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Developers building for VR will have to optimise their games properly – or risk being refused release entirely.
That’s the warning from SCEA senior dev support engineer Chris Norden, who spoke on the technical requirements for creators looking at the PlayStation VR headset at GDC.
"Frame rate is really important; you cannot drop below 60 frames per second, ever," Norden pressed (via Gamasutra). "If you submit a game to us and it drops to 55 or 51, we’re probably going to reject it.
“I know I’m going to get flak for this, but there’s no excuse for not hitting frame rate. It’s really hard, and I’m not going to lie to and say it’s extremely easy – it’s really difficult.”
The PlayStation VR features a 1920×1080 OLED display, with support for frame rates up to 120Hz.
A drop in performance with any VR headset can lead to nausea in the user – a major risk for the medium’s mass-market appeal.
“We have a team of VR experts that will play the game and look for technical correctness,” explained Norden.
“We’re not going to beta test your title or anything, but we’re going to provide you kind of a report of: ‘Oh, this is a possible nausea trigger. Oh, here you’re dropping frame rate.’
“60Hz is the minimum acceptable framerate,” he reiterated. “Everybody drill that into your heads."
