No more ungainly break-out boxes to contend with; thankfully PSVR 2 connects to PlayStation 5 via a single USB-C cable. But if you think you’ll be able to plug in that seemingly standard cable to a VR-ready PC to play Half-Life: Alyx like you might with standalones such as Quest 2, Vive XR Elite or Pico 4, you’ll be sorely disappointed. PSVR 2 won’t work as a PC VR headset, and according to the developer behind unofficial conversion software iVRy Driver, you shouldn’t buy one with the anticipation that it ever will.

Plug in an original PSVR into a computer, and the PC thinks it’s an additional monitor. That was the starting point back in late 2016 for many to begin cobbling together unofficial support for PC VR games. One such go-to staple for PSVR-to-PC conversion is iVRy Driver for SteamVR, an ongoing project created by indie studio Mediator Software.

But what about PSVR 2? In a Reddit thread discussing the topic, Mediator Software says you should save your cash if you want to buy a PSVR 2 specifically for PC VR gaming:

You would be wasting your money, as there is no guarantee you could ever use it on a PC, and quite a good chance that you won’t be able to. The original PSVR is (electronically) equivalent to a monitor and so it it is relatively simple to get a video signal up on it. Reading sensors etc. took a lot of reverse engineering, and at least a year from release before anyone figured that out. It then took a couple more years before it was usable as a PC VR headset. Tracking and controllers (using the original hardware) is still very much a work in progress, over 5 years from release. That is without Sony making any effort to prevent non PS4 users from using it.

How to connect PSVR to PC | Image courtesy Mediator Software

The iVRy Driver creator speculates that Sony has likely encrypted the signals to prevent use across any non-PlayStation device. Still, even if it’s cracked eventually—or by some chance the video signal running through USB-C isn’t encrypted—contending with the headset’s inside-out 6DOF tracking will be a headache:

Even if they haven’t [encrypted headset data] it would take a lot of reverse engineering (read several years) just to get an image on the headset. Then there is the tracking, which would need to be developed, as there isn’t a ready-made SLAM tracker available for Windows (assuming of course the camera protocol was reverse-engineered). Then the controllers etc. etc.

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Mediator Software calls it “unlikely” that the PSVR 2 would be useable for PC VR “within 5 years of its release,” making it essentially a non-starter. To boot, the developer says anyone Googling “will PSVR2 work on Windows?” is best answered with “No, not in the foreseeable future, and probably not ever.”

While the entrance of PSVR 2 on February 22nd is set to bring a smattering of popular titles to PS5, some of which are available on SteamVR today, as it is today Sony still hasn’t published a launch day lineup, leaving us more than a bit crestfallen so close to release.

In the meantime, we’re compiling a growing list of every PSVR 2 game announced so far so you can keep up on all the games coming Sony’s next-gen headset (hopefully) this year.

Thanks to Jayjay @JayHadHope for pointing us to the news.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • David Wilhelm

    Hogwash; encrypting the display will induce latency, increase power consumption and thus heat, and add unnecessary component cost. It’s almost like I posed this question on the (open source) Revive Discord last week..

    • Cless

      Yeah, the reason PSVR2 wouldn’t work on PC would be most likely a lack of interest. Which if PSVR2 starts selling like pancakes might create interest from people that have it to get it to work somehow, specially seeing how it beats to a pulp all current headsets in image quality.

      • ViRGiN

        Yeah that’s gonna happen. Like Quest got bootloader unlocked. _someone_ is going to hack it. Yeaaaa.

      • GunnyNinja

        “beats to a pulp”? What specs have you been reading?

        • Cless

          Tell me how many other OLED 2K HDR at 120hz, with eye tracking and foveated rendering headsets are there around?

          • GunnyNinja

            I have no idea. Since I can’t use it, it’s pretty irrelevant. For my use, it can’t even beat the Oculus Rift, much less my G2. But I still think beats to a pulp is an overstatement for something you haven’t seen yet.

          • Cless

            I mean, you did ask for specs, so I answered… Just because you can’t use it doesn’t mean its worse for everyone else…?
            Also, plenty of devs and reviewers have had their hands on PSVR2, its coming out in a matter of weeks.

          • GunnyNinja

            I wanted to know if you are aware that others exist since you said all current headsets.

          • Cless

            Oh! Yeah, I’ve tried plenty. If you like your Rift, you would love the PSVR2, its basically a serious upgrade of it (if there was any way to bring it to PC that is, of course).
            Its also a pretty serious upgrade over the G2 to be honest, specially image quality wise. The G2 uses LCD displays that have pretty poor contrast ratio, and aren’t HDR. You do sacrifice about 100px of resolution, but that is almost negligible to be honest, specially since the lenses are better too.

          • GunnyNinja

            If you are going to compare it to ALL headsets, it’s fair to point out how useless it is for the PC. That matters more than how good it looks. If you know that I have a G2, why tell me how much of an upgrade it is over the Rift? Choose an argument. It’s not better than any PCVR headset for PC use. Varjo exists, and although expensive, you didn’t qualify your statement to a price point. Your whole point is moot since it can’t be used for what most people want VR for. So, again, beats to a pulp only describes PSVR if comparing apples to apples.

