The PlayStation VR2 PC adapter gets a release date and price, but a lot of its best features won’t work
It’ll play nice with SteamVR, at least
We knew a PC adapter for PlayStation’s VR2 headset was on the way, and it looked to be fairly soon - and we were right! Sony’s shiniest virtual reality offering is now confirmed to be adding official PC support via a nifty wired adapter at the start of August. It’ll cost £50/$60 - but whether it’s worth the price given a number of key features will be missing is another question entirely...
On the good news side of things, the PlayStation VR2 PC adapter will support SteamVR out of the box when it releases on August 7th, meaning you’ll be able to hook it up and play virtual reality games on Steam - including Valve’s own Half-Life: Alyx. To do that, you’ll just need to hook up the headset to your PC using the adapter and a DisplayPort 1.4 cable, then run both SteamVR and the new PlayStation VR2 app, which will let you tweak around with settings for things like play area.
That’s great news, especially as the VR2 is a very comfortable headset by all accounts and puts some lovely 120Hz 4K (2000x2040) OLED displays in front of your eyes across a 110-degree field of view.
What’s not so great is that many of the features that arguably make the VR2 a strong contender for one of the best VR headsets overall won’t be supported on PC, even when using the official adapter. Notably, those panels, crisp as they are, won’t support HDR on PC, and the VR2’s impressive eye-tracking won’t work either - though foveated rendering without using eye-tracking will still function. Headset feedback also won’t function, nor will the handheld controllers’ DualSense-based adaptive triggers or haptic feedback beyond simple rumble.
That leaves the list of working features at the panels themselves, the headset’s see-through view - handy in case you’re about to bump into something - and the controllers’ finger-touch detection, along with 3D Audio in some games - albeit using SteamVR’s audio tech rather than the PS5-only Tempest 3D AudioTech.
If you’ve already got a VR2, being able to play VR games on PC without having to cough up for a whole new headset seems a no-brainer. If you’re weighing this up against other PC offerings such as the Meta Quest 3, though - which is already cheaper than the base VR2, and almost on par feature-wise due to these limitations - the combined cost of the VR2 itself the adapter certainly makes this a harder sell, in my opinion.
Still, the VR2 apparently hasn’t exactly set the world on fire since it came out a couple of years ago, so it might be you’re able to grab one for a steal and make the most of its nice hardware - even if some of its promising potential goes unrealised on PC.