Sony: Project Morpheus is as game-changing a technology as sound was to silent films

"Will virtual reality technology like Project Morpheus be a disruptive technology?" asks Sony's Dave Ranyard during a talk at today's DICE Europe conference, attended by Polygon.

Ranyard's keynote was a statement about the future of virtual reality in the face of criticism of some of its early prototypes. According to the Project Morpheus developer, skepticism over new technology is part of a cycle that kicks off when a new method of interacting with entertainment is brought about.

Disruptive technologies, he says, include the arrival of the television and its affect on radio broadcasts, or the arrival of audio in the face of silent film.

Ranyard offered a quote from Mary Pickford, one of the founders of United Artists during the era of silent film, using it as an example of the habitual nature of short-sightedness in our culture.

"Adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo," reads the quote.

Ranyard concludes that virtual reality technology is in the end as disruptive a technology as television and sound before it, but the technology is still in a very early form that will continue to evolve before becoming ubiquitous.

Ranyard lists a number of experiments being done using these virtual reality tools, including eye tracking, haptic feedback to fool the brain to thinking you're in a different place, as well as navigation with Move controllers. According to the developer, there is no standard in VR just yet, but a standard will be achieved over time.

"Is virtual reality a disruptive technology?" asks Ranyard. "I think it is, I think it could be. All the ingredients are there."