A Developer Got PlayStation VR2's HDR Partially Working On PC

A developer got 10-bit color depth working for PlayStation VR2 on PC, a key aspect of high dynamic range (HDR).

While PlayStation VR2 officially supports PC VR through Sony's SteamVR driver, the headset currently lacks its standout features on PC, including eye tracking, HDR, headset rumble, and adaptive triggers, though the developer of Cactus Cowboy got the triggers working back in September.

Earlier this month a developer who goes by the handle whatdahopper managed to get PlayStation VR2's eye tracking working on PC. They told UploadVR that they plan to release the solution as a free and open source mod of Sony's official PS VR2 SteamVR driver called DriverEx, and they call their overall PS VR2 reverse engineering project PSVR2Toolbox.

Developer Gets PlayStation VR2 Eye Tracking Working On PC

A software engineer managed to get PlayStation VR2’s eye tracking working on PC, though they caution that it’s currently “extremely WIP” and lacks calibration.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

Now, whatdahopper says a member of their PSVR2Toolbox team, who goes by Hekky, got another standout PlayStation VR2 feature working on PC, at least partially: high dynamic range (HDR).

I say "partially" because there are two core tenets of HDR: the wider color gamut, and the greater range of luminance. According to whatdahopper, while SteamVR supports 10-bit color depth, which enables the wider color gamut, it does not currently support PQ (perceptual quantizer), needed to enable the greater range of luminance.

Thus, for PlayStation VR2 to fully support HDR on PC, including a greater range of luminance, either Valve would need to add support for PQ in SteamVR, or someone would need to write a driver that connects to a different OpenXR runtime than SteamVR which does.

Further, even the 10-bit color depth that will be supported with DriverEx will require per-application support. Developers will need to specifically support HDR in their PC VR games.

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UploadVRIan Hamilton

True HDR support, thus, will remain a standout exclusive feature of PlayStation VR2 on PS5 for the foreseeable future, and is also supported on Apple Vision Pro standalone.