September 28th, 2005
Review: eMagin’s Z800 3DVisor Brings Gaming to (Half) Life
By Oliver Rist
Guest Contributor, RealTechNews
This thing just screams “new horizon in FPSs”. And you may justifiably ask why? After all, we’re just moving the monitor closer to your eyes, correcto? Correcto, but there’s more. eMagin also added what they’re calling 3D Stereovision. The rest of us call it head-tracking. So you’re mowing down those really creepy crawling demons in Half-Life. Normally, you’d twitch your mouse to look left and right–make sure you got them all. With Stereovision, if you hear that annoying clicking sound they make off to your left, all you’ve got to do is turn your head left and you’re facing the one that almost got away.
Truly cool. Downsides? A few. First it costs just under $900. Then again, the good vid cards are going for $600 nowadays and true performance zealots are running two of them in tandem, so what’s $900? The real downside is that it’s still a baby. Telltale signs are numerous: For one thing, my test unit was relegated solely to NVidia 3D accelerators. Okay, I had to dig for one of those, but I found it. (On a buddy’s system. He complained until he saw what I was toying with–HA!) But, by far the worst disappointment was a max resolution of 800×600. Source: TechFilter
Complete Review Here
Alice Adds: Oliver and I used to work together back at Ziff Davis for Computer Shopper magazine (now owned by my previous stomping ground, CNET.com). Welcome Oliver. Oliver is a bigger geek than I am and he has the picture to prove it! 9Couldn’t resist.) Please welcome him here, we are lucky to have another great tech writer with us here at RealTechNews.
David Johnston says:
That looks pretty cool. I definitely think we’ll be seeing more of this kind of thing in the future. It’s too bad they look so dorky.
September 28th, 2005 at 5:11 pm
Alice says:
Oliver is a brave, brave man!
September 28th, 2005 at 5:33 pm
Oliver Rist says:
I think they give me a certain devilish charm. Or maybe devilishly dorky. Okay, just dorky, but in a charming way.
September 28th, 2005 at 5:52 pm
Andy@RecycledElectrons.com says:
I’ve been looking into modding Half Life into a live-fire VR simulator.
My frist challenge has been to put in 4 screens (front, back, left, right) and have them all display at once. Has anyone ever seen such a mod?
Andy Out!
September 28th, 2005 at 7:47 pm
bookishboy says:
“eMagin also added what they’re calling 3D Stereovision. The rest of us call it head-tracking”
Color me confused; I thought that ‘head-tracking’ is when the movements of a head-mounted device are measured and translated into game input.
‘Stereovision’ is when each eye is shown a different picture, and the two pictures combine to simulate a 3D experience. Like a ViewMaster, only with full-on video.
If this device offers Stereovision for under $1000, AND head-tracking, then I’d say it’s possibly a very good value; the only downside is the limited compatibility with vidcards.
September 28th, 2005 at 8:18 pm
Lockergnome's Tech News Watch says:
eMagin’s Z800 3DVisor Brings Gaming To (Half) Life
Oliver Rist, Guest Contributor of RealTechNews, writes: This thing just screams “new horizon in FPSs.” And you may justifiably ask why? After all, we’re just moving the monitor closer to your eyes, correcto? Correcto, but there’s more. eMagin also a…
September 29th, 2005 at 5:53 am
Phil says:
I wish to clarify that 3D stereovision is a completely different thing to headtracking.
The device gives a different image to each eye, creating the illusion of 3d depth in a similar manner to LCD shutterglasses, only with a full colour image for each eye.
Any nVidia card that uses their unified forceware driver will work with the Z800 (and many other 3d viewing devices). nVidia release a stereo driver that works in tandem with their regular driver that forces the 3d viewing position (camera) to flip between a left-eye and right-eye position.
Headtracking? Well, you know what that is.
October 5th, 2005 at 2:25 am
Phil says:
–correction– LCD shutterglasses ALSO give a full colour image, though can be slightly washed out. Anaglyph (red & blue/green) has little or no colour.
October 5th, 2005 at 2:29 am
Falcon says:
Be advised - this unit offer BOTH stereoscopic vision (by virtue of its two displays and hardware-based image handling) AND head tracking.
Sad to note the author’s ignorance - since you’d pay many thousands for greater resolution, and such units are very far from consumer items at present. In fact to date 640×480 has been the de facto best available at consumer prices (yeah, like $2000USD), QVGA - i.e. 160×120 being the “meat and drink” mainstream res at more affordable prices.
As it goes this unit has superior specifications at a very reasonable price and it’s disappointing that this isn’t properly recognised in the commentary. Shame on yous. Please hire more knowledgeable authors in future who have a better grasp of present day realities.
If you call to question my (well researched) view, please do let me know where I can obtain even a monocular HMD (Head Mounted Display) with greater resolution for a comparable price - let alone a binocular one with head tracking and stereo sound built-in.
Jeez…
October 11th, 2005 at 12:06 am
cutlass says:
Calling this a review is being somewhat kind. Oliver seems like a cheerful sort so I shall go gently here. To start with a reviewer should know his field of review, which in this case is head mounted virtual reality visors. His first mistake was to state or imply–he wasn’t clear–that the displays used in the visor were LCDs. They are in fact OLEDs, which is quite a different kettle of fish, the former being backlit and the latter being emissive. He also likens the visor to shutter glasses, which trick the eye into seeing 3d by shifting the image back and forth from eye to eye. The eMagin visor displays 2 images simultaneously all the time. I somewhat agree with him that 800×600(SVGA) is limiting, but because the OLED visor is inherently brighter and all 1.44M pixels are always on, image quality is quite good. Finally, as to price, $899 is indeed a lot of money. However, as long-time gamers will attest, the price is relatively inexpensie compared to the prices of other visors which run the gamut from about $1,500 to $90,000.
October 11th, 2005 at 11:00 am
Robin says:
The price is now $549.
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August 6th, 2006 at 8:29 am
Joakim Sandroos says:
It would be very nice with a few comments from Oliver Rist
October 20th, 2006 at 1:39 pm