Showing posts with label sony. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sony. Show all posts

Wednesday 19 March 2014

'Project Morpheus' is Sony's virtual reality headset for the PlayStation 4


The rumors are true: Sony's working on virtual reality. The hardware is called "Project Morpheus" and it's headed to the PlayStation 4. The headset is two pieces: a closed display and what looks like a PlayStation Move sensor built in. SCE Worldwide Studios head Shuhei Yoshida unveiled it on-stage tonight at GDC 2014; he said the "prototype" is "by no means final." It's the culmination of over three years of work, Yoshida said, and the prototype unveiled tonight will also double as a dev kit.
As seen above, a subtle PlayStation-themed blue light is emitted by Morpheus. A single wire can be seen exiting the unit on-stage; apparently carrying both an HDMI and USB connection. Sony's clearly drinking the VR Kool-Aid: there's serious talk about "presence" on-stage (the term Valve coined as the target for "true VR"). What are the specs in the headset? It's got a 1080p display and just over a 90-degree field of view. There's positional head tracking, a 3-meter working volume with full 360-degree tracking that works with the PlayStation Camera, and games can recognize the PS Move controller as a virtual object. In terms of audio, the device has "true spatial sound" using binaural audio -- pretty neat! It's also apparently "highly adjustable" and supports custom headphones if you'd prefer your own audio choice (it plugs right into the headset). Head below for more!
The current dev kit is wired, though the wire is "very long" (around five meters, we're told). The dev kit also has a "breakout box" between the headset and your television (akin to the original Oculus Rift dev kit).
PlayStation R&D engineer Richard Marks dug into the nitty-gritty a bit: He said Morpheus needs a high-resolution, high-quality screen ("no problem," he quipped), great sound (SCE is developing binaural tech to produce sound, incorporating that into the experience), tracking (he pointed out that the PS4 camera is "almost custom-built for VR"), and control (Sony's sticking with DualShocks, cameras and Move, apparently).
Project Morpheus specs:
Component: Processor unit, head-mounted unit
Display Method: LCD
Panel Size: 5 inches
Panel Resolution: 1920×RGB×1080 (960×RGB×1080 per eye)
Field of View: 90 degrees
Sensors: Accelerometer, Gyroscope
Connection interface: HDMI + USB
Function: 3D audio, Social Screen
Marks admitted that VR needs to be easy to use -- as in, as simple as picking it up off the coffee table and quickly jumping in. So, perhaps no wire then? That's still unclear. He finished with a plea to devs to create content for Project Morpheus, "which is why we're announcing this at GDC." Sony's already working with a handful of devs, including Epic Games and Crytek. We expect it won't be too long before the large world of game devs jumps in.
Update: In a Q&A following tonight's session, we were told by R&D engineer Anton Mikhailov that the headset was given its project name for "the god of dreams" (he's not lying). In terms of first-party Sony studios working on content for Morpheus, the Sony trio on-stage stayed mum, pointing to the handful of titles revealed tonight as the first example.

Sony's Project Morpheus is a VR headset for PS4



Like the Oculus Rift, Project Morpheus lets you step into a virtual world of a game. It has a visor head-mounted display and works with PlayStation Camera to help create these virtual worlds.
As you move your head, the world adjusts so you see what you would if you had been plonked down in it. This headtracking is done using interial sensors.
You can also use the PlayStation Move controller as a sword in some games. Morpheus will show your hands and the sword in the virtual reality world, so you'll feel like you're actually using it to fend off foes.
Project Morpheus uses 3D audio technology developed by Sony. You'll hear stereoscopic sound from all directions, including helicopters flying overhead and footsteps coming up from below. Which will add to the suspense in a game like Resident Evil.
The sounds change in real time as you move your head, too.
In terms of the tech specs, it offers a 5-inch, 1,920x1,080-pixel resolution screen, that gives you a 90-degree field of view. That's less than the Oculus Rift's 110-degree field of view.
Sony showed off Project Morpheus at the Games Developers Conference in San Francisco. Techoblog magazine editor Matt Hill is there, so expect an eyes-on verdict soon.
"VR has been the dream of creators since video games were invented," said Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) Worldwide Studios. "We're looking to go one step further than 'immersion' and deliver 'presence'."
Virtual reality could soon be the norm, and not just for games, according to Sony. "VR is pervasive and going to become the preferred medium for many different applications beyond games," said Richard Marks of SCE Research & Development. "We're already working with NASA to create the feeling of walking on Mars but imagine picking up a VR headset and trying out a hotel room before you stay there."
It's crucial to eliminate the motion sickness feeling that has plagued VR so far. "VR is a medium, not a peripheral, so needs to be approached on its own terms," said SCE R&D's Anton Mikhailov. "Head motion for the player is law – if you mess with that, you make people sick."
Sony admitted this is easier said than done. "Control in VR is still very difficult," confirmed Marks, suggesting that a consumer version of the headset is still a way off. "I have a feeling it's something I'm going to be working on for a while." 
Sony hasn't set a release date or price for the Project Morpheus yet. It did show off demos including Eve: Valkyrie, which is one of the Oculus Rift's launch titles. It also said the software development kit – which will let developers start making games for it – is in development, and that Sony will "continue development of Morpheus looking towards a future commercial launch".

