Pools brings limited terror to PS5 and PS VR2 on November 25 – PlayStation.Blog

This November 25th, our limited space fever dream game, Pools, will be coming to PlayStation 5 and PlayStation VR2. To say we were elated would be the understatement of the year; we’re really excited about the prospect of seeing our game out in the days after this post is published. Besides seeing our games appear on the consoles many of us grew up with, what’s really exciting for us is seeing how people react to the specific PlayStation 5 and PS VR2 features we implemented. That’s something we’re really excited about, and I thought it would be a really cool thing to tell you more about in this post. So, what makes the PS5 and PS VR2 versions of Pools special? Come with me and I’ll show you.

Immersive DualSense controller features

We wanted to make the experience in Pools as realistic and immersive as possible (at least to make the smell of chlorine come from the DualSense controller). To give you an immersive feel, we made the most of the DualSense controller’s haptic feedback. First, we want to give a distinctive “feel” to every surface you walk on. You can feel subtle vibrations with every step you take, and each surface has its own haptic feel and intensity. In some places, your footsteps will feel light and normal, while in some places you will feel resistance. Walking in water also creates different types of feedback depending on the depth and speed of your movement. This may sound like a small thing, but it really helps you to be “there”, almost smelled chlorine in the pool.

The controller’s haptics are also used to highlight unique locations and events in the game. For example, at some point you may come across a bottomless pit that seems bottomless, and from there you can hear a sound like a growl in the distance. You’ll feel the sound reverberate through your controller’s speakers, while the intensity of the haptic effects scales naturally based on the distance to the hole. When creating haptic moments like these, we realize that some of you may want to customize them to suit your tastes. So the haptic intensity can be adjusted or enabled/disabled in the settings menu according to your personal taste.

Maximizing PS VR2

When we started our plans to bring Pools to PS5, we decided early on that PS VR2 mode should make the most of its features. Once again, we have cool hardware that can make you even more interested in our gaming world – let’s take full advantage of it! The PS VR2 version is a new custom version of the game, designed directly for the hardware. It takes full advantage of eye-monitored foveated rendering, so we can give you maximum visual quality and performance. This is a really great feature because it allows us to make Pools look as realistic as possible, while maintaining excellent performance – at least 90 FPS without reprojection. It’s all about making the game look good and play well.

Now, while it may seem a bit shallow to say this, we are very proud of the PS VR2 version. Between you and me, we had to rebuild most of the visual aspects of the game from scratch to hit our performance goals. We wanted foveated rendering to work as well as possible, and to do that, we needed to create a custom solution for our water visuals. So we locked ourselves in, dove into the code, and learned a lot about shader programming. It was hard work, but we are very proud of what we achieved. The entire studio hopes that when you dive in, go deep, or just stare at the water effects, you will think “hey, that looks good.” If you do, it’s all good for us.

Thank you so much for spending a little time with us and seeing our thought process on how we can make the Pools experience as great as it is on PlayStation 5 and PS VR2. Additionally, it’s worth mentioning that you only need to purchase the game once, and you’ll get access to both modes.

Pools will be released in just a few days, on November 25th, and you can play the demo now on the PlayStation Store. We hope to see you there.