When the PlayStation VR2 headset was released, people wondered whether it would be possible to get the headset to work as a PC VR headset. That would mean being able to plug it into a PC and have it work as a VR headset, instead of it only working on a PS5 as Sony intended.
Enthusiasts were initially skeptical and at times despondent about the prospects, but developer [iVRy]’s efforts recently had a breakthrough. A PC-compatible VR2 is looking more likely to happen.
So far [iVRy] is claiming they have 6 DOF SLAM (Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping), Prox sensor, and stereo camera data.
Most of the juicy bits are paywalled behind [iVRy]’s Patreon. We’re hoping the jailbreak process will eventually be open-sourced.
The PS VR2 headset is quite unlike a PC VR headset in a number of ways, and it has not been historically easy to work with Sony’s products from a reverse-engineering perspective, whether it’s an attempt to improve the user experience of an annoying headset, or an attempt to understand the not-even-remotely-sanely-designed protocols behind the Sony Memory Stick. Getting the PS VR2 headset to work in a way it wasn’t intended was expected to be an uphill battle.
It’s not a finished job, but judging by the progress regularly shared on [iVRy]’s Twitter account, it might only be a matter of time.
So… No display input to the VR headset? Seems kind of like the most important bit in my mind, but no mention
That already works out of the box iirc. Since its using virtualink.
Display input works with a workaround. Needs an custom driver or hardware to get it to work.
It works as a display with 0 tinkering. Plug in the USB-C cable to a capable port, and a PC sees a Displayport device. All the other bits and bobs weren’t expected to be accessible for months/years, if ever.
So one person says ‘it’s not there’
A second person says ‘it’s there but you need tricks’
A third person says ‘it works flawlessly out of the box’
Real helpful guys, really helpful…
It’s a terrible shame PS3 Cell processor was not developed further in order to replace aging x86 architecture. It is said it could emulate Core i7 6700K in real-time when all SPEs are utilized – and that’s 2006 era hardware. Imagine how much computing power one could have if it was manufactured in 5nm process.
Writing code for the Cell was a pain in the ass which is why it isn’t used today
Good libraries for hiding the “pain”.
Just because modern programmers™ cannot write anything without python AI copilot intellisense nonsense framework doesn’t mean we should abandon computer science and engineering knowledge. It’s easy to write code if you know what you’re doing and can imagine how it will be executed by actual hardware.
Yet that doesn’t mean even the greatest bare metal programming folks will actually choose to try and write efficient programs/library for silicon that is a real PITA.
Just because its technically very capable hardware if you can optimise the software for it doesn’t make it at all practical or capable in the real world. The hardware needs to be designed in a way its actually sanely useable.
“The hardware needs to be designed in a way its actually sanely usable.”
X86 hears you. ;-)
With modern advances in compilers and silicon, are you sure? They could have a few X86 or ARM cores on the die, if you have to do something yourself that the compilers can’t yet optimize for Cell, run it on those, otherwise, just do your app in JS and let the V8 team JIT it to be good enough, or use high level numpy type libraries. You’d probably only need a few dozen highly optimized libraries to capture a fairly large fraction of CPU time.
Danial Dunn:
‘otherwise, just do your app in JS and let the V8 team JIT it to be good enough’
Someone should kick you square in the balls.
There are kids here, one of them might take your advice.
Have to be stupid, but kids.
If trolling then well done…one eternity in Buddhist JS dependency hell.
Do you realize Cell was intrinsically very parallel? Weak processor, but many. Took years for games to work half efficiently.
Never performed as fanboi numbers claimed, never once outside contrived demos included in dev kit.
Yup, we’ve evolved further to using hardware that is even more application-specific (the GPU) for the tasks that the Cell SPEs were well suited for.
Who said something that ludicrous?
You haven’t tried to write code for the cell, have you? :)
Sounds like bullspit dude. CELL was a nightmare snakeoiled by Sony. it was a great idea BUT not as magic as people think it was. It was single core, dual thread device with 8 additional cores. Xbox CPU was way more flexible and SPE units are easily replaceble by GPU units…
So while you’re right it is theoretically possible cell was better overall as a hardware architecture for very specific things… We kind of saw that in the gravametric arrays that NASA used running hundreds of these things in parallel, or how folding worked so well on them.
There’s a lot of interesting use cases and specific tasks cell could be very Superior at if it kept developing…
But yeah it was a garbage architecture for general use x86 is so much Superior. Arm as well
Cell had an amazing performance for very specific workloads but its design just isn’t very good for general-purpose computing, especially anything involving a lot of random-access memory reads.
Basically it’s roughly good for the sorts of things that GPUs are good for, and there’s no comparison between Cell and a modern GPU in terms of raw compute power. For that matter, even the GPU in the PS3 itself could often do tasks better and faster than what the Cell SPEs could, and it was pretty mediocre even for the time period.
It’s not just a matter of how difficult they were to program; it’s a matter of the kinds of workloads they’re designed for, which have little relevance to the workloads that people actually want to do most of the time.
Works out of the box using Virtual Link on RTX 2K series with Virtual Link on the card. No drivers or hardware needed.
Too bad this was dropped for 3K and 4K cards.
7900xt and xtx, well at least the reference design
Seems to have locked all his stuff behind paywalls. I get their work is valuable, and they’ve shelled out a lot of cash, but jeez there’s very little info on the twitter account, even basic demo videos are behind Patreon or something.
Open up just a little!
They were completely open with their initial work. Unfortunately the GIFT (see penny arcade) proved itself once again, the author received a steady stream of accusations, threats and abuse in equal measures.
I can understand why they would take further work private.
Wow, Sony is rough!
So, if you want to use psvr2 on PC you have to pay $10 month for an undetermined ammount of months (from one to dozens), or wait until It’s released and pay once.
I choose option number 2.