Tuesday 18 March 2014

Sony Rift: PlayStation VR headset news, rumours, price and release date




Virtual reality gaming is firmly back on the gaming radar thanks to the success of the Oculus Rift and rumours are circulating that Sony could be planning a headset of its own.
A Sony-branded Rift virtual reality could give the PlayStation maker a huge one up over bitter rival Microsoft. And, the company has already experimented with headsets, releasing the Sony HMZ-T3W last year.
In the run up to last year’s unveil of Microsoft and Sony’s next gen consoles, the big question was whether Sony would team up with the developers of Oculus Rift for a next generation headset built around the PlayStation 4.
PlayStation had confirmed that it’s using Oculus Rift dev kits and further hinted that it could be offering support in the future.
“We’ve got a couple of the development kits and I tried it out and I love it,” said Shuhei Yoshida, head of Worldwide Studios at Sony Computer Entertainment said before the unveiling of the PS4.
Last month, a source told our sister website TechRadar that “the quality and resolution are really, really good. People will definitely be impressed with what Sony’s built.”
So what do we know about what we're calling the Sony Rift?

Sony Rift release date

In all honesty, there is very little indication of when the Sony Rift will be available.
Multiple sources have suggested to T3.com that a protoype will be revealed at the Game Developers Conference later this month. The event starts on March 17 - so if this is true, we don't have long to wait.
And if Sony did show it off at GDC it might allow the company and its developers to take some of the limelight at the E3 gaming expo in LA.
Our best guess of when you’d be able to get your hands on it would be Christmas at the earliest but likely next year.
Sony is said to have been working on this device for more than two years - longer than the Oculus Rift development - and has held back on revealing it until it is up to a standard the company is happy with.

Saturday 8 February 2014

How to use a PS4 DualShock 4 to play PC games

DualShock 4SCP Virtual Bus DriverDS4 to XInputOptionsWhen Sony first announced that theDualShock 4 would work with Windows, PC gamers across the internet cheered in unison. Unfortunately, it’s not exactly a plug-and-play situation quite yet. While it’s true that the PS4′s controller is recognized by Windows right out of the box, existing games don’t automatically work with the new gamepad. Thankfully, there is an open source application available that maps the DualShock 4′s controls directly to Microsoft’s XInput API — effectively tricking games into thinking you’re using an Xbox 360 controller.
To get started, head on over to the PCSX2 forum, and grab the latest version of DS4Tool. Unzip the folder, and stash it somewhere memorable. Inside the DS4Tool folder, navigate to the “Virtual Bus Driver” folder, and open the “ScpDriver” executable.

Friday 31 January 2014

No time for laptops or computers? just wear Sony computer on your wrist

In soon future this gonna possible to access web from a device which is attached to your wrist. I know lots of people don’t want to spend their time in front of computers or laptops. For solve this problem and make you more available for web Sony is here with its new concept, flexible bracelet OLED touchscreen device. This device is that much flexible that you can band it like bracelet or use it like Smartphone or tab. This device may take approximately ten years to come in market but ten years is not too long for such kind of gadget







No time for laptops or computers? just wear Sony computer on your wristSony Nextep Computer Concept for 2020
sony wrist gadgetsony wrist gadgethttp://newupcominggadgets.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/sony-wrist-gadget-5.jpg

Saturday 18 January 2014

Sony’s PlayStation Now uses custom-designed hardware with eight PS3s on a single motherboard

PS3 CellNowThe lack of native backward compatibility in the new PlayStation 4 was a bit of a bummer when the console was announced, but Sonypromised it had a solution. The company bought game streaming startup Gaikai a few years back, and has been developing the technology to deliver its catalog of PlayStation 3 titles not only to the PS4, but to smart TVs, tablets, and phones. Now the first details on the guts of Sony’srecently announced PlayStation Now streaming service are leaking out, and it all starts with custom PS3 hardware that crams eight consoles into one server.
According to content partners that are working with Sony to test PlayStation Now, the service relies on a new piece of PS3 hardware. It consists of a single motherboard with the miniaturized components for eight PS3s embedded, each of which can be independently controlled. Sony’s PS Now server farms will be filled with rack after rack of these units to power games in the cloud.
Sony reportedly decided to create new hardware after experimenting with placing retail PS3 units in data centers. However, the space and power requirements to run enough games made this plan fundamentally unfeasible. As an added bonus, redesigning the PS3 hardware to fit multiple units on a single board allowed Sony’s engineers to optimize the console for faster response times. This could save precious milliseconds to combat the latency of playing games over the internet — it could be the difference between a console-like experience and a laggy mess.
PlayStation Now will rely on the PS3s in the cloud to do all of the rendering and processing work, which is why Sony thinks it can get PS3 games running on almost any screen with an internet connection. Most titles on Sony’s regular local console platform run at 30 fps with 100-150ms of input lag. That doesn’t leave a lot of breathing room for internet latency — anything over 150ms starts to feel disconnected from controller input. Sony hasn’t said officially how the system compensates for this, but there are whispers.