          • Cless

            Fair enough. But… that kind of was part of the argument of my first comment, wasn’t it?

            I was complaining about PSVR2 most likely not getting any PC support even though it would kick ass if it did, specially since spec wise and price wise would basically cleanup the competition.

            They’re good enough that… even though you could argue in favor of PSVR2 against Varjo’s, since the HDR+OLED+120hz can be more enjoyable than resolution+higherFOV that the other’s give. But that’s more of a subjective issue, since each would have their own strenghts.

          • GunnyNinja

            I doubt the PSVR2 would be the same price if it was a PC headset with those specs. A bit easier given the limited ecosystem it exists in. We’d likely be talking about a lot more horsepower to push it with PC content. So, it’s a nice what if to bandy about, but not realistic to compare it to what’s out there. It’s kind of like comparing superbike performance to an SUV. Until you have to go grocery shopping…

          • Arno van Wingerde

            The specs are good… but wait for the reviews, for instance the mentioned motion blur at Road to VR might turn out to be a major problem. It is often not what’s good about a headset but what’s bad that limits the experience

          • Cless

            I’ve been using it for some time already. Its pretty awesome to be honest.

            I would say the worst is the lenses. They are the best fresnel I’ve seen, but fresnel nonetheless. But I mean, they are selling this thing for the price of just the Index headset, with two controllers included, they HAD to cut corners somewhere.

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      Nope. HDCP content protection has been around for more than 20 years, is mandatory for media players and includes encrypting the video signal send via HDMI etc. It adds no latency, which is why e.g. Sony never bothered to disable it on the PS4 during gameplay, you have to do that yourself if you want to use a capture card. The costs are negligible.

      And if they wanted to lock the PSVR 2 down, they’d prevent you from accessing the sensors and scramble/encrypt those protocols, not the display. Without sensor access your PSVR 2 would be just a rather heavy type of video classes, if you manage to sent the display signal via DisplayPort alt mode over USB-C.

      But even if Sony encrypts nothing, you can access all the sensors over USB and Sony even publishes the full specs and all the needed documentation free for everyone, you still don’t have anything that could do inside-out, controller, hand or eye tracking on a PC. It would be like a HTC Vive Pro Eye without the Tobii eye tracking software and without the HTC software stack that makes it OpenVR/OpenXR compliant. Some kind of controller tracking shouldn’t be too hard to implement for a third party, but WMR has taught us that some tracking doesn’t equal usable tracking, and everything else will be much more complicated.

      Your chances to find any type of usable eye tracking that allows to use a HMD like the PSVR 2 as an OpenXR device, or something that supports the haptics are pretty much zero, because this stuff is really hard. There is a reason why Sony licensed the eye tracking from Tobii, who have been working on it for 20 years and can sue most competitors out of existence due to their enormous amount of patents, similar to haptics where it is very difficult to release anything without having to pay Immersion a hefty license/black mail fee.

      • David Wilhelm

        Ah yes, forgot about our ‘friend’, HDCP..

      • XRC

        Ah immersion inc. lovely people, haptics all tied up with comprehensive patents…

  • I just think it’s stupid not to also support a way to play PC VR, especially with Steam being a huge library and installed base of potential users right there.

    • ViRGiN

      It’s stupid to support Steam in the first place. Why support a dead horse? Why support the community who is addicted to a single storefront for 20 years? PCVR people brought it upon themselves.

      • Cless

        Dude, you have the worst takes from the whole site from time to time. Don’t know how you do it.

        • ViRGiN

          Yeah I’ve been told wrong so many times, still waiting for *that* PCVR moment to shine. It’s not coming. It’s dead. Move on people. PCVR people are a meme, vrchat abusers and advocate for more competition like Pico to use exclusively with Steam, trapping entire ecosystem money into company that does not even care.

          You’re just toxic positive nancy talking about ideals that never come to fruition.

          • Cless

            You realize that for something to be dead… it means nobody uses it and that numbers are going down, right…?
            I don’t know about you but that’s the opposite of what has been going on.

          • ViRGiN

            nothing has ever died in history

          • Cless

            Plenty, just not industries/business that are actively growing its user base while growing at a linear pace and creating millions in revenue.

          • ViRGiN

            and you pulled that millions for PCVR out of what?

          • Cless

            Back of the envelope math. It isn’t that hard, single games can get into that territory by themselves if big enough, imagine a whole industry when we add up software and hardware.

          • ViRGiN

            more bullshit of yours. at 30% cut, valve needs to sell 158982 copies of Pavlov VR at full price of 20.99 EUR to make a single million, of which they are subject to taxes.
            that’s ten times as many concurrent users via VRLFG. and the PCVR playerbase have not changed their games at all in the past 5 years. it’s still rec room, gorilla tag, beat saber, blade and sorcery. get fking real please. steam deck despite young age shits on all PCVR combined.

          • Cless

            … huh? Why are you bringing Valve again into this? Who cares? I’m talking about the industry moving money. 20.99 EUR is 20.99 EUR the industry got in. Just literally take top 10 games and they have moved plenty of money already, add to that hardware sales and then it goes up even further.

            Average indie games cost around a quarter of a mil to make, and yeah, they get way more than that back usually, or nobody would even try making them (even if plenty of them fail as well ofc).

