An official product page for PlayStation VR 2 confirms some new details on the headset’s optics and displays. Although the page signals that PSVR 2 is getting ever closer to becoming a reality, we still don’t have a release date or a look at the headset itself.

Last month Sony shared the first solid specs and info on PSVR 2, which we covered in-depth here. Now a new official website for PSVR 2 has sprung up and revealed a few new details.

Beyond what we already knew about the headset, the new page confirms that PlayStation VR 2 will use Fresnel lenses. This is a fairly big change compared to the aspheric non-Fresnel lens used in the original PSVR headset.

A comparison between a Fresnel lens (1) and a traditional lens (2). The Fresnel lens has the same overall curvature but in a more compact package.

Fresnel lenses use concentric ridges to condense the geometry of a lens into a thinner package, thereby reducing size and weight. This can allow the lens to achieve optical characteristics which might otherwise result in an impractically large traditional lens. However, Fresnel lenses are also known to introduce additional artifacts like ‘god rays’ and edge glare.

The vast majority of VR headsets on the market have moved to Fresnel lenses, likely due to their flexibility for optical design, despite some of the negatives that come attached. The original PSVR is famously the only headsets on the market in its class that didn’t use Fresnel lenses, so it’s interesting to see PSVR 2 making the jump.

Beyond the use of Fresnel lenses, the PlayStation VR 2 product page also confirms that the headset will have two independent displays, one for each eye.

We already knew that the headset will have a 2,000 × 2,040 per-eye resolution, but it was previously unknown whether this would come in the form of a single 4,000 × 2,040 display, or two 2,000 × 2,040 displays.

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It might seem like a minor detail, but splitting the display into two means more flexibility for the headset’s IPD adjustment (the distance between the lenses).

On headsets with a single display, like Quest 2, when you adjust the IPD you’re merely sliding the lenses along the display. This can leave some unused resolution on the table or make it easier to see the edges of the display depending upon what the IPD is set to.

In headsets with two displays, each lens is typically mounted directly to the display itself; when you adjust the IPD the display and the lens move together. This makes it easier for the headset to accomodate a wider IPD range without potentially revealing the edges of the display or giving up any resolution to account for the adjustment.

PSVR 1 display and housing | Photo courtesy iFixit (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)

The original PSVR used a single display and didn’t include any IPD adjustment. PSVR 2 on the other hand will have two displays and an IPD adjustment, allowing users to dial the lenses into an ideal position. It’s been previously confirmed that the displays will be OLED and support up to a 120Hz refresh rate.

So far the IPD range for PSVR 2 is unknown, but the product page makes mention of an “adjustment dial” which suggests that the range will be continuous rather than discrete.

All the way at the bottom of the product page you can also choose to sign up to be notified for when PSVR 2 pre-orders go live. We still don’t have a release date or even pre-order date, but it’s increasingly looking like the headset will launch this year.

For a deeper dive on what’s known about PSVR 2 specs so far, check out our article comparing the new headset with the original.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • scientia

    Hmm… Sony moves to Fresnel lenses when it’s already clear that 2022 & 2023 will set Pancake optics as the new standard.

    • Bob

      Moving to fresnel lenses allows Sony to maximize field of view on the headset. Had they went for the combination of pancake lenses + micro oled, the fov would have been compromised which would mean a downgrade over what currently exists with the PSVR 1.

      • dk

        and mostly because fresnel is a cheap way to get a bit more fov ….most likely index sized in reality……and pancake lenses can do high fov it’s just extra expensive and hard to produce

      • kontis

        No, they don’t have to use micro oled to use pancakes.
        Just ask HTC or Facebook.
        What do you think meta Cambria uses? Big LCDs! Yes, LCD. (Marketed as miniLED, but that’s an irrelevant bs)

        And even with micro oled it’s now possible to achieve Fov similar to psvr.

        The reason psvr 2 uses design of first generation vr is cost and mass manufacturing. They are making a toy for kids, not premium headset like cambria.
        There will be NO psvr3, just like there is no PS Phone. HMDs won’t be just toys be the end of this decade, hopefully.

