Sony has filed a new patent that appears to show an input device for the PSVR 2. This patent was published by Sony Interactive Entertainment Japan.
In the patent, we can see a new form of input device that will use a camera and light-emitting units to track the position of the user’s hand. It appears to work in conjunction with a head-mounted display as shown in the drawings of the patent suggesting that it could be for PSVR 2.
As it stands with most of these patents, they are just hypothetical and we don’t know what will be used in the final PSVR 2. We do know that a successor to the PSVR is coming, but Sony hasn’t shared a release date or any other details for it so far.
The patent is in Japanese and appears to explain the problem of detecting the movement of the player’s hands as they see an image on the head-mounted display.
The gist of the patent (at least from what we have gathered so far) is basically to accurately track the movement of the player’s hands and reflect that in a game. The patent explicitly mentions an HMD 2 which will have a front-facing camera.
As shown in Figure 1, the input device 100 is used, for example, with a head-mounted display (HMD) 2. The user wears the HMD 2 on his/her head and holds the input device 100 in his/her right hand and/or left hand. The HMD 2 has a forward-facing camera. The input device 100 has a plurality of light emitting parts H, which will be described later. The positions of the light emitting parts H are detected through the camera. Based on the positions of the light emitting parts, the position and orientation of the input device 100 (i.e., the position and orientation of the user’s hand) are calculated. The input device 100 has a plurality of operation components (e.g., operation buttons, operation sticks, touch sensors, etc.) that the user operates with his/her fingers, as described below. The display section of the HMD2 shows the position of the input device 100, its posture, and the operations performed on the operation components. The display of the HMD2 shows a moving image (e.g., a game image) generated based on the position of the input device 100, its posture, and the operations performed on the operation components.
The calculation of the user’s movement will be performed by HMD 2 (PSVR 2). This will be done from the information processing device in PSVR 2. This can also be done through an external information processing device. All of this data will be transmitted to the PSVR 2 through either wireless or wired.
The calculation of the position and posture of the input device 100 may be performed by the information processing device mounted on the HMD2. The calculation of the position and posture of the input device 100 may be performed by an information processing device mounted on the HMD2 or by an external information processing device (e.g., a game device separate from the HMD2 or a personal computer). The input device 100 may have a motion sensor (e.g., accelerometer, gyroscope). The information processing unit may calculate the position and posture of the input device 100 based on the output of the motion sensor as well as the position of the light emitting part H. The generation of the moving image may also be performed by the information processing device mounted on the HMD 2 or by an external information processing device. When the calculation of the position, etc. of the input device 100 and the generation of the moving image are performed by an external information processing device, the image information acquired by the camera is transmitted wirelessly or wired to the external information processing device. The generated moving image information is transmitted from the external information processing device to the HMD2 wirelessly or wired.
The patent also mentions that this input device might have a microphone or speaker, or more sensors to track the operating state of this input device, or their quantity supposedly in case of multiplayer games.
PSVR was a success for Sony selling more than 5 million units worldwide as of January 2020. Sony didn’t disclose any updated sales figures but it is sufficient to assume that they consider it a success.