            And again, who gives a shit what people are playing as long as more people are joining? Variety and bigger projects come hand in hand with bigger, safer and more established markets, its easy as that.

            And I don’t even know why you would bring the Steam Deck at all, that is as relevant as bringing the Switch into the conversation, why do you bring it up? Is it because its Valve? Dude, you’re obsessed with them.

          • ViRGiN

            > … huh? Why are you bringing Valve again into this? Who cares? I’m talking about the industry moving money.
            The whole PCVR industry is limited to valve/steam. Anyone using anything VR with PC is borderline exclusively left with Valve wallet getting bigger.
            If you’re talking about business usecases – then through websites like this it appears as htc products and quest pro are dgsht products.

            > Average indie games cost around a quarter of a mil to make, and yeah, they get way more than that back usually
            What PCVR indie game makes that?
            Richies Plank?
            Or maybe Hubris costed 250k? LONN?

            > And again, who gives a shit what people are playing as long as more people are joining?
            Analysts? Users? Players?
            That’s as important as checking specification of hardware you are getting into.
            People interested into platforms future? Maybe I should invest into HD DVD player instead of Blu-Ray? Both have movies. One was dead on arrival, other continued to get tons of movies.

            > And I don’t even know why you would bring the Steam Deck
            Cause that’s what the company that gets surely 90% of PCVR revenue from file hosting is exclusively focusing on?
            It indicates their real priorities.
            Yet Meta gets bad reputation for “abandoning” Quest 1 and focusing on Quest 3/Pro and other future products, all while fully supporting their existing ones?

          • Cless

            >The whole PCVR industry is limited to valve/steam.
            So what? Its not about them, its about the money its moving, which most goes to the devs.
            At one point gamestop had a big chunck of the console industry and nobody would bring that into the argument, its just the reality of PC game distribution at this time. There is always intermediaries.

            >What PCVR indie game makes that?
            Unless they disclose it, we won’t know for certain. But there are ways to guess how many games are sold by checking numbers of reviews and the quality of them. Guesses can be surprisingly close to the real deal and we use them in the industry often. So if you check just the few games at the top of PCVR, it doesn’t take long to see they are making good money.

            Valve, has, no, priorities. They do what they fucking want (this is not a good thing but I would argue is not always bad either).
            They aren’t even that money driven either since they have a shitload of that already.

            And we can shit on both Valve and Meta if they make shit decisions, who doesn’t is just a hypocrite or a fanboy.

          • ViRGiN

            > So what? Its not about them, its about the money its moving, which most goes to the devs.
            And yet it’s somehow bad for Meta to have “monopoly” on VR, all while most of the money goes to Meta employees, factory workers, and devs. Valve does not bring any of their money back into economy. That’s bad.

          • Cless

            Monopolies are bad, no matter who has them.
            What I dislike is walled gardens. Meta and Sony will pay for games NOT to go to other platforms, which is incredibly anticonsumer, while Valve, again, won’t give a fuck because they are too busy doing whatever weird new shiny thing they might be following now.

          • ViRGiN

            Meta and Sony “will pay for games NOt to go to other platforms” because they are actually competing with each other, just like Sony with Xbox. Valve competes with noone. Even behemoth like Activision Blizzard with their portfolio is moving back to monopolistic Steam, as it is a single handely “the only” PC store. Apparently selling on their own store was enough of a reason for huge number of nerds not to purchase from them.
            The very same is happening with PCVR. You have to sell on Steam, or die trying.

            As for PSVR2, the only thing preventing it from being a PC is lack of Windows. Even if it could never work with SteamVR despite Windows.
            That’s how I envision PCVR. You will have to buy a new “console”, not add more RAM, new GPU etc. One unified starter kit that industry can get behind together rather than tareting everything and everyone and yet nobody.

          • Cless

            Hmm… Sony probably sees Meta as some sort of competitor, but I’m not sure they are on the same market exactly. We will have to see, but I think that the Quest 2 (and 3) portability might make it different enough that they can coexist without direct fighting, specially since SoCs are so different as well and games can’t be easily ported from one to the other.
            Steam took advantage of the most important thing piracy had, convenience. If we get lucky, GoG might become more relevant slowly so more stores can compete, since having a program that unifies all stores in one program is incredibly convenient.

            “As for PSVR2, the only thing preventing it from being a PC is lack of Windows. Even if it could never work with SteamVR despite Windows.”
            I’m… very confused by this statement, would you mind rephrasing it?

            How PCs will evolve in the future is definitely not written on stone, but for now we can expect it not to be a big shift on how things are being done in the near-mid future, so buying a new “console-PC” every few years will still be the best way to have high-end components working I’d argue.
            Targets are usually very clear. Defined by the current console generation. Because of quirks when creating 3D games, we will use higher than needed textures, so we can later use those for “ultra settings” on PC, and just crank up effects to 11 as well, which is basically a slider.

            Then downgrading graphics for weaker software is doable, but only down to a certain degree, for example the Switch and the XR2 are at the lower end of what we can do without cutting gameplay, and it is a headache to keep it so as tech advances every year.