        And the reason for fresnel is lower pupil swim and distortion. Psvr 1 causes headaches to more people than rift or vive. Theoretically, at least. That was valve’s opinion. So they switched.

        • Rogue Transfer

          HMDs will still be used for gaming by the end of this decade. Gaming isn’t going away as one of the biggest use cases for VR.
          As such, a PSVR3 is inevitable. Sony won’t give up a great new money spinner, in addition to their console. Optics costs will reduce with increasing mass market scale and be easily included in cheaper devices, in the future.

        • Andrew Jakobs

          But LCD has the biggest problem with lack of decent blacks.. and OLED screens are just much more expensive, THAT’S why meta and valve went for lcd, otherwise their new headsets would cost a lit more.

          • James Cobalt

            The price of OLED over LCD is minimal when there are manufacturing lines setup to accommodate. Three of the cheapest consumer VR headsets all used OLED. The real price-limiting factor for Quest 2 and Index was nobody was setup to make stripe-OLEDs at the required size, resolution, and quantity.

            If you wanted those screens in OLED, you’d have to partner with a manufacturer to do a completely custom run – tons of new equipment and training and pulling plant space away from more stable, longer-term production lines – and that is prohibitively expensive for a product you might not sell a million of.

            Sony was in a unique position from having an established relationship with one of the biggest OLED manufacturers already – in addition to manufacturing their own (and knowing they’d sell enough of them).

        • Bob

          “No, they don’t have to use micro oled to use pancakes.”

          No they don’t however if a small and unknown consumer focused company such as Apara could afford to assemble a pancake lens + micro oled HMD then there is no reason to suggest that Sony wouldn’t have utilized the same approach, all for the sake of targeting a smaller and more appealing form factor whilst retaining the benefits of OLED at the expense of field of view.

          “The reason psvr 2 uses design of first generation vr is cost and mass manufacturing. They are making a toy for kids, not premium headset like cambria.”

          You’re conflating product design with technical design. The PSVR 2 includes features that simply don’t exist with any other “premium” VR HMD on the consumer market. Could you name a few consumer products out there that offer features such as dual ‘HP Reverb G2 level’ resolution OLED RGB panels, HDR WCG/dynamic contrast, integrated eye tracking, dynamic foveated rendering, headset feedback, HD controller haptics all under one package? If those features don’t qualify as “premium” typically found in an existing enterprise/prosumer product then I’m not sure what is. On that point, I’m not even aware that existing HMDs in that market have a third of those features listed.

          Suggesting that the future wouldn’t pave the way for a next iteration of a potentially very successful mass consumer product is very short-sighted at best. In fact, it’s most likely guaranteed that PSVR 3.0 is already in the works as we’re discussing this. I’m also well aware that from experience of being present on multiple VR related publications in the past, the predictions that you make are generally hit-and-miss almost all of the time. Simply put; you’re not good at anticipating the direction of the market and I’d advise future readers to take caution when reading some of your utterly fantasical comments.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            hen there is no reason to suggest that Sony wouldn’t have utilized the same approach

            The reason is money and will always be money. PSVR 2 is a consumer HMD, and they want the price to be low. John Carmack mentioned during his last Connect Keynote that Quest 2 is currently more constrained by the optics than the display resolution if you don’t look straight forward. They might have to switch all their devices to pancake lenses to get around this, but this would put a limit to how low they can price their Quest budget line. So for him pancake is necessary for higher resolutions, but expensive. PSVR 2 switches to Fresnel and sticks to a similar resolution like the Quest 2, even though the GPU is twelve times as powerful and could easily drive higher resolutions, esp. with smart upscaling.

