Good luck with the PlayStation VR2 PC Adapter — you’ll need it

The biggest problem with Sony’s PSVR 2 virtual reality headset is the dearth of games. I’d hoped Sony’s PC adapter would change that. The chance to play Half-Life: Alyx, the best VR game made yet, seemed like reason enough for existing owners to justify the $60 adapter purchase.

But I can’t currently recommend Sony’s PC adapter. If I had purchased it with my own money, rather than borrowing one from Sony, I’d have asked for a refund long before now.

It’s a shame, because the $550 PSVR 2 is still a good headset, with image quality that arguably beats the newer $500 Meta Quest 3. Playing Half-Life: Alyx inside Sony’s headset isn’t just more vibrant thanks to the richer colors of its OLED screen; it’s more thrilling, too, with the panel’s true blacks making me feel the terror of its darker corridors. The Quest 3 experience looks incredibly washed out by comparison.

But what really scared me in Half-Life: Alyx was the damned glitch. How — when I lift my pistol to deal with an unspeakable horror — I’d often find my hand had become detached from my body, stuck in place, two feet above the ground.

I’ve spent eight hours troubleshooting this issue and ones like it over the past week, and I’m no closer to a solution. My Quest 3 streams this game almost perfectly from the same PC in the same room, and yet my PSVR 2 struggles even with a hardwired headset cable to help. I see plenty of others reporting the same issues online, yet others report no issues at all.