          • ViRGiN

            > I’m… very confused by this statement, would you mind rephrasing it?
            If Playstation 5 could run Windows 10/11, it would be a complete replacement for desktop computers for average users seeking to surf the net, work on video editing, using photoshop, writing docs, work, design etc. Gaming in 2D should be supported as it has actual true value throughout the years. PCVR might as well enter the incompatibible phase, just like PSVR2 doesnt really play PSVR1 games without legacy hardware. Here no true value would have been lost. The very few gems would likely still receive support to this day and would be updated to run on the console.
            That’s all hypothetically speaking assuming that nerds aren’t buying PS5 with Windows to play Steam games on it.

            Playstation 3 supported Linux at launch, but was promptedly removed as a feature and Sony had to pay some fines. But it was Linux. That was nerd feature. Actual Windows would have real use. Maybe futuristic Xbox VR will be prebuilt Windows console with the very brand new generation of components, marking the start of PCVR revolution. I think even Carmack alluded to something like that as the true high end experience tailored for VR, rather than retrofited various components. Modular phones never took off. Laptops modularity basically ends with drive and memory.

          • Cless

            To be fair, I don’t see any reason for consoles to not be just PCs anymore. In the past, it made sense, their CPU/GPU and general architecture was different enough to warrant that but now… I mean, that’s what they really are, custom built barebone with CPU/GPU/Memory soldered on to it, that’s it.
            They could as well run windows if given the chance easy, but that would take all if not most of the control consoles have now over their hardware.
            MS, like you mention, might do something about it in the future… but we’ll see, its a risky move after all.
            We are on the same page on this though.

          • ViRGiN

            Also I don’t think “walled garden” is about exclusive titles, but rather exclusive means of access, like you can’t use iOS apps on Android, and you can’t reall install third party unverified apps. Nothing to do with platform exclusive titles.

    • Cless

      I agree, its just that if you are Sony’s boots, it doesn’t make that much economic sense since selling more PS5 instead of PSVR2 makes them more money at the end of the day.

    • RowdyFish

      Why is it stupid to not support a platform that isn’t yours? It is remarkable how dense many in the VR community are. Sony make no money on the headset. They only make money on their platform. Why is this so hard to understand? Forums are full of “this makes no sense”…”they need to support PC”…”so dumb for Sony”. Blah blah blah.

      • J. B. Bost

        Hey genius, your Playstation is just a computer that Sony won’t let you watch 3d porn on

    • brandon9271

      Why would Sony produce a headset for STEAM? That doesn’t make ANY sense. That would be like Apple putting the Google Store on Iphone. That would be DUMB

      • J. B. Bost

        For the same reason every single other headset on the market currently can connect to Steam?

    • Arno van Wingerde

      Ja, so you could play games available for both platforms on the PC which often offers cheaper versions… do you see a certain eh disadvantage for Sony shareholders there?

      • Well, do you think it would be better for Sony and its shareholders for me to not buy the PlayStation or PSVR 2 at all, as happens to be the case right now, or purchase them both and play a mix of exclusive PlayStation VR games and Steam games.

        • J. B. Bost

          I think if the PSVR2 was your first and only headset, by the time the magic of Gran Turismo 7 wore off, you would be very unhappy and out 600+ bucks

      • J. B. Bost

        After 3/4ths of a year of 30-40 dollar Quest ports, I can say for certain that Sony only care about the money and not about the product they’re selling. For that reason, the Sony Corp will never get another dollar of my money

  • Jeroham Ortiz

    Hopefully Sony will release an official driver. They are now publishing their games on PC and also offering PS Now for PC users. It will likely push more PSVR2 units and I don’t think will affect PS5 sales given than an equivalent PC costs at least double the PS5’s price.

    Otherwise, I hope they don’t use encryption or any other road blocks so the community can implement a solutions, even if it takes some time.

    • ViRGiN

      I hope they do, as VR needs to grow, not be driven by latest and greatest headset playing oldest and lamest PCVR games.

      Sony, lock that shit up, invest in developers, and become the sole leader of uncompromised high-end VR experience.

      • Cless

        Kind of hard if not impossible to do with a measle PS5 to be honest. They will give the best bang for your buck VR for the average gamer, that is for sure, high-end will always be PC hardware wise.
        They are pushing hard with PSVR2 though, I can tell you that much, which is great.

        • ViRGiN

          there is no high-end in a landscape dominated by unlimited indies. anyone can publish to steam.
          RTX4090 does not make VR experience any better than RTX3090.
          pcvr is considered a gimmick because it’s indie driven. that’s not normal for any other established platform. nobody is buying nintendo switch to play indie games.
          i’m still waiting for the true game announcements for psvr2. silly ports of silly games interestes noone, and yet we will never get any real number on actual engagment/dust settling periods.
          right now ps5 seems to be pcvr, without the need of a pc. nothing really great and amazing. i’m not ordering one at the moment.

          • Cless

            You gave the key argument there. “Established platform”. VR, in all its shapes and forms is FAR from being an established platform. If that was the case, we wouldn’t be even arguing right now.
            PSVR2 will have games eventually, expect just a bigger push than PSVR OG was, and a bigger effort from some AA and AAA studios. Maybe even at the end of its lifetime we will be able to see it becoming established. That depends completely on sale numbers though.

