The largest downside with Sony’s PSVR 2 digital actuality headset is the dearth of video games. I’d hoped Sony’s PC adapter would change that. The likelihood to play Half-Life: Alyx, the perfect VR recreation made but, appeared like purpose sufficient for present homeowners to justify the $60 adapter buy.
But I can’t at the moment advocate Sony’s PC adapter. If I had bought it with my very own cash, fairly than borrowing one from Sony, I’d have requested for a refund lengthy prior to now.
It’s a disgrace, as a result of the $550 PSVR 2 continues to be a very good headset, with picture high quality that arguably beats the newer $500 Meta Quest 3. Playing Half-Life: Alyx inside Sony’s headset isn’t simply extra vibrant due to the richer colours of its OLED display; it’s extra thrilling, too, with the panel’s true blacks making me really feel the fear of its darker corridors. The Quest 3 expertise seems to be extremely washed out by comparability.
But what actually scared me in Half-Life: Alyx was the damned glitch. How — after I carry my pistol to cope with an unspeakable horror — I’d usually discover my hand had grow to be indifferent from my physique, caught in place, two toes above the bottom.
I’ve spent eight hours troubleshooting this difficulty and ones prefer it over the previous week, and I’m no nearer to an answer. My Quest 3 streams this recreation virtually completely from the identical PC in the identical room, and but my PSVR 2 struggles even with a hardwired headset cable to assist. I see loads of others reporting the identical points on-line, but others report no points in any respect.
Is it luck? Perhaps, however I think it may also have one thing to do with how Sony cheaped out.
You in all probability know that Sony’s headset connects to the PS5 with a single USB-C cable that routes its show sign, energy, and information concurrently. Once upon a time, graphics card producers had been planning to standardize on a USB-C port with that very same combo — they referred to as it DigitalLink, and whereas the model didn’t take off, some GPUs did make it out into the wild with a do-it-all USB-C port.
The PSVR 2 PC Adapter seems to be the identical factor. The three-by-three-inch sq. puck takes USB-A and DisplayPort out of your gaming PC and energy from a DC barrel jack, combining them right into a single USB-C port to your headset on the opposite finish. Find a DisplayPort cable (it doesn’t include one and doesn’t help HDMI-to-DisplayPort), hearth up the free PlayStation VR2 App on Steam, and abruptly, you’ve got a SteamVR headset able to displaying any Steam recreation.
But the headset is the solely factor the PSVR 2 adapter adapts. Sony offers no solution to join the PlayStation VR2’s all-important controllers. They want to connect with your PC over Bluetooth, however Sony doesn’t present any type of Bluetooth radio for that — and determining controller connectivity by myself has been an utter mess.
First, I attempted my desktop’s personal built-in Bluetooth. My motherboard shipped with the extraordinarily frequent Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 / Bluetooth 5.2 combo chip, so I figured I had an opportunity. I made positive its antennas had been screwed in tight and turned off Wi-Fi simply in case it would intervene.
The controllers paired shortly! But certainly one of them refused to replace until I bodily plugged it into my PC with a USB-C cable first. My blasters in Space Pirate Trainer, a recreation the place I can simply check aiming, had been unusually floaty, and shortly, certainly one of them began disappearing totally. The controllers wouldn’t keep related.
So, I ordered the primary Bluetooth adapter on Sony’s extremely small compatibility listing — the $15 TP-Link UB500. Sony weirdly writes there that “operation isn’t assured” with any of its really helpful adapters, however on the time, I didn’t take it as a pink flag.
The very first thing I realized is that you should disable your motherboard’s onboard Bluetooth if you wish to use a dongle. (I realized that from poking round myself as a result of neither Windows nor Sony’s app gave me a clue.) The second factor I realized is you should unpair controllers earlier than you disable your motherboard’s onboard Bluetooth, or else Windows gained’t allow you to pair them once more.
After many, many further troubleshooting steps, my controllers started to really feel responsive.
But even then — with Sony’s really helpful Bluetooth dongle, the newest drivers, plugged right into a USB extension cable, with a direct line of sight to my controllers lower than 5 toes away — certainly one of my digital palms would recurrently, repeatedly, and persistently get caught in midair. It misplaced positional monitoring, that means I might nonetheless rotate my hand, even squeeze the triggers, however not transfer it wherever.
Now, I admit that doesn’t totally sound like a Bluetooth difficulty, and I might be incorrect about that, however right here’s why I think it is perhaps:
- I’ve no points with the Quest 3’s controllers in the identical area, so I don’t suppose my room or lighting is interfering with monitoring.
- I had no points with the PSVR 2’s controllers with a Framework 16 laptop computer and its inner Bluetooth chip (although I did produce other points with that setup).
- When I added the TP-Link adapter to that laptop computer, my controller began getting caught.
- The digital controller will get caught even when it stays inside the discipline of view of the headset’s cameras, which ought to assist with positional monitoring.
- It was all the time the identical controller getting caught — till I unpaired them and re-paired them. Now it’s the different one. It feels prefer it’s having bother absolutely supporting two directly, which had lengthy been a grievance with standardized Bluetooth wi-fi tech.
I’m afraid that controller monitoring isn’t the one difficulty I’ve had with PSVR 2 on PC, both. I’ve repeatedly seen your complete expertise grind to a halt, on a number of PCs, simply by making an attempt to entry the SteamVR overlay to alter quantity or load a unique recreation. I needed to take away the headset and force-close issues every time. It occurred as soon as after I was making an attempt to play Armored Core 6 in SteamVR’s theater setting that provides you an enormous digital display to your flat video games, too.
If it weren’t for that, and the way each Sony and Valve require you to make use of movement controllers to entry and navigate SteamVR, perhaps I might no less than advocate the adapter for non-VR gaming.
Sony didn’t reply my questions on why it didn’t select to supply its personal Bluetooth resolution or whether or not there’s one other Bluetooth adapter or a validated laptop computer I ought to attempt as an alternative. I provided to let Sony assist me troubleshoot over the cellphone, however the firm didn’t take me up on that, both.
After making an attempt each troubleshooting step on Sony’s web site and extra by way of PR e mail, and placing eight hours into this factor with no single good gameplay session, I’ve determined Sony’s PC product merely isn’t prepared for my PC.