            Could you name a few consumer products out there that offer features such as dual ‘HP Reverb G2 level’ resolution OLED RGB panels, HDR WCG/dynamic contrast, integrated eye tracking, dynamic foveated rendering, headset feedback, HD controller haptics all under one package? If those features don’t qualify as “premium” typically found in an existing enterprise/prosumer product then I’m not sure what is

            Sony obviously wants to keep the high contrast OLED, which is most likely also required for HDR. The panels themselves won’t be much more expensive, you need better display drivers and GPUs for HDR, but the latter is covered by the PS5. Eye tracking means adding two or four IR cameras plus a lot of smart software. The reasons we have no good eye tracking yet isn’t that we don’t have fast or cheap cameras, these cost a few bucks. The reason is that nobody has figured out the software yet. Which is also the reason we don’t have dynamic foveated rendering, which would already work, if we had fast enough eye tracking.

            I don’t know how much more expensive the HMD feedback and controller haptics are, but they are already in the DualSense controller. Nintendo boasted how fine tuned the haptic feedback in the Switch controllers was on launch, and even the Rift CV1 had better haptic feedback, which was then downgraded with the Rift S and Quest, because developers weren’t making use of it. All the hardware parts are rather cheap, making use of them is the expensive part.

            The PSVR 2 will not be a high end HMD. It will be a consumer HMD with a design strongly driven by cost. As there will be inevitable comparisons with the Quest 2, Sony will probably try to price it below USD 299, as otherwise people would complain that they could get an HMD with comparable resolution that doesn’t need a console for the same price from Meta.

            If they push for USD 250 or even less, there is no room in the pricing for anything fancy like pancake lenses. This is a plastic box with two OLED displays, fresnel lenses, outwards cameras for room and controller tracking and inwards cameras for eye tracking plus some excenter motors for feedback connected via a standard USB-C cable. It doesn’t even have an integrated audio solution. The whole design screams “cost reduction”.

            Everything complicated and expensive is done by the very powerful PS5. The cameras can film your pupils, the PS5 calculates their distance and shows a message on the screen telling you to manually turn the IPD dial until the lenses are positioned correctly, because adding extra motors for automatic IPD adjustment like on the Varjo would be too expensive.

          • Bob

            A complete and utterly wasted word salad with many red-flags, “state of the obvious” and nonsensical points but I’m not prepared to head into a full blown discussion with you simply because it’s not worth the time or effort at 3:20 in the morning.

            I will however highlight one of the many fundamental flaws in your argument and it’s this particular point here: “Sony will probably try to price it below USD 299, as otherwise people would complain that they could get an HMD with comparable resolution that doesn’t need a console for the same price from Meta.”

            The flaw is amplified through the point that follows: “If they push for USD 250 or even less, there is no room in the pricing for anything fancy like pancake lenses.”

            Hopefully, another user that isn’t located within the same timezone as me could pick apart these arguments and correctly address them one-by-one.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            Not sure what exactly irks you about the price argument. I’ve argued elsewhere that I expect Sony to price the PSVR 2 significantly below the Quest 2 to distance the two devices, which should be possible as it needs neither the expensive SoC, RAM, flash nor battery that drive the price of the Quest 2, nicely circumventing a lot of the silicon that got more expensive in the last year, spoiling Meta’s production cost reduction plans.

            I don’t think Sony is aiming for another 5% user share as they got with PSVR on PS4. I think they want 20% or more. To achieve that they will try to ruin Meta’s “we outprice everybody” tactics by outpricing the Quest 2, moving the PSVR 2 into true accessory territory. I could be wrong of course, but with the cheap hardware design, Sony should be able to sell it below USD 200 or even USD 150, including controllers. This plus their “hybrid VR software” approach could get a whole bunch of PS5 owners to just give it a try. I omitted the detailed argument in my previous post because it was already such a long word salad.

          • kool

            Sony designs excellent products and psvr2 doesn’t directly compete with the quest. Psvr2 will be for gamers who want to play vr. Quest seems to be more of a gateway into vr. I’d bet money itll be $399 when it comes out, the tech in it is unmatched and while they did cut cost audio and display is what sony does so its going to be best in class again. I’m sure better hmd will come out later but itll will be the one to beat cable or naw.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            As I’m not sure how RoadToVR likes me linking to my comment in the Quest 2 vs. PSVR 2 specs article on UploadVR, the ultra short version: PSVR 1 released after Vive/CV1 with inferior hardware in almost every aspect, yet sold 6mn units, while the PCVR HMDs sold less then 1mn. PSVR was never unmatched, it was “good enough and cheap”. PSVR 2 will be too, beating others not with specs, but with better comfort and games.