          • ViRGiN

            VR is established. As much as Symbian phones were in the 2000s. Not exactly mainstream, but if you wanted to develop something for mobile for anything other than outdated Windows Mobile/Phone/CE and whatever they used to call it, that was your pretty much your only choice.

            VR today is more like Symbian today.
            The only true way to access mobile software, it could do everything it stationary brothers could do. Emails, faxes, phone calls, voicemail, call recording, photos, videocalls, attachments, word files, games, emulators, custom themes, web browsing, video players, screen mirroring etc. Literally everything. But Symbian was never anything close to scale that Android/iOS is. But when people talk about VR – it’s pretty much Meta only.

            Valve VR is nothing more than some random products like imaginary Fujitsu monitor; just yet another entrance in a flood of dumpster headsets like WMR, pimax or even pico. You either enter VR with its best offer, or you choose wrong. As simple as that.

          • Cless

            I see what you are trying to go for on that analogy, but it really isn’t working. Symbian (Or HD DVD like you said on the other comment) is nothing like current PCVR or PCVR in the past. PCVR is, just like PC Gaming in the 2000s, slowly growing on the background. There will be a day the critical mass will be achieved and games will be made with ease, this decade most likely.

            Symbian is dead today, and will never resurrect, that’s why the analogy doesn’t work. PCVR could slow down, and that would mean just that, slow down, but not dead. That is the whole meaning behind that expression.

            PCVR is not dead, and will most likely never be, or if it dies, it will be together with regular PC gaming. That seems highly unlikely to me if I’m being honest.

          • Julien

            I think that for PCVR to thrive it needs console VR to thrive first. You say that the PS5 is an “average gamer” system but that’s also those people that represents the majority of the gamers worldwide. Without the support of these people the gaming industry wouldn’t be where it is now. Gaming wouldn’t thrive with just the high end PC gamers. The people who can upgrade their PC hardware every couple years represents only a minority of gamers. Mass market is on consoles.
            Also another advantage for the users and mainly for the developers that PSVR2 brings is a standard platform. Game devs don’t have to scratch their head to know if x or y features should be supported like on PCVR games because everyone on PSVR2 has the same hardware whereas PCVR is very fragmented with many headsets and also different PC configurations (CPU, GPU, memory, HDD vs SSD etc.) possible. How do you want this platform to thrive when there is literally millions of configurations possible on PC? Sure they can mandate specs on PC but how should a dev know how many people can run their games with their specs? Whereas on PS5 they can know that they can target +30 millions people including x number of PSVR2 headsets that will be sold to consumer and only have to support only one standard target configuration.

          • Cless

            Yeah, definitely it will greatly improve once the whole console market is available. That’s what PSVR2 is there for, which has me pretty excited, its not a frankenstein like the first PSVR was, now its the real deal. That coupled with amazing choices, like OLED RGB at 120hz with eyetracking.

            And like you brought, PSVR2 is so feature complete that we will get everything it brings as a standard really soon. The only thing that I think might not make it is the haptic feedback, which even cool, its another thing that brings up the price.

            >>How do you want this platform to thrive when there is literally millions of configurations possible on PC? Sure they can mandate specs on PC but how should a dev know how many people can run their games with their specs?

            This is actually not an issue. When we want to make games for PC we already have that issue. Its normal in the industry to just aim towards what consoles have as a baseline, then cut down for older gen/less powerful PCs, and then use full quality assets for the “Ultra” on the PC versions (For example, we might be making 4K textures, then reducing them to optimize to 2K for consoles. We already have that 4K texture, so that one usually will be added to the “Ultra” settings on a PC version).

            So again, that’s not an issue at all, specially now that we have OpenXR that unifies to a degree API stuff as well.

            PCVR is and most likely will always be kind of experimental, and for that reason, we will also find the high end here most likely too. You can sell to the enthusiast/rich a lot of stuff with higher profit margin to make up for the lower quantity (kinda like 4090s are sold). We are a bits away from getting there though.

            Bottomline, yes, VR in consoles will greatly improve PCVR, but viceversa as well, PSVR probably wouldn’t have existed without Oculus before it!

          • Julien

            >>”When we want to make games for PC we already have that issue. Its normal in the industry to just aim towards what consoles have as a baseline, then cut down for older gen/less powerful PCs”

            This is one reason the new generation of gamers don’t get why the PC ports of “next gen consoles only” games require beefier configs than cross generation games (especially in RAM requirements) but that’s not the topic of this conversation.
            I get that for flat games, but doesn’t the different types of headsets add to the complexity of PCVR support ? For instance how would a developer tackle the port of a PSVR2 game that uses eye tracking as a gameplay feature ? It’s not everyone that has or can afford a headset with eye tracking. It’s an extreme example I know but something that has to be taken into consideration. It’s just a game of compromises lol. I really do hope that the PSVR2 headset features will become the baseline for all future headsets whether PCVR or standalone.

            I wouldn’t give that much credit to Oculus. Sure they helped the market but the Move controller released in 2009 for the PS3 was a prelude of a VR headset development at Sony that started years before Oculus (Reality Labs) showed their prototype. Sony had also the Glasstron released back in the 90s. But I get your point: they all learn from each other.

