3D is the next big frontier in home entertainment if we are to believe Sony and what it has been saying in various tech conferences and expos. The company is investing heavily on 3D that it is coming out aggressively with 3D related products like 3D-ready LCD TVs, 3D glasses (the company recently announced more affordable 3D glasses at the last E3 Expo), and has already made available a firmware update on the Playstation 3 to enable 3D gaming and content.
Now, Sony is back with more 3D related preaching. At the recent CES 2011, Sony talked about 3D once again, and just to drive home the point, asked the audience to don the polarized 3D glasses all throughout the presentation (which was similar to what was done during E3). Aside from showing demos of various 3D content, Sony also made it known that the company is moving a step forward in the 3D world by showing a headset that contains what they call nascent virtual reality technology.
What the headset represents is Sony’s further immersion into 3D. The company envisions the headset to be used not just for playing 3D enabled games and watching 3D movies. It is going to use the headset when it creates virtual reality gaming. At this point Sony hasn’t made any concrete announcements on actual games that will use the virtual reality environment. But the speculation is that the company will go to Sony’s go-to game studios to develop the games. This include Evolution Studios (Motorstorm), Sony London Studio (EyePet), and Studio Liverpool (Wipeout).
The headset will reportedly be equipped with 720p OLED displays mounted on each “eye”, and will also have a 5.1 surround sound speakers built into it. Head tracking technology will also be incorporated into the final product when it goes to market.