VR shooting can be great on Sony’s Morpheus, but the Rigs demo made me seasick

Sony is working on refining its Project Morpheus headset and the virtual reality applications that go with it. I had a good look at the demos at the recent Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the big gaming trade show in Los Angeles. Those demos tell us a lot about the progress the company is making toward the launch of the VR headset in 2016.

As you might expect, some parts of the demo were good and others were bad. Impulse Gear, a startup cofounded by MAG co-creator Seth Luisi, showed off a precise shooting demo that used a gun peripheral to steady your shots. That worked well, but I had a hard time with a mech demo dubbed Rigs, which made me nauseous. These demos show the progress that Sony is making on the big march to VR nirvana. Tim Merel, managing director of Digi-Capital, forecasts that virtual reality will grow to a $30 billion market by 2020, while augmented reality will be even bigger at $120 billion by 2020.