PSVR patent filed for ads displayed inside headphones

A new PlayStation VR patent filed by Sony Interactive Entertainment suggests that the company is working on a technology that allows ads to be displayed inside the headphones. Sony’s patent listing, released June 25, shows drawings that provide an example of what a virtual reality advertising model might look like in practice. The ads appear to appear at the peripheral parts of your vision, at the top corners of the screen, or as a banner at the top center of the screen.

A technical drawing from Sony’s patent.

According to the patent text, the way the ads will be displayed depends on the position of the user’s head within the head-mounted display and their line of sight. The patent describes the ads as “additional content” to “promote recognition of a given thing or service.”

An example used in the text is that the user watches a concert with a set of artists appearing at the same time. The technology claims to be able to “detect which artist the user is focusing on, and then change the ad according to the artist of interest.”

It should be noted that patents are not a guarantee of final results, only that the company in question is researching and developing such technologies. As such, we cannot say whether Sony is definitely bringing advertising pop-ups to PSVR. However, he is certainly working on the concept.

In other weird patent news, here is another bit of Sony technology discovered in April that suggests that in the future we may have fuzzy robotic playmates who react to our emotions.

Jordan Oloman is a freelance IGN writer, excited to be sold Lightspeed Briefs when he plays Bloodborne Kart in VR. Follow him on Twitter.