        • ViRGiN

          also, please tell me how awesome value SIDEQUEST is bringing to the people.
          they got 15 millions dollars according to crunchbase, and that’s just single google find. they have had second round investments as well.
          if they were to sell pavlov there at the same steam price of 20.99 and taking 30% cut, they would need to sell roughly 238473 copies – roughly half the number that the most popular pavlov pc mod to date – black ops 2 nuketown map which at this moment has 436,967 and is pretty much stale for the past 2 years. one of the most popular PCVR games, definietly the one people often come back to regularly has that number.
          please quit being toxic positive. all your ‘opinions’ have never materialized, and you sound like MLM scam artists.

          • Cless

            Sure, its not like, you know, I’m a game developer that has inside knowledge or anything from the industry.
            And none of the things I’ve said have materialized because… we aren’t even there yet. This things take time, not 1 or 2 years dude. In the whole time we’ve been discussing around isn’t enough to even finish half a decent game.

          • ViRGiN

            Well, I did tell you that PCVR is dead. And when it maybe becomes alive and prosperous in 20 years time, it will be wrong to say it has “survived”. We had VR in the 90s. Maybe PCVR never died and Oculus 2012 is just irrelevant?

            PCVR revolution will happen almost overnight, not as RTX4090/RTX10090 step decade long progress.
            The magic is not in the hardware but software. But until then, it’s dead for customers.

          • Cless

            You have a point here, its not magic, it won’t happen one day to the next. But that’s why I always throw paralels with old PC gaming. Its just slowly growing on the background, and one day it will start being too big to ignore (even if not as big as regular PC gaming, that’s not happening AAAAAANY time soon)

        • Arno van Wingerde

          I disagree on that one: not everybody drives a Ferrari! Sure a PS5 is weaker than a top notch PC, say $2500 and up, but better than most PCs on Steam and for a nice price point, in between Quest2 and a full PC setup. So if they can offer good games, the way Meta seems unable to provide, and decent graphics, they may grab the VR market top spot!

          • Cless

            >>Sure a PS5 is weaker than a top notch PC
            25% of active steam users have equal or better hardware than a PS5, its not a small part by any means.

            >>not everybody drives a Ferrari!
            True, but I’m not saying that. I’m saying that Ferraris will always exist, even if the majority of people drives a Ford.

            I hope PSVR2 gets the market top spot, it would be good for the whole industry, and with luck, it might happen as well.

    • Leisure Suit Barry

      It doesn’t make business sense for Sony to officially support PC compatibility, not to mention they would also have to offer after sales care/support for PC too.

      • Ashish

        If they had their own platform on PC I’m sure they’d be game for it though.

        • Leisure Suit Barry

          Have you been living under a rock? Epic are losing tons of money with the Epic Game Store, people will use Steam where possible.

    • Umar Yusha

      Hopefully they dont. You want psvr2 buy a Ps5. If you can dump thousands on a rig you can pay for a psvr2+ps5. Ps5 needs to have more unique selling points not less

      • ViRGiN

        you’re hero

  • ViRGiN

    I mean, at least vive trackers would stop gathering dust xD

  • Sofian

    Too bad for Valve…

    • ViRGiN

      finally some bad news for monopolist like valve

    • Cless

      I mean… I’m pretty sure they’d rather people buy an Index… Though most $ spent on PC gaming goes to them, so I guess less PC games will be sold, so that would make it true.

  • Christopher Barnhouse

    I have no desire for PSVR2 on PC, I do hope developers make their games more cross platform though.

    • J. B. Bost

      You should have a “desire” for it. Imagine you could play Pavlov but there was actual content there. Like an infinite amount of content including Kino der Toten that you could play in your VR headset for free. And that’s just one game.

      Now compare Blood & Sorcery with mods to Swordsman VR.

      Now consider every single flat to VR port out there, a full world of mods, no, hold up, imagine… WATCHING A 3D VIDEO ON THE HEADSET YOU PAID 600 DOLLARS FOR

      You can’t do any of that on the PSVR2. The only thing you’re allowed to do is pay Sony 30-40 a game for no effort Quest ports. This week alone, as the minimum age to use the PSVR2 is decreased, we’ve seen an onslaught of children’s shovelware — games that would look bad even on Newgrounds.

      Sony has no excuse for this. They’re complete idiots with the way they’ve handled this headset. And the worst part of all, ,this little army of Fanboys that have been defending Papa Sony since day one have been holding back open and honest discourse on the PSVR2.

      Oh well

  • MeowMix

    lol, were ppl actually holding out hope that the PSVR2 would work as a PCVR headset ? lol

    • Ookami

      the psvr1 works on pc, so yeah some people thought the psvr2 might as well.

  • iVRy

    As the developer being quoted, I will have a chance to experiment with an actual PSVR2 in February. Everything is speculation until then. Just because it’s difficult, doesn’t mean I’m not going to try make it work on a PC. ;)

    • Daniel Sá Pina

      For what it’s worth, the x-rays on PS5’s SoC shows a displayport IO next to the USB controller, so the signal is probably just DP1.3 with USB3 using USB-C alternate mode.

      Bigger issue should be encoding DP and USB into one USB-C connector which doesn’t really exist out there but shouldn’t be hard to make.

