Virtual reality is widely thought to be crucial to Sony’s plans for the PlayStation 5, and it looks like the upgraded headset will offer a big improvement on its unwieldy forbearer.
According to Inverse, The United States Patent and Trademark Office published a Sony application on the 4 April that gives us an insight into the tech giant’s plans for a “head-mounted display” with wireless capabilities.
The design blueprint presents a headset that has been scaled down considerably in size, though Sony has increased space within the device to make room for prescription glasses – a regular complaint levelled at the first PSVR headset.
A new technique called “foveated rendering” would also increase the device’s graphical capabilities, with eye-trackers being used to fully render scenes that are at the centre of your eyeline while scaling down the resolution in your peripheral vision.
It’s not the first time a patent has revealed Sony’s plans for wireless virtual reality. A submission from March, featuring a sketch of the original headset, described how the technology would work:
“Gaze tracking system of the glasses may be configured to transmit the signal representing the gaze tracking results to other computing devices (e.g., laptop computer, desktop computer, tablet computer, cellular phone device, etc.) instead of or in addition to the sensor of the HMD, using wireless communication.”
Of course, patents should be taken with a big pinch of salt – but it's very likely that Sony will want to address all of the complaints levelled at its original PSVR headset and convince casual gamers to invest in the pricey tech.
