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For Digital Foundry, GDC 2015 ends as it began - in the company of Sony's president of worldwide studios, Shuhei Yoshida, and getting to grips with the firm's Project Morpheus VR demos. It's been several days since we first went hands-on with the London Heist experience, during which time we've enjoyed Crytek's Return to Dinosaur Island and WETA Digital's Thief in the Dark demos on Oculus Rift, and of course, Valve's immense HTC Vive-powered 'VR cave'. We've experienced the high-end of VR by the best in the business running on simply immense PC hardware. But what's clear is that thanks to Project Morpheus, console gamers aren't going to miss out, either.What's become evident over this GDC is that virtual reality isn't just a technological arms race with hardware specs as the defining factor in the quality of the experience. Even before we discuss the challenges facing the future of gameplay in the VR world, the biggest obstacle will be in getting consumers to try the headsets and instantly get the intended effect, whether they're wearing glasses or not, and preferably without feeling ill. On a basic ergonomic level, Sony seems well ahead of the competition: the original Morpheus prototype was good, and the second-gen headset is easily the closest thing to a viable, consumer-friendly piece of kit we've seen at GDC this year.
"We were happy with last year's model, but when we went to events, to games shows and such we saw that people didn't understand how to put it on, so the hardware designers really, really focused on making that easy," says Shuhei Yoshida. "We really, really want people to be able to buy, open the box and use it without anyone helping, so now we have this one unified band solution. Now we're pretty happy."
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