to aim carefully placed shots by moving and tilting the PlayStation Move controller in my hands.

When the gun ran out of bullets, I realized I had no idea how to reload—the attendant at the demo had only told me that I could fire by pulling the trigger on the controller. There were additional ammo clips sitting on the virtual desk in front of me, but I couldn't just magically pick them up by running over to them and/or tapping a button, as I would in most games.

What I could do, instead, was reach out my left hand, pick up a clip with the squeeze of a trigger, then slam that clip into the bottom of my empty gun with a satisfying click. I was doing this in the game, but I was also doing it in the real world, moving my hands and bumping my palms together naturally and intuitively in a motion that I imagine mimics a real quick reload situation quite closely.

This, more than anything else, is what has me excited about gaming with the Morpheus. The PlayStation Move is so well suited to virtual reality that it's a bit hard to believe it was a consumer product for the PlayStation 3 years before Oculus put the concept of home VR back into the public consciousness (though Sony may have been thinking about Morpheus even back then). The combination of camera tracking and gyroscopic angular tracking maps the position of your hands to real space quickly and accurately, making it easy to just interact with the virtual world in the same kinds of ways you would with the real world.

This wasn't the first time I've been impressed by the way the PlayStation Move is integrated into the Morpheus experience. Back at E3 2014, I tried an updated version of a GDC demo that involved picking up a sword and attacking a training dummy with real-world swings. On a whim, I decided to unleash my inner juggler and try throwing the sword up and over to the side, to see if I could catch it with my other hand.

It took a minute or two to get the timing right, but sure enough, the simulation and the controllers allowed for this impromptu experimentation. More than putting on any headset or seeing any convincing virtual reality visuals, the moment I caught that sword in my hand was the moment where I knew virtual reality could lead to some truly new and interesting experiences in gaming. Reloading that clip today was another.

Still well-designed hardware

As far as Morpheus is concerned, PlayStation Move integration is already old news. Today, Sony was really showing off a new prototype headset with many improved specifications over last year's trade show model.

I can't say I noticed much difference between the new OLED screen and the LCD display on the previous prototypes. The image persistence and refresh rate seemed perfectly adequate 12 months ago and also seemed perfectly adequate today, with no noticeable blurring or smearing. Maybe if I saw both prototypes right next to each other I would see more apparent change from the roughly 40 ms latency of the past to the 18 ms latency of today, or the jump from a 75 Hz refresh rate to 120 Hz. Separated by months, though, it was hard to really appreciate these improvements.

I was a bit surprised that Sony's headset hasn't advanced past the 1080p resolution we saw in last year's Morpheus prototype, especially when devices like the Gear VR are already pushing more pixels to users' faces in homes across the country. At the current resolution, there's still a subtle but noticeable "screen-door effect" that can distract from the experience, especially when trying to focus on virtual objects up close.

This is still a prototype about a year out from release, but I'm a bit worried that Sony will stick with the 1080p resolution that's already proven comfortable for the PlayStation 4 hardware on TV screens. It's possible that the system just can't push past that resolution and still maintain the high frame rate necessary for convincing VR (at least, not without sacrificing the visual fidelity of in-game models).

I'm still impressed by the Morpheus prototype's industrial design, which puts the main weight of the device on a headband area, rather than on elastic goggles that clamp to the front of your face. The new prototype features a couple of buttons that make it quite easy to adjust the fit and focus quickly and to slide the display so it hovers a comfortable distance from your face. I think the unit felt lighter and less cumbersome than last year's prototype, but I couldn't swear that this change wasn't just in my head.

The most annoying part of the design is still the wire hanging off the left side of the device. That wire goes to a small junction box that integrates the multiple wires coming from the PS4 and provides a nearby plug for headphones. I found myself constantly bumping into those wires and the dangling box they were attached to as I twisted and turned through the demos. The need to swing all of this out of your way as you use Morpheus may be unavoidable for now, but it's still annoying.

An exciting firefight

Even at 1080p, the demos Sony was showing off today were still pretty visually impressive in their own right. The revamped version of "The Deep" and a new demo of "The Toy Room" used directional lighting to great effect, projecting three-dimensional rays and shadows convincingly in real time. Strong art direction in both of these demos made it easier to forget about the relatively low resolution, for the most part.

London Heist was definitely the standout demo experience, though. A short introduction showed that being threatened with torture-by-blowtorch is much more convincing when you can't just look off-screen to avoid the flame dancing in your face. Holding a virtual cell phone to my ear and hearing the audio come through accurately based on the distance from my face also proved the value directional audio can add to the VR experience.

Before long, I was rifling through virtual desk drawers using the Move controllers, looking for a key to unlock a compartment hiding a gem and ducking behind a desk to avoid guards. When the experience eventually descended into a firefight, it felt incredibly natural to kneel down on the floor and out of the rain of fire coming in. Aiming and shooting was like something out of an arcade light gun game, only with a playfield that surrounded me rather than being confined to a small flat screen.

Simply pointing my virtual gun at a target and squeezing the trigger was much quicker and more intuitive than any mouse or joystick setup I've ever used for the same purpose, and more satisfying to boot. Reaching around the desk to fire blind or tilting quickly up to take out an attacker on the balcony all felt simple and fresh in this new environment.

The only problem, of course, is that I was trapped in a relatively small play area for the entire firefight. Even when my virtual co-conspirator screamed "Get out of there" in my ear, I knew I couldn't actually run for the exit without taking the entire Morpheus and PS4 apparatus with me in the real world. Taking this kind of VR experience from a virtual shooting gallery to a fully explorable first-person shooter world is going to remain a challenge.

It's the kind of challenge I look forward to more developers playing with. With the control system, minimum hardware specs, and an early 2016 launch window in place, it's time to see what outside developers can do with Sony's robust-looking virtual reality effort. I can't wait to see what they come up with.