Major established VR developers denounce the difficulties and challenges of porting PSVR 2 games

Developer perspective

（英伟网Nweon January 5, 2024) According to market research company Omdia, Sony PSVR 2 sales are slower than the previous generation. In fact, one of the community’s major criticisms of Sony VR is the lack of content, let alone the experience of masterpieces. In a special blog post, Inverse talked about this problem with PSVR 2. According to interviews with multiple VR development studios, developing games for Sony PSVR 2 is not easy, including feature experiments, how Unity hindered project development, and the trials and tribulations of getting Sony's approval.

Developers’ wish list includes improved tracking performance, updated test access to collect player feedback, and a QA team to support small VR studios, among other things.

"A week before the game was released, many of our expectations were dashed."

Mixed Realms creative director Edi Torres was faced with a tricky decision. Although the team intends to bring the work to Sony's platform, the graphical fidelity of the PSVR 2 version of "Hellsweeper" is not as good as the Steam VR version. However, they are still working hard to find solutions to ensure the best gaming experience on PSVR 2.

In fact, when Sony first announced PSVR 2, Mix Realms was very excited about the headset’s hardware specs. However, just as production of the game was coming to an end, Etty encountered an unexpected obstacle.

Foveated rendering is a key feature in "Hellsweeper". It uses the headset's eye-tracking capabilities to clearly render the area where the player is looking, while reducing the resolution elsewhere on the screen. In September 2022, Mix Realms received a development kit for Sony's new headset and spent several months resolving early performance issues. However, closer to the game's release, the team found that it was unable to meet performance expectations without foveated rendering. Unfortunately, the standard rendering pipeline provided by Unity does not support this feature, and Unity's universal rendering pipeline (which provides support for functions such as foveated rendering) was not stable when "Hellsweeper" was developed.

At that time, Mixed Realms was already close to the preview time for releasing PS VR2, Steam VR and Meta versions. Since Hellsweeper supports co-op and cross-play, the code for the three versions is basically the same. Therefore, making significant changes to one version will affect all versions. In addition, delaying the release of the PS VR2 version also means that the studio has spent several years developing cross-play, which is also a sacrifice.

Eventually, the team released a sync version on September 21, 2023, and subsequently shared a detailed roadmap detailing plans to move the project to a universal rendering pipeline.

If we had a magic crystal ball and someone told us that after three and a half years of development we could make the game more user-friendly, we would make different decisions," Etty said.

This is just one example of how PlayStation VR2 directly or indirectly hinders the development of game developers. First-party games such as "Resident Evil 8" and "Horizon: Call of the Mountain" were released as early as February 22, 2023. Since then, more than 130 games have been made available for PSVR 2, from ports to new experiences. But not all studios can get the job done safely.

Inverse interviewed the developers of "The Light Brigade", "Hellsweeper", "Paper Beast", "Among Us VR" and "Vampire: the Masquerade – Justice" about the feature experiments of PSVR 2 and how Unity is stymieing the project's development, and the trials and tribulations of getting Sony's approval (Sony did not respond to a request for comment as of press time).

PSVR 2 resolution issue

Paper Beast creative director and game designer Éric Chahi originally thought going from PS VR to PS VR2 would be an easy transition. But this is not the case.

Since the new $549 headset does not support backward compatibility, the studio will need to manually port the game. Although there are opportunities for developers to take advantage of higher resolutions, better performance, etc. But the process can be a huge ordeal.

Natsuki said: "The pixel count of the headset has increased four times, and we have added a series of rendering improvements, such as dynamic textures of sand and water flow, light axis effects, and clearer shadows, so the quality improvement in PSVR 2 It's very obvious in version 1. However, more pixels and more complex shaders means more calculations."

The main difficulty still comes from Unity. The development team Pixel Reef received a development kit and upgraded to a new version of the engine in mid-2022. But because of the custom rendering pipeline involved, the transition to Unity was very "painful". Natsuki noted that the team is working on a patch aimed at increasing the resolution to "get the best of both worlds."

The hardware specifications of Sony’s new headset, coupled with the horsepower of PS5, developers can use the high-fidelity Steam VR version as the basis for porting. This was the original intention of Hellsweeper and the starting point for The Light Brigade.

Eddie Lee, designer and co-founder of development team Funktronic Labs, said: “We added special effects such as shadows, bloom and HDR to the Steam version and brought said version to PS VR2. So technically it's a matter of passing the VRC (the list of virtual reality technical requirements every game must pass)."

While there is no shortage of horsepower, meeting the necessary performance and visual thresholds without the help of rendering capabilities is a challenge. At the time of release, The Light Brigade used reprojection. But the first major update replaced it with a native resolution of 90Hz.

Most PS VR2 games use reprojection, a rendering technique that artificially generates frames to increase frame rate. For example, 60 frames/second can be reprojected to 120Hz, but this will result in blurry images, especially when viewing objects at close range.

