Now that the PlayStation VR2 is finally out and ready to buy, let’s take a closer look at all the little features and hardware specs Sony’s latest VR system has to offer. A very important aspect of quality, VR headsets are a bit more complicated than TVs and monitors.
Therefore, PSVR 2 (opens in new tab)‘s display resolution is only part of what makes an image reach your eyes. We’ll look at resolutions, display types, lens types, and how it all works together to deliver a great image to your eyeballs.
What is the PSVR 2 display resolution?
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Sony’s PlayStation VR2 features the latest OLED technology, bringing HDR brightness levels to an affordable VR headset for the first time. But PSVR 2 he’s not just using one OLED panel. Instead, it splits the display and provides one 2000 x 2040 resolution OLED panel for each eye.
The original PSVR used a single panel with 1920 x 1080 resolution, so each eye received 960 x 1080 pixels. As you can tell by the numbers alone, this is a huge improvement in visual clarity over the original PSVR.
By comparison, the Oculus Quest 2 (opens in new tab) Reaches 1832 x 1920 per eye. This means the PSVR 2 will feature higher resolution than the Quest 2, but the resolution itself doesn’t tell the whole story.
This is because the PSVR 2’s display is a PenTile OLED panel, while the original PSVR and Quest 2 are RGB striped panels. It might sound like jumbo jumbo, but don’t worry. I will explain. See this photo to get started.
Meta Quest 2, Valve Index, and some other VR headsets use LCD panels, specifically because they use RGB stripe sub-pixel arrays. As you can see from the image above, the RGB stripe layout means that each pixel consists of 1 red, 1 green, and 1 blue sub-pixel and is made up of clean straight lines.
Comparing this to an OLED panel that uses the Diamond PenTile layout like the PSVR 2, we can see that the PenTile layout has more space between each sub-pixel. To compensate for this, Sony placed a diffusing filter between the lens and the display to mitigate the “screen door effect” caused by the space between pixels.
This effectively reduces the resolution of the headset. This is because the image itself is less sharp. It’s difficult to specifically measure the PSVR 2’s resolution loss due to its sub-pixel arrangement, but other Diamond PenTile displays typically perceive about 20% lower resolution than RGB stripe panels of the same resolution.
Shahram Mokhtari from iFixIt posted a larger version of the PSVR 2’s display. on Twitter (opens in new tab)proving that Sony has indeed switched from the original PSVR’s RGB stripes to the PSVR 2’s Diamond PenTile.
The next generation isn’t just about graphics
You need a PS5 to use PSVR 2, so get a PS5 first.
Get the latest VR hardware from Sony and experience VR like never before. Bring virtual worlds to life with stunning HDR OLED displays, all-new haptics in controllers and headsets, and adaptive triggers that respond to your actions in VR.