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        It does exist. The Pico Neo 3 Link uses DP alt mode over a dedicated USB-C mode, with a cable that splits into DP and USB-2 on the PC side. As DP alt mode works by utilizing the four USB-C superspeed cable pairs for unidirectional DP signal transfer, leaving only the extra USB-2 speed pair as a way so send back data to the PC, this works just fine.

        And as this is exactly the purpose for which the DP alt mode in the USB spec is intended, it is very likely that Sony uses the exact same method, only they split the DP and USB-2 signal inside the PS5, allowing them to use a cheap USB-C to USB-C cable. It is most certainly DP1.3, as the 2000*2040 per eye resolution is just below the bandwidths limits of DP1.3. Going for 2040*2040 would already have required going for DP 1.4 with enabled DSC stream compression. To avoid the splitter cable you could also try some of the Radeon cards providing video over USB-C, or some RTX 20X0 founder editions, also featuring the port.

        The real challenge will be accessing sensor data. As the only data line back to the PS5 should be USB-2, there probably isn’t enough bandwidth to send raw image data from multiple room and eye tracking cameras, so I’d assume the PSVR 2 has to include some sort of SoC doing at least some preprocessing, or even performing controller and room tracking directly, sending only the results back. This shouldn’t be too hard, if Meta managed to delegate all of the tracking to the Hexagon DSP of the SD835 even on Quest 1, leaving CPU and GPU free for OS and applications.

        AFAIK iVRy pretty much only reads the IMU on the PSVR 1 via USB, usable for DK1 like 3DoF tracking, everything else has to be reimplemented externally. In the best case scenario where the basic tracking is done on a SoC on the PSVR 2, sending back just the readable results via USB-2, and Sony hasn’t scrambled/encrypted the protocol, this could make it rather easy to utilize at least the basic 6DoF functionality. ETFR will most definitely require the eye tracking to be run on the PS5, so adding the features that make the PSVR 2 special will be in a completely other dimension of problems.

        • iVRy

          Another potential problem is powering it. If only graphics cards still had VirtualLink ports…

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            Shouldn’t be a big problem. VirtualLink allowed the HMD to draw up to 27W. USB-PD over USB-C allows devices to draw up to 180W, though it gets more complicated as there are standard and extended power ranges, voltages from 5V to 48V and cable length restrictions. But even at the lowest 5V, you get 15W and at 9V you reach the same 27W as VirtualLink. Unfortunately I cannot find any specs detailing how much power exactly e.g an AMD RX 6900XT can provide on its USB-C port.

    • Ookami

      LOL of course ViRGiN would downvote this

      • Jistuce

        He’s passionate, I’ll give him that.
        It is about all I’ll give him, but… you know, broken clocks.

  • neodraig

    Are you so so full of yourself that you had to upvote yourself ?
    This is quite lame dude :-/

    • ViRGiN

      hmm you really had to hover the mouse over the counter and check who is upvoting who? wow

      • Ookami

        that moment when you think the 1 second it takes to hover over the likes is some monumental amount of work

    • Cless

      You will get used to it. At least he isn’t writing all in bold letters like before, that’s an improvement already in my eyes lol

      • Ookami

        Character development!

  • Nothing to see here

    It is hard enough to get VR headsets that were designed to work with PCs to function correctly. Half the time, the game gets stuck when launched because you need to do something with the keyboard and mouse while looking at the computer screen. Microsoft’s Flight Simulator pretty much requires the use of the keyboard while you are wearing the headset. The Quest is even worse because you need to connect to the broken Quest software and then go into the desktop to launch Steam and finally the game you want to run.

    • ViRGiN

      what? my meta games stream so easily to quest.
      blame steam for not having steam game launcher. what a shit company.

  • ApocalypseShadow

    What I posted on mixed news:

    There’s no point in PC support.

    PC gamers want it, want to experiment with it, but there are no games on PC that would support it or its features. Nothing that would support the controllers which haven’t even been used yet anywhere. There isn’t any software to support it for productivity. Nothing.

    PC gamers just want because it’s new. By buying it hoping that it has PC support, these gamers would only be hurting Sony in the fact that Sony needs the headset to sell games. Sell their hardware. Because they are connected. Sony doesn’t make royalties from Steam. Valve does. So, there’s no point.

    I hope it doesn’t get supported anytime soon. Want to use it, get a PS5. Instead, PC gamers should be asking PC manufacturers to make a headset with eye tracking and foveated rendering to make it easier on the hardware. Could even push higher detail with these powerful graphics cards depending on where you look. Instead of making these expensive but useless headsets that gamers can’t buy and has no software support for these thousand dollar headsets.

    Even Facebook was dumb in adding useless features when they should have given Quest eye tracking and foveated rendering. And release facial tracking later in the future. Quest 2 games would have benefited. Just look at Grid Legends. That could have used it how ugly that game is. Instead, it’s in an expensive Quest Pro that has no game supporting the eye tracking.

    Nope. PC gamers want Sony’s headset just because. And that’s more entitlement than anything. Thinking Sony’s headset needs PC when Sony has no VR games on PC.

    • Jistuce

      “PC gamers want it, want to experiment with it, but there are no games on PC that would support it or its features. Nothing that would support the controllers which haven’t even been used yet anywhere. There isn’t any software to support it for productivity. Nothing.”