Sunday 15 December 2013

Carmack claims the PS3 and Xbox 360 have tons of life left, but developers say otherwise – who’s right?

PS3 vs PC in gamingIn a recent interview with Wired, id Software founder and CTO of Oculus, John Carmack, gave a rather startling opinion on the current state of the PS3 and Xbox 360. According to Carmack, he’s often struggled with leaving the low end of gaming behind, even when he decided that Doom would require a VGA adapter and a 386.
“[T]here’s so much you can still do on the previous console generation. The 360 and PS3 are far from tapped out in terms of what a developer could do with them, but the whole world’s gonna move over towards next-gen and high-end PCs and all these other things,”Carmack told Wired. ”Part of me still frets a little bit about that, where just as you fully understand a previous generation, you have to put it away to kind of surf forward on the tidal wave of technology that’s always moving.”
That’s a little surprising to hear, given that Naughty Dog — creators of the hugely successful and gorgeous PS3 game, The Last of Us,” have said that they pushed the PS3 to 110% to create the title. According to Lead Designer Jacob Minkoff, “With The Last of Us, we are as efficient as we can possibly be. It’s just squeezing every last drop of power out of the system. And it’s a system we know really, really well. We know its constraints, so we can push it to the edges and play it really fast and loose because we know what the system can handle.”JoelEllie

Wednesday 27 November 2013

Xbox One costs more to make than the PS4 : Thanks to ESRAM and Kinect


Xbox One, in pieces [Image credit: iFixit]


If you bought an Xbox One for $500, rest assured that you got a good deal: It cost Microsoft $471 to make the Xbox One, new Kinect, and everything else in the box. After the retailers’ cut, Microsoft loses money on every Xbox One sold. At $471, the Xbox One costs about $90 more than the PS4 — a cost difference that is almost entirely down to the new Kinect, which costs around $75 to make.
This data comes from IHS iSuppli, which reported its bill-of-materials teardown analysis of the PS4 last week, and then the Xbox One today. The cost of making an Xbox One mostly boils down to the APU ($110 from AMD), 8GB of RAM ($60 from SK Hynix), and the Kinect ($75). The cost of the console itself comes to around $332, with the Kinect, power brick ($25), gamepad ($15), and headset making up the remainder.

Xbox One Kinect, exploded view

Friday 15 November 2013

PS 4 Launched

The PlayStation 4 debuts today, sparking a new round in the battle over your attention span, thumb endurance and, ultimately, checkbook. But despite all the fanfare over Sony’s latest release, the PS4 will only enjoy a week alone in the spotlight, with Microsoft set to launch its own next-generation console, the Xbox One, on Nov. 22.
Here’s a breakdown of some of the details you'll want to know about Sony's new console:
$399.99: The launch price of the PS4, a significant drop from the PS3’s much-maligned opening price of $499.99 for the 20-GB model and $599.99 for 60 GB. More important, that price point places the device $100 below the opening cost of the Xbox One, reversing the price advantage the Xbox 360 held over the PS3.

