Continuing its drip feeding of details about the PlayStation VR2, Sony has finally revealed what the next-gen headset will actually look like. Unsurprisingly, it looks a lot like the original, finished in the contoured white-and-black design of the PS5 console.
It was a year ago to the day that Sony first announced that it was working on a new VR headset for the PlayStation 5 – not that that wasn’t already a safe assumption. In March 2021 the company showed the world what the new controllers would look like. And it wasn’t until January 2022 that we finally got to peek under the hood at the full specs list.
Now, Sony has filled in the last piece of the puzzle – what the damn thing actually looks like. It’s nothing too crazy of course, with the same basic form factor as the previous PSVR headset, made up of a face-hugging unit fitted with an adjustable headband to fit a variety of head sizes. The company says the ergonomics and weight balance are based on the original, but with a slimmer design and a slight weight reduction.
Gone are the brightly colored tracking lights, replaced by small black dots – these are the sensors that enable the PSVR2’s inside-out tracking.
Sony says that the design team was going for a more rounded form factor to make the headset comfortable to wear for long periods and, in true marketing speak, to represent “the 360-degree view that players feel when they enter the virtual reality world.”
This orb shape also matches the new Sense controllers, which themselves have had a bit of a style change since we last saw them. They, like the new headset, have been finished in the white-and-black color scheme of the PS5 console.
The PSVR2 also packs a couple of new features. There’s now a dial to adjust the distance between the lenses, something that’s often found on other VR headsets. A new ventilation system should keep the lenses from fogging up, which is often the bane of the VR user’s existence. And the headset faceplate is covered in those tiny PlayStation symbols found on some DualSense controllers, to add a bit of texture.
So now that Sony has finally answered the burning question of what the PSVR2 looks like, we can focus our attention on the next most pressing matters – when can we actually play it, and how much is it going to cost us?
Hopefully, we don’t have to wait much longer for those answers.
Source: PlayStation blog