PlayStation VR2 is making me fall in love with VR again

polygon.com:

Once Oculus went wireless with its Quest headset in 2019, it seemed like there was no going back. For years, everyone had been talking about what a hassle cords were for VR and how they would inevitably disappear one day, once the tech got figured out. And here was Oculus ahead of schedule, figuring it out.

Sure, the games looked a generation or two out of date compared to those on Valve Index or Oculus Rift S, or even PlayStation VR, but that felt like a fair trade-off for something that didn’t make you feel like you were on a leash. Almost immediately, I switched over and started using Quest more or less exclusively for VR.

I wasn’t alone. Quest took off, becoming the most popular headset line and delivering highly convenient, decent quality VR to millions of people.

After trying PlayStation VR2 recently, I’m reminded of what we’ve been missing.

Last week, I tried Sony’s new headset for the first time and was caught off guard by how stunning two of its marquee games, Horizon Call of the Mountain and Resident Evil Village, looked. They didn’t rely on particles or stylized art direction; they looked like AAA console games that just happened to be in VR. The past few years of playing Quest had recalibrated my expectations for how VR games should appear, and it was great to see games pushing forward visually once again without requiring an elaborate setup.

I’m still not especially thrilled about going back to a tethered headset, but with Sony’s backing and games this pretty, it’s instantly tempting.

At Sony’s press event, I had a chance to play around with the PSVR2 hardware and try four game demos. Overwhelmingly, the thing that jumped out is that the hardware feels like the original PSVR brought up to date. Sony’s not