3 million:
 The estimated total of consumer sales for the PS4 by the end of the year, according to Sony. By March 2014, following the console’s launch in Japan, the company expects to sell an additional 2 million. During the same length of time, the PS3 sold 3.5 million units.80 million: The number of PS3 units shipped as of Nov. 2, 2013 , an impressive figure given the Xbox 360’s yearlong head start and 79.4 million shipped as of Sept. 30, 2013 . But given the success of the PS2, which from 2002 to 2012 has sold 155 million units worldwide , it’s no surprise that Sony has aggressively sought  to crush its closest competition, Microsoft.
26: The number of launch titles accompanying the PS4's debut. At the forefront are big-budget exclusives including “Killzone: Shadow Fall” and “Knack,” but the majority of the games are either ports of PS3 titles, such as “Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag” and “Battlefield 4,” or downloadable titles, such as “Trine 2” and “Resogun.”
$49.99: Though it launched at a higher price than the Xbox 360, the PS3 boasted an entirely free online multiplayer suite, while Microsoft required a $50 annual fee from users wishing to play online.
Later on in the PS3’s life span, Sony introduced PlayStation Plus, an equally priced online subscription service offering occasional deals and monthly free games. But PS+ and that subscription fee are now mandatory for anyone who wants to take their PS4 games online.
x86: Much of the PS3’s initial marketing was focused on the Cell Processor, a supposed miracle with which PlayStation creator Ken Kutaragi hoped to revolutionize not just video game consoles but many consumer electronics , allowing them to communicate with each other to increase processing capabilities.
For the PS4, Sony has dropped Cell for Intel’s x86, which is used by the Xbox One and PCs, making cross-platform development significantly easier. The reason? Building games for the unique Cell architecture presented a hurdle for developers, a problem that hampered many early PS3 titles.
1080p: The new gold standard in resolution. Just look at the reaction to the news that the latest “Call of Duty” would run at 720p on the Xbox One, identical to the Xbox 360 version. The PS4 version hits 1080p, and the difference is dramatic. But that advantage won’t last forever: Xbox Onehas its own 1080p titles . So expect the average game to look significantly sharper than you’re used to on the PS3 or Xbox 360.

The Xbox One Is Enormous In Comparison To The PS4


Both the Xbox One and Playstation 4 are essentially repackaged PC parts at this point. Unlike the PS3, Sony’s new console uses standard X86 architecture and fairly standard components. This should allow for an easier development path and quicker adoption among studios down the line.
That’s why I was so surprised when I saw this image on the German gaming publication PC Games of the two next-gen offerings side-by-side. The Xbox One is so big!
Screen Shot 2013-11-14 at 12.40.26 PM
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t believe I’ve seen any shots of them together in one image, as each one has been handling its press events separately, obviously. We have a PS4 in the labs for testing and I was at the Xbox event earlier this year and saw the console in person. It didn’t look all that big, roughly the size of the old Xbox 360′s (before the slimdown) overall. But, when compared to the PS4, the size difference is crazy. But until the Xbox One makes its way into reviewer hands (and is allowed to be shown publicly) we won’t be seeing comparisons.
Add to that the fact that the PS4 has a slight edge over the Xbox One in pure processing power and it’s even more puzzling. Developer Patrick McCarron posits it might be the slimmer Blu-Ray drive in the PS4, or perhaps fan size. Primate Labs’ John Poole conjectures that the Xbox One’s system on a chip might actually be much bigger than the PS4′s. One possibility could be more aggressive attention to thermal properties by Microsoft this time around, after overheating and cracking solder caused the ‘red ring of death’ fiasco which cascaded into a major PR issue.
Here’s the Xbone next to a slim Xbox 360:
Screen Shot 2013-11-14 at 12.41.58 PM
And that size differential is even more nuts when you consider that the Xbox One has an external power brick, and the PS4 does not. Its power supply is internal to the device itself, and it plugs directly into the wall.
For a look inside the PS4, you can check out Wired’s video of Sony engineering director Yasuhiro Ootori tearing it down here.
Screen Shot 2013-11-14 at 12.49.17 PM
The site has a bunch more comparison images between the two consoles including controllers and more. Head on over there to check them out.
Via: TechCrunch

Wednesday 13 November 2013

Sony Xperia SP

Sony Xperia SP


Sony Xperia SP

The Sony Xperia SP is a phone that's flown a little under the radar in recent
months: a phone with a decent spec list that can be had for a fair few quid under £300.
One of the main draws is the camera, where the range of settings and the quality of the images it produces were well beyond what we would expect from a smartphone at this price.
It's become an indispensable tool of any modern handset, and Sony has concentrated its efforts to make sure this part of the Sony Xperia SP really punches above its weight.

There are other things we really dig on the SP too: the inclusion of a microSD slot is always welcome, and the Walkman app makes a mid-range handset really shine for the music lover.
It's also packing 4G connectivity for speedy data on the go, which again is really rather nice for the price - in short, it's a handset that outperforms its price tag.

PS4 vs. Xbox One

PS4 system board, and other hardware bits


For the first time in the history of video game consoles, it’s actually possible to do an almost direct comparison of the hardware inside the PS4 and Xbox One. In almost every one of the seven preceding generations, game consoles were outfitted with highly customized chips and CPUs featuring niche, specialized architectures that could only really be compared very generally (bits, flops) or in the very specific (number of on-screen sprites, MIDI instruments, etc.) The PS4 and Xbox One, however, are very similar consoles. With an x86 AMD APU at the heart of each, the Sony and Microsoft consoles are essentially PCs — and their hardware specs, and thus relative performance, can be compared in the same way that you would compare two x86 laptops or ARM Android tablets.

PS4 innards

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