What VR Headsets Work With PS4?

The Oculus Rift was the original VR headset from Oculus. It was launched in March 2016, beating the PlayStation VR by a few months. Designed to work with PCs, the Oculus Rift is a tethered VR headset. It is now discontinued, but you do find secondhand Rifts for sale. The Oculus Rift relied on external sensors to track the movement of the headset. Like the PS4, this tracking system used LED positioning lights to keep track of where the headset was positioned. The Rift works with one sensor positioned in front of the user, however, for full 360 freedom of movement, three sensors are recommended. These sensors are similar to the PlayStation camera, but they are not interchangeable or compatible. This is one of the many reasons why you cannot use an Oculus Rift headset on a PS4.

The Rift was discontinued in 2019 to make way for the Oculus Quest and eventually the Oculus Quest 2. Both of these headsets are untethered, meaning that they don’t use cables to connect to the system These headsets are completely self-contained, meaning they don’t require external sensors or connections to work. Instead, they use cameras mounted in the headset to track your movements and position. While you might think that an untethered system could connect wirelessly to a PS4, this is not the case. The Oculus headsets from the Rift through to the Oculus Quest 2 are all designed to run on Android operating systems like Windows.

The PS4 uses the Orbis OS, which is simply not compatible with the Oculus software. In essence, the PS4 and the Oculus headsets speak different languages, and no translators are available. Naturally, Sony wants to prevent other headsets from working on their console, so that users are forced to buy Sony’s PSVR headsets to experience VR on their console. It may be frustrating for those who want to play PS games on other VR headsets, but it’s not unexpected. A lot of companies these days make brand specific hardware so that you are encouraged to spend your money with that brand.