That glowing controller light has a real function.
About six months after Sony launched the PlayStation 4, the company introduced us to Project Morpheus. Morpheus is the company's virtual reality effort and comes at a time when the VR industry is on the cusp of a major breakthrough. Though the PS4 was around before we ever heard of Morpheus, Sony has said it has been working on Morpheus for several years, so it should come as no surprise that the platform has influenced certain aspects of the PS4. In fact, we now know that the feature of the PS4 controller that hasn't really made a lot of sense up until now was specifically designed with Morpheus in mind.
Read more: Project Morpheus vs. Oculus Rift Development Kit 2
Speaking to TechRadar, senior Sony designer Jed Ashforth said that the DualShock 4's light bar is a tracking light put in place by Sony's VR team. As a result, despite complaints about the light draining battery too quickly, reflecting off the TV, or being a distraction, users won't be able to turn it off or deactivate the light completely, even though Morpheus won't be around for quite some time. While that light bar is going to go unused by any kind of VR technology for now (it's going to shine on for the motion tracking camera), it will eventually be used by Project Morpheus, so it stays.
Like most of the VR solutions we've been getting really, really excited about over the last year or so, Morpheus isn't quite ready for prime time just yet. Sony has been working on this project for more than three years, and the company says it will continue to develop Project Morpheus for a "future commercial launch." Nothing more specific than that. We know that Sony is currently working on getting a dedicated SDK out to developers. The company did demos of the technology at GDC back in March, featuring EVE Valkyrie, Thief, The Castle, and The Deep, but it will likely be next year before we see the technology available for consumers.
MORE: The Past, Present, And Future Of VR And AR: The Pioneers Speak
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I mean really, can't it just send a signal to the controller to turn the light on when you have the VR helmet turned on?
Tom's Hardware needs to do some damn research before posting nonsense.
Gotta love excuses to be lazy and wasteful.
You don't need to remove the light to allow the light to turn off when not needed/wanted. They can just as easily turn the light on when an Eye Toy is installed on the system.
... what on earth would Morpheus need a light on the controller for anyways... unless Morpheus requires installation of the Eye Toy to function properly...
"UPDATE:
So I just tested again and the DS4 with the LED on is at 1 bar, however the DS4 with the LED off is still at 3 full bars. The reading is 3.67V on the DS4 without the LED controller which is more than the DS4 was with the LED on was last night after a few hours. The battery draw isn’t huge for the LED’s but its still there and noticeable. I think I can safely assume that the DS4 with LED on isn’t going to last 24 hours of being on and idle whereas the DS4 with LED off will probably be scratching at 2 bars."
its been proven the led light eats a noticeable amount of battery
Still if it bothers people that much then maybe Sony should have given an option for it - although it just seems to be a case of people complaining about something 'because they can' rather than something of any real impact.
How did you come up with the notion that LEDs light up powered by luck and good intentions?
It takes power to light up a LED or any other form of light source and any power used by the LEDs in a wireless battery-powered device necessarily come out of the battery.
Typical low-power LEDs can handle 30-50mW and the DS4 has three so that's possibly more than 100mW getting wasted out of the DS4 battery's ~3.5Wh capacity... ~1/35th of the battery's capacity every hour.
It takes power to light up a LED or any other form of light source and any power used by the LEDs in a wireless battery-powered device necessarily come out of the battery.
Typical low-power LEDs can handle 30-50mW and the DS4 has three so that's possibly more than 100mW getting wasted out of the DS4 battery's ~3.5Wh capacity... ~1/35th of the battery's capacity every hour.
Congratulations on taking what I said literally, where would I be without your insightful commentary to instruct me that LED's need power, i'd have to scrap my entire belief that all light sources are powered by pixie dust.
Obviously anything is going to drain the battery; you could argue they use too many components in the transmitter and the heat dissipated by them all is a 'waste of battery life'. The fact I was simply pointing out, is that without someone measuring what the LED's are using we have no quantifiable data to tell us just how much of an impact it is. Like I said, that guy was using the bars in the system. I saw nothing to suggest that the charge times were done in a measurable manner either, like ensuring a fully drained battery at the start, and a measured charge cycle. There are so many variables going on and that 'investigation' just was not thorough.
SMD LED's are usually below your "30-50mW" estimate, and whilst I haven't seen for myself what they are i'd be surprised if they were not. This is my point: no one seems to have measured them to know whether this is a large impact or a negligible impact that people just like to moan about.
VR (or eye, or anything) needing it does not explain why you have it on when using neither PS eye, nor the VR.
If you have ever worked with LEDs, preferably high-efficiency ones, you would know that you do not get much useful light out of them until you reach roughly 5mA. Less than that would usually be nearly imperceptible in a reasonably well-lit room and that is even without a diffuser cap in front of it, staring straight down the clear epoxy lens.
So, even without taking any measurements or knowing what exact parts used are, I can already make a fairly well-educated guess from typical device characteristics that the LEDs should be draining ~1/60th of the battery capacity every hour.
Since the PC-DS4 controller toolkit allows setting RGB-LED brightness, the simplest way to find out how much of a power drain the LEDs put on the controller would be to measure USB power with the LEDs on max/normal/off brightness. Whatever the difference is, that's how much power the LEDs + LED controller use.
we'll just have to live with less battery life.
"Yeah, but I might use that feature"
Yeah, you might jump off a bridge and drown too. But will it happen?
Fok em =). If it hurts their dollars, they will do something about it.
New technology should (in theory) be better on all fronts. Better resolution, better battery life, better reach of the signal, better content as well... one can dream...
You can not complain about "customizability" and be unhappy about a product if the whole point behind consoles are ease of use.
Live with it people or go PC. Period.