Sony Is About To Make Your Games Look Better Than Ever

Gaming companies are getting awfully good at producing graphics that are uncannily realistic, and a new patent from Sony suggests that the gap between reality and games might get even smaller soon. Sony filed the patent in April, but it was just made available to the public when it was published in late October. The implications of the patent are exciting, and could mean a complete shift in how PS5 owners experience games and VR.

The patent is titled "computer implemented method for completing an image," which likely sounds like gibberish to many gamers. The patent aims to create a gaming system with the capability of improving an image's quality by filling in gaps in the code.

PlayStation Lifestyle dug deeper into the patent and put things more simply. Images always have some amount of corruption in them, and gaming hardware and software work to translate those corrupted images into something pleasing for the human eye. Sony's patent proposed a hardware and software duo that would gradually learn how to create better and more efficiently. 

Eventually, the machine will learn how to efficiently create the intended images, the hardware will use less power and run more smoothly all of which will allow gamers to enjoy increased performance without losing graphical quality. In other words, gamers would be able to run at, say, 4K without experiencing lags. While this possibility is exciting for all corners of the gaming world, it has specific implications for VR gamers.

It's clear that Sony is still invested in the VR game, as they also filed a patent in the summer of 2021 that could change VR forever by allowing for a more interactive viewer experience. The company's new patent aims to improve VR even further by allowing headsets to use less processing power, therefore improving the machines' graphical capability. As pointed out by The Gamer, the patent mentions VR headsets several times, which might hint that Sony is working on a next-gen headset for the PS5. Because VR headsets require so much processing power to work, the new patent could be finding workarounds to that issue, allowing for a smoother and more graphically satisfying experience.

Then again, Sony has published a lot of patents recently, and gamers don't know how all of its plans will shake out in the future. One patent could change esports forever by allowing viewers to boot players out of esports games (for a price, of course). Another patent could level the playing field by allowing games to self regulate and adapt to the gamer's ability level. While none of these patents have borne fruit just yet, it's clear that Sony is attempting to envision the future of gaming.