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PSVR

If you were worried about Sony's walled garden limiting your enjoyment of the PlayStation VR, you can breathe like shooting fish in a barrel now. Sony just pushed an update to the PS4's Media Player app, and the new features information technology brings volition undoubtedly brand the PSVR much more than highly-seasoned to some of us.

In a post on the European PlayStation weblog, Sony outlines a few of the new features added to version ii.5 of the Media Role player app. With this newest update, FLAC playback and "audio upscaling" for MP3s and AACs with Sony's own DSEE HX tech are at present available to all. That's great news for panel-loving audiophiles, but the new features specifically tailored for the PSVR headset are much more interesting.

With the new software installed, the PS4 now supports 360 degree videos and photos, but for proper playback, they'll need to be equirectangular. Unfortunately, that means some existing 360 degree content won't work out of the box. As for file formats, MKV, AVI, MP4, MPEG2 PS, MPEG2 TS, AVCHD, JPEG, BMP, and PNG files are all capable of existence viewed with Sony'due south software, but you lot still won't exist able to store the files straight on your PS4. You'll either need to utilise a good old-fashioned USB stick, or simply store them on your local media server. Thankfully, streaming to the PS4 isn't very difficult.

And so, what kind of content does this open up? Well, yous could shoot your own 360 degree photos with the Google'southward Street View app, and immerse yourself in your memories later on. Take 360 caste photos of your Christmas decorations, your trip to the Grand Canyon, or capture your whole crew at the family reunion. And if you e'er want to experience new places in your pajamas, yous tin can easily observe other 360 degree photos online.

Services like Hulu and Vrideo already have dedicated apps to let PSVR users watch curated 360 degree video, but having support broiled into the Media Player lets smaller content creators have access to a brand new audience besides.

Of course, this also opens up the PSVR to a swath of content that Sony would never allow directly on PSN. 360-degree pornography has been effectually for quite a while now, and we know PS4 users already tend to lookout a lot of porn. Not every video service will take PSVR-optimized video right out of the gate, but it's fait accompli that distributors will exist targeting the PlayStation VR. Sony is selling this headset as a mass market place device, and the porn industry will want to accomplish early adopters who are just itching for new ways to use their gadget.

My PSVR headset just arrived today, and so I haven't had a chance to put any of these new features through their paces yet. But rest assured, we'll exist diving deep on what the PlayStation VR has to offer in the side by side few days. Continue an eye out.