Just a few weeks after confirming that a VR system for the PlayStation 5 is in development, Sony has now shown off the controllers. Wearing their inspiration on their sleeves (almost literally), the new designs look lightyears ahead of the PS4’s clunky old sticks, and pack some features from the PS5’s DualSense.
The PS5 VR controllers kind of look like a regular controller snapped in half. The mirror image of each other, each controller packs a thumbstick, a grip button on the side, a trigger on the back, and two of the main “face” buttons – triangle and square on the left and X and circle on the right. The Create button is on the left half and Options is on the right.
Thankfully, these new controllers have ditched the awkward wand form factor of the PS Move controllers in favor of a more modern design. For one, all the buttons, triggers and sticks look like they’re much easier to reach and use than on the old controllers. They look an awful lot like the controllers on the Oculus Quest range, but hey, if you’re going to emulate anybody you might as well emulate the best.
The circular shape may look like you’re putting your hands into a gladiator ball, but that ring is how the system tracks your movements and gestures. Rather than the old system of having one single camera watching from in front of your TV, the new headset itself will now track where the hand controllers are.
Most other VR systems already use this “inside-out” tracking, but it’s great that Sony is catching up. The PS4 VR is mostly a seated, eyes-forward kind of experience – if you turn your back to the camera your in-game hands just float away. This new system removes that limitation and opens up the possibility of room-scale and full 360-degree VR.
The new controllers have a few other nifty tricks up their sleeves too. Even if you’re not pressing any particular button, touch sensors can tell when your fingers are resting on the controller or are raised, allowing more natural gestures to be replicated virtually. This is also borrowed from the Oculus controllers.
Some of the headline features of the PS5 DualSense controller are carried across. The VR controllers are built with the surprisingly detailed haptic feedback system, and the adaptive triggers that simulate the tension of actions like pulling a bowstring taut.
All up, the new controller design has us pretty excited that the PS5 VR will be closer to the experience that its PC and standalone competitors offer. Unfortunately Sony has said that the system won’t be releasing until 2022 at the earliest, so it’s a little strange that the company has made this announcement so early.
That said, it looks like prototypes will be shipped out to developers soon, so they can start designing games around them. That gives us hope that it’ll be worth the wait.
Source: PlayStation blog