      That’s true of any new hardware. The nice thing about SteamVR is that explicit support for a given headset or controller isn’t required. A SteamVR driver for the headset and controllers means most(but admittedly not all) existing software will “just work”.

      I grant that, lacking official Sony-funded SteamVR support, that software developers will likely never target PSVR2-exclusive features. It is a lot of effort too expend on a niche within a niche. But the PSVR2 hardware seems rather nice even without that.

  • Andrew Jakobs

    Don’t if it’s unlikely as development of PS5 is happening on PC’s these days, with engines like Unreal Engine just using the PS5 as a target, and likely using the PC as development box, so with windows drivers for the headset.

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      The PS5 is based on PC technology, but its OS is based on FreeBSD. You can of course create a Windows build of a PS5 game in Unreal Engine and run most of it without even having a PS5, but if you want to test something that relies on PS5 specific features like the inline texture decompression or the SSD writing directly to shared CPU/GPU memory, you will need a PS5 dev kit and a specific build running on that hardware and OS. So it would be reasonable to assume that PSVR 2 developers are required to have a PS5 dev kit and that PSVR 2 drivers only exist for Sony’s FreeBSD variant, even if you can create many PSVR 2 games on a Windows PC using Nvidia cards and a HP Reverb G2 for 95% of the way.

      And even if Sony has bothered to create Windows drivers for the PSVR 2 that work with some AMD Radeon GPUs actually featuring the required graphics capable USB-C port, I doubt they would release them to the public. The question isn’t whether running a PSVR 2 on a Windows PC is feasible in principle, the question is pretty much only if Sony sees any reason to provide such a solution to PC users, as it will be almost impossible to replicate Sony’s full software stack and PSVR 2 feature set otherwise.

  • silvaring

    One day we will look back on these walled gardens as the biggest threat to an open internet that ever existed.

    • ViRGiN

      no we won’t.

      • silvaring

        So whats the biggest threat to an open internet then, honest q

        • ViRGiN

          i’m not an internet expert, but i assume it would be the censorship. how sony not supporting steam vr is the biggest threat to an open internet?

          why steam vr isn’t supporting MacOS? they briefly did it, even apple announced support for it, but then valve quickly backpedaled and ABANDONED THEIR PRODUCT. i never see this mention anywhere.

          • silvaring

            A bunch of walled gardens make a community. Sony is just a symptom of the walled garden problem is it not? Cant comment on Apple VR not familiar with the platform, but knowing Apple they can be pretty strict about their terms e.g Epic games lawsuit.

          • ViRGiN

            It was Valve who quit MacOS, not Apple.
            And no, Sony is not a symptom of the walled garden.
            Valve is the problem, having absolute monopoly on supposedly “open” platform like PC. Doesn’t matter that you can install multiple stores – 20 years of existence made steam THE default store for everybody. give it a few more years and it will likely be preinstalled on machines like facebook app on many mobile phones…

          • Ookami

            Steam being the go-to app store for pc because the competitors can’t match quality and content (I’m looking at you EGS with your 20+ second response time), is not an equivalent to companies like Apple forcing people to download apps through their app store only (on mobile devices).

  • Román Díaz Peláez

    Too bad, I had hope, but not buying two VR headset’s, one for each platform. Will have to wait to see what comes out this year for PC then.

    • ViRGiN

      beat saber dlcs

      • Román Díaz Peláez

        You mean they are not going to be good headsets for pc this year with your joke?

        • ViRGiN

          There isn’t anything on the Horizon really outside Quest 3.
          But PC will get Beat Saber DLCs, so that’s something to look forward to ;)

  • brandon9271

    at a cost of $549.99 US, I would assume Sony is taking a loss or at best breaking even. If doesn’t make any sense for them to support PC. None. It could only cost them money. Sony could release a PC compatible version for $999 or so. That’s the only way it would make sense.

  • Ad

    This was fairly obvious, I’m not sure why people don’t seriously engage with modding/hacking, they just insist it’ll magically fix all problems without either getting informed or helping.

  • Jistuce

    You underestimate the number of folks that will just go “wouldn’t it be cool if…” and start banging away to make it happen.

    I mean, they’ve spent a lot of time making PSVR1 usable in Windows, and it isn’t even really a good VR option next to just about anything. PSVR2 is at least a good VR set.

  • Rob

    I am not an expert in this but only see problems here. Even if it is possible to make it technically work I wont be surprised if it doesnt work anymore after a windows update, steam update, game update or maybe your personal firewall will block the whole thing. Even the quest 2 didnt work well as pcvr in windows 11 at launch. It toke months to get it done. And Meta had thousands of workers. If you want pcvr than buy a real pcvr capable headset and dont fool yourself by buying a playstation headset.

  • Simplex

    Once the PS5 VR users market is saturated, I think Sony should (but probably won’t because it’s Sony) release PSVR2 “PC Edition” which would be compatible with both a PC and PS5. They could price it at whatever price that gives them decent enough profit. Maybe €999? Even at that price it would still be an enticing buy for PC VR gamers – a 4 year old Valve Index costs as much and has lower res, no HDR, no OLED, no eye tracking/foveated rendering.