            People here (wrongly) compare Quest 2 to HMDs like Index or HTC Focus 3 all the time, which also do not directly compete, yet somehow a lot of people complain the later two as too expensive, because the Quest 2 is cheaper. Read some of the threads on how HTC is doomed because nobody will buy anything that is more than 50% more expensive than a Quest 2.

          • XRC

            Haptic licencing from immersion inc.

            Cost of license/unit considerably higher than hardware cost of haptic motor and driver

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            Do you have a rough number how much it might be? These things are always hard to estimate. I remember a BOM from when the CV1 released with an XBox One controller, where the controller that sold for USD 60 at retail was listed as USD 15, so hardware with haptics feedback isn’t necessarily expensive.

            I know from smartphones that the license costs for all the modem parts can outweigh the cost of the SoC itself, but I also know that I can buy a pack of 10 replacement rumble motors for Xbox controller for less than USD 10 total on AliExpress. With USD 1 per haptic device a license twice as expensive wouldn’t be a problem, but I assume that the advanced haptics hardware will be (a lot) pricier.

          • Cless

            250usd or less. If the PSVR2 comes for that price or less I will fucking shave my head lol

      • Sofian

        During Oculus connect 5 Michael Abrash said that pancake lenses were capable of a FOV of 200° (140 for fresnel).

        • Rogue Transfer

          But he also stated that you can’t have large FOV at the same time as small form factor. It’s one or the other with pancake lenses. So, in effect, as we see headsets like Project Cambria & Vive Flow going for smaller form factor, they’re limiting the FOV to a bit less than current headsets. You just need to look at the smaller lens size to verify that.

          • Gonzax

            If that is the case then I certainly won’t be buying Project Cambria. A lesser FOV is the LAST thing I want.

          • Sven Viking

            Possibly by “less than current headsets” he means Index etc. rather than Quest 2, which is already on the smaller side of current headsets?

        • dk

          exactly

        • mellott124

          I’ve never seen one yet past 120. Current pancake optics are 90 to 120 degrees.

      • MeowMix

        Moving to fresnel lenses allows Sony to maximize field of view on the headset.

        And pancake lenses allows the headsets to become more compact (what the industry and mainstream users want, more comfortable headsets).
        I assumed PSVR2 would be pushing the latest tech stuff, but things like Fresnel lenses and being a single tether instead shows perhaps they’re just playing catch up.

        • kontis

          It’s not about catchups. It’s about making an addon for a $399/$499 toybox that has to be cheaper than the actual toybox. That’s not easy when this addon is a cutting edge HMD with dual controllers.

          Sony can order pancake lenses just like everyone else, including no-name Chinese companies. It’s not related to any “technological capability” or patents or anything like that. Sony had no qualms to give up on 20 years of their microdisplay HMD products line and copy Oculus Rift to create PSVR (Yoshida even thanked Valve publicly for shared research in VR, like low persistence strobing OLED method that Oculus also copied), so why would now be any different?

        • Andrew Jakobs

          Lesser fov is NOT what anyone wants.

        • Bob

          Pancake lenses do allow the display to sit almost directly behind the lenses which allows for the compactness but there are limitations to the field of view as result of doing it this way.

          With pancake optics you cannot have both a large FOV and compact form factor which is ideally the end-game target. It is one or the other.

      • Eh, isn’t the FOV of PSVR2 basically they typical 110 degrees of many headsets? I would hoping for a lot more to be honest.

        • Blaexe

          Probably not, no. OG PSVR already is on the upper end of “normal FoV” headsets, its ideal FoV is 96° horizonal and 111° vertical.

          Now Sony claims 10° bigger FoV for PSVR2 – whatever way that is measured. So I could totally see this rivaling the Index in practical use.

    • ApocalypseShadow

      Good thing Sony has a patent on manufacturing fresnel lenses that deals with God rays.

