WipEout on PSVR: an upgrade with no compromises?
WipEout and virtual reality should be a match made in heaven - and Sony's new PlayStation VR upgrade more than delivers. While there have been some changes to the visual make-up of the game, the sheer quality of the original release remains in place, making VR a genuine upgrade here with few drawbacks. The stark cutbacks we've seen elsewhere in other titles in terms of content, visual quality and shading don't seem to apply to WipEout VR - it's still a beautiful experience. More than that though, this isn't just a straight port: genuine effort has gone into enhancing the experience specifically for the VR medium.
But let's tackle graphics first. What we know about WipEout Omega Collection from the outset is that the developers have overhead here. PlayStation 4 Pro renders the standard game at full 2160p with a faultless 60 frames per second, so there's more than enough GPU fill-rate and compute power to handle PSVR's 1080p display. Indeed, Pro delivers a super-sampled 1620p experience, dropping just a touch to 1512p on the base PS4. Essentially, right off the bat, WipEout is a great candidate for a VR port - there's no need to double frame-rate (as required in DriveClub VR) and little need to pare back the visual feature set. Indeed, both PS4 and Pro versions even retain the 4x8 EQAA hardware anti-aliasing of the original release.
Perhaps the most daunting challenge is in doubling geometry throughput, required for a true stereoscopic output, but more importantly, we get the idea that a fair amount of work has been carried out in adapting a visual design aimed at today's living room flatpanels for a very specific VR display: an OLED panel no less, mere centimetres from the user's face. There are two major visual differences between the standard Omega Collection and its VR off-shoot; one that's easily explained and another that is a little more of a mystery.
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