It can also cause dizziness. Fast Travel Games, the developer of “Vampire: the Masquerade – Justice”, acknowledged this problem in November 2023 and planned to resolve it in a subsequent patch.

But weeks later, a studio spokesperson noted via email that it was a matter of "poor communication." Games target 120Hz, but sometimes use reprojection to hit that target. As of now, studios don't have the bandwidth to offer other refresh rate options.

Hubris game producer Keon Van den Steen said in a Reddit AMA that the headset’s reprojection system will be improved in the future. But for now, developers face a tough decision.

No Man’s Sky engine programmer Martin Griffiths spent about 4 months enabling foveated rendering. The "Switchback VR" patch released in July 2023 also has similar results, introducing foveated rendering to increase resolution. Both games are part of the PSVR 2 launch lineup.

Annoying VRC

Other projects are trickier. Games like Phasmophobia, Madison VR, Behemoth, and Bulletstorm VR are just some of the dozens of games that have been delayed in 2023. While most studios struggle to share specific details, one person has revealed what Sony's VRC will entail.

Eddie Lee of The Light Brigade said: "Completing VRC is very annoying because there are many scenarios, such as holding down the X button with the left controller while holding down the start button, unplugging the headset 20 Times. All of these crazy scenarios are things that the average player wouldn't do. But you have to ensure the quality of the experience. PlayStation doesn't want users to have a bad experience, right? Because it's related to the brand."

Eddie Lee said that Sony has always been very supportive and has included "The Light Brigade" in the PSVR 2 starting lineup, while actively promoting the game. He's grateful that his studio can hire a full-time porter to complete all the requests, but that's not a privilege every small studio has.

Schell Games lead engineering manager Robert Gordon, who worked on Among Us VR, said Sony did add extra steps to the certification process. This step is less important given the studio's experience with PSVR and PSVR 2, but it's still something to consider, especially for developers new to the VR space.

Michael Lee, senior engineer at Schell Games, noted: “Sony is very focused on player comfort, probably more so than other platforms. You can’t have frame drops in VR, you have to avoid locking the content In the UI, ensure consistent movement and avoid sudden camera movements that the player cannot control. This is all part of the VRC process."

After investing a lot of time optimizing the game to achieve a stable 60 FPS, Paper Beast was approved after two submissions. The team behind Hellsweeper had to ask Sony to waive some of the flipping content, as it's a signature feature of the game and Sony flagged it as potentially causing discomfort to players.

Etty said: “All we have to do is turn it off by default and then communicate with Sony that this is a choice for players. We provide this feature in the game and if they want it, they just need to turn it on. So we passed the certification.”

The Hellsweeper team also had to adjust certain related trophies, including one that rewards defeating a certain number of enemies while flipping. When asked if it was disappointing to turn off the game's signature feature, she said: "The answer is both yes and no. "We designed "Hellsweeper" to be an intense action game, the core includes somersaults, flying over walls, etc. Superhero style action. But ultimately, we want ease of use for players. We don't want them to play Hellsweeper and say, 'Okay, I hate VR, I don't want to play this game anymore because it gave me a bad experience.' ”

What’s next for PSVR 2?

As PSVR2 approaches its first year of life, studios are continuing to experiment. In Among Us VR, the team was unable to reach a clear consensus on headset vibration from a design perspective. Early ideas include having the headset vibrate when players vote in an emergency meeting, or when a Pretender murders another player. They say Sony does share "negative examples" of usefulness, such as the discomfort caused by being exposed to vibrations for too long, but it's up to each developer to find a practical use for them.

Looking to the future, there are elements inside and outside this headset that could be improved. Tracking is done automatically when you start the game, and its success or failure depends on the light surrounding the player. If you're playing close to a window, this will be a huge factor.

It is hoped that PlayStation will allow testing of upcoming Builds, as this feature is already implemented on Steam and Meta. This way, developers can get early feedback from the community before deploying potentially polarizing patches. Mixed Realms' producers and 3D technical artists hope Sony can provide a QA team to help smaller studios.

They said: "The moment we start testing means we stop working. It takes a lot of time to consider different scenarios."

Others, like Funktronic Labs' Eddie Lee, want Unity to fix the standard rendering pipeline so that it can support features like foveated rendering without requiring the team to invest time and resources Move to a universal rendering pipeline.

Schell Games believes that with PSVR 2, Meta Quest 3 and the upcoming Apple Vision Pro, the VR market will usher in an interesting turn. They believe that VR is no longer the Wild West. Of course, studios are taking more care when developing games because development times and development processes aren't getting any shorter or more streamlined.

Michael Lee of Schell Games concluded: “Unfortunately, in VR, development, testing and QA all take longer. If you are playing across multiple platforms and multiplayer, you It usually takes two or three times the investment. Fortunately, our studio has done a lot of work on this and has experienced QA staff. I think the reason why we were able to complete this port so quickly is completely Because we already have that advantage. But it’s difficult for most teams.”

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Original link: https://news.nweon.com/116585

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