Sony won’t certify PlayStation VR games if they dip below 60fps

Developers who want to release games for the PlayStation VR will have to ensure that the frame rate is a constant 60fps. During the Game Developer Conference, Sony announced that games that do not pass will not receive a PSVR certificate.

“There’s no excuse not to hit the framerate. It shouldn’t be below 60fps. Never. I can’t emphasize that hard enough,” Chris Norden, senior staff engineer at Sony, told game developers at the conference in the presence of polygon. “If you send us a game that drops to 30, 35 or 51, we’re probably going to reject it,” the Sony representative added.

Norden also indicated that Sony is willing to play games from developers and look for “technical correctness.” It will be examined whether a game induces nausea, where problems with the frame rate occur and whether there are hitches in the tracking of the player. This process should take place early in the development phase so that development studios can then adjust the bottlenecks to meet Sony’s requirements. Norden states that it is not mandatory to let Sony watch the game, but strongly recommends it. After all, in order to release a game for the PlayStation VR headset, Sony will have to approve the game.

The PlayStation VR headset displays images at a refresh rate of 90 or 120Hz. To display the games that run at 60fps on the PlayStation 4 at 120Hz, Sony uses reprojection. This is a technique in which an extra frame is calculated on the basis of the previous frame. The interpolation takes the player’s movements into account. This should give the illusion of a higher frame rate. Sony will also use reprojection for games that run natively at 90fps or 120fps.

The technology therefore differs from VR glasses for the PC. Both the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive have a refresh rate of 90Hz, but games must also actually run at that frame rate for an optimal experience. In contrast, these headsets do not use interpolation.

Sony announced during the GDC that the PlayStation VR glasses will be on the market in October and will cost 399 euros. To play with the headset, a PlayStation Camera is also required, which costs about 60 euros.