      I think Gamers are going to surprised at the small form factor of PSVR 2 and the quality of the image presented across those dual oled screens.

    • Yeah, this is actually a disappointing announcement from Sony for me, not a positive.

    • Holdup

      Sony always playing catch up

    • xyzs

      The future is not pancake lenses, even less crappy Fresnel, but Liquid Crystal Lenses even. Going back to Fresnel looks like a huge step back. Time will tell.

      • Iown You

        I agree. Fresnels suck. I have them in my Oculus and the rings and glare are a letdown. I don’t know what Sony is thinking here. The lenses in PSVR were great, never had any of those issues.

  • Nothing to see here

    The big question is how Sony will handled prescription lenses? Ignoring the fact that the large majority of adult uses require prescription lenses (again) would be a serious blow to their market. Good solutions would be to offer prescription lenses at an additional cost or a way third parties can easily create them. The best solution would be a soft lens that can be adjusted to support most prescriptions.

    • Gonzax

      Probably the most important factor for me in all future headsets with eyetracking. If I can’t use prescription lens adapters then it’s going to be a huge problem for me as I don’t want to use spectacles inside the HMD for many reasons nor contact lenses either.
      I couldn’t care less about face tracking but I do need adapters.

    • kool

      The psvr2 your glasses could fit under the hmd. I wonder why you cant just plug your prescription into the hmd and it adjusts the res on the headset. Idk anything about eyesight.

      • James Cobalt

        Adjusting the resolution doesn’t change the direction of light, which is what eyeglasses do. There are headsets with adjustable lenses, but they have very small FOVs.

        • Sven Viking

          You could also do it with lightfield displays, but those are impractical enough for now that they might as well be science fiction basically.

    • Corellianrogue

      I think you don’t need glasses for PSVR2 and that you can adjust it for your prescription. Because on the PSVR2 website it says “a lens adjustment dial that lets you customize the focus to your own personal preference.”

  • Andrew Jakobs

    So the first bad news about PSVR2 is out.. Fresnel lenses are awful. I don’t care if headsets become a few grams heavier, the rest of the newer headset is lighter anyway.

    • silvaring

      I think its a gamble that could pay off, Sony will bet heavily on their 3D audio implementation, some strong exclusive content and a low price point. If the headset is compatible with PS4, and perhaps one day on PC when Sony get their subscription service more organized, then all this could be a good value proposition in spite of the god rays.

      • Andrew Jakobs

        Don’t count on it being compatible with the PS4, that one is way to underpowered to drive those displays.

        • silvaring

          PS4 ‘Pro’.

          • Andrew Jakobs

            News up till now speaks of PS5 exlusive only..

      • Corellianrogue

        You can’t have dynamic foveated rendering without eye tracking.

      • Iown You

        People aren’t using VR for 3D audio, in fact I will risk saying most people don’t care about it at all and–not being audiophiles–wouldn’t notice the difference if it wasn’t pointed out to them. I get trying to make lemonade of this lemon, but it’s a bad design decision to do anything that will negatively affect the image in a product focused on visuals. Fresnels are junk and anyone who had PSVR during its early market life and also tried other headsets that used fresnels knows the immediate difference in better optical quality when they put on a PSVR headset.

    • shadow9d9

      I’d trade visuals for lighter and more comfortable any day of the week.

      • Andrew Jakobs

        Well, comfort is in the eye of the beholder. To me my HTC Vive Pro is already pretty comfortable, I’d rather have it with clearlenses (yes I know there is a mod for that) then being lighter. Weight isn’t really a problem with the newer headset anymore, so lesser visuals due to weight would only be an excuse, not a reason. For me it needs to be a tight fit and no light leakage. Having had VR glasses with no real strap behind your head, I know those are just crap for real VR where you move your head a lot.

      • Iown You

        PSVR was already pretty comfortable. The weight difference between using crummy fresnels and optical grade lenses is negligible to the point that if one knew how negligible it is they would want their visual quality back. Sony is simply making a mistake here. Going from optical grade lenses to fresnels is just a sorry move.