Hi guys, i've just got a emagin z800 off ebay and to say im not overwhelmed is an understatement.

The minor points being Focusing issuses and edge blur.
The main bone of contention however is there is no real 3d pop like I had with a set of revelators years ago.
It is 3d- ish, but not to the effect of something I could reach in and touch.

I'm putting it down to drivers (fingers crossed), so what drivers should I be using with a 7600gs card?.
There is no selection in the 3d app for the Z800 so I have to select I/O glasses, could this be the cause.

Just another thing as well, the 3d test only displays half the screen, its like the resolution is set to high.
I've set both monitor and glasses to 800/600 60hz and am using dualview.

Come on guys make my 3d pop!

Have You adjusted the convergence? If You have the same separation on far and close objects You need to adjust the convergence.

Rebo, my suggestion would be to turn of dual view first. Dualview is designed to offer mutli monitor across the two outputs of the video card. Since the z800 has only one input, this is not needed. Second, spend some time adjusting the position of the HMD on your head. When I had mine, I found that the closer the panels were to my eyes, the sharper the image was and the corners were quite as blurry. Very sensitive to placement... I was using an older set of Nvidia drivers at the time and had to set very high separation settings to get the "pop" i was looking for. Since the FOV is a bit small, try changing the stereo settings to get what you want

I've been using one for 13 months now.

It takes time to find a way to avoid blurriness. In my firsts weeks I found a position without blurry but the z800 was pressing my nose (my rather big nose anyway) and hurting it. That evolved to a more comfortable wearing with time and my nose is now happier. The upper strap is important in achieving a proper wear. Test different lengths.
Anyway, some days a still have problems finding the right position and have to readjust while I play trying to find it. Normally I do it at first try due to habit but not always.
Very important! Distance between eyes! Almost forgot that. Do a lot of tests changing the eyepieces distances till you find yourself comfortable looking at the image. They must end at a symmetrical or almost symmetrical position from the center. Use the marks on the plastic to guide you. This distance is a *key* to proper viewing.
Be sure the z800 is leveled when you wear it or you will never have clear images at both eyes. Sounds silly, but it can happen, as only a little difference in height (relative to the eyes, not the floor!) can have you a while swearing till you realize what's the problem.

Now I'm using the 162.50 forceware and stereo drivers successfully. The register hack is needed to make the stereo options available with this version. How to do it is described at mtbs and other sites.

The z800 should work with "DDC VGA glasses (IO Display)" and "Dual VGA Output (Dep3D)". I'm not sure why it works with the last one, but it does. It looks like the sync signal is there too so it doesn't make a difference for the z800.

You can't talk of pop out effect in a HMD in the same way than with a monitor. With a HMD it's difficult to tell if things are closer than the screen or farther away cos it's difficult to tell how far is the screen itself when you are visualizing stereo images. You don't have visual references of real objects like the frame of the monitor or objects beneath it. What you just *can* tell is if things are closer or farther relative to your face more than relative to the screen. At the end, this means a more natural stereo experience.

To achieve satisfactory 3D effect, you need to know mainly 5 keystrokes. Ctrl+F3/Ctrl+F4 adjust stereo separation. Ctrl+F5/Ctrl+F6 adjust convergence. Ctrl+F7 saves you settings.
In general, you need as much stereo separation as possible. The best distance would be the one that match your eye distance (which is difficult to do, as you can't put a ruler inside the z800 to measure separation of the two stereo images of an object at infinity). Begin with a low stereo separation and go increasing it.
Changing convergence allows to make things look like little objects near your eyes or big objects far from your eyes. You could say that it changes the scale of the scene.

The test application is very good to play with the settings and learn what they do. You should be able to make the nvidia logo be very close to your face when it goes out from the tunnel in your direction. And the tunnel should be quiet deep.

Head tracking is another history. You'll need glovepie and ppjoy. But, for now, make 3D work. 3D in a HMD is simply neat! It's not as comfortable as a weightless polarized glasses, but nothing can give you better stereo.

The z800 forum at 3dvisor.com had a lot of information, but it looks like it has been closed and everything is lost.

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An offtopic question. In spanish is used very often expressions like "you can blah blah blah..." or "you see blah blah blah..." not referring to the interlocutor, but to none in particular. As I'm using it a lot here, I need to know if it's true in english or it sounds like I'm talking directly to the one that began the thread. For instance: "You could say that it changes the scale of the scene" meaning that I could say it, he could say it, anyone could say it.

I think it is ok to say you for a general Person. It's also ok in German

@Rebo
Did you juse a resolution, the display supports? If not, it might be the reason, why you 'only' see a small part of the screen. If that's the fact, it explains the bad S-3D as well. The native (max?) resolution of the Z800 is 800x600 of course...

Please post, if things work, and if you change your mind about the z800
I always wanted to try one out, but the price and the low fov and resolution kept me away from buing one.

A z800 requires a long courtship. It is the anti plug and play. It took me about 7 months of experimenting (100s of hours probably) before I really got it. But now that I do get it….Well, these games have become more tangible then my dreams. I have a good amount of experience with lucid dreaming but I still feel this to be true.

After the bit about the dreams it should also be obvious that being a bit delusional helps a lot. Sometimes if I look really hard I can see all the problems that people talk about but more often than not, my imagination probably convinces me that it’s a lot cooler than it really is.

Of course I should mention that I also spent countless hours perfecting scripts for 3 wiimotes (Thanks Carl and the others who made scripts that were the bases for many of mine) to give me near perfect walking by walking in place, ridiculously fun grenade tossing, a pump motion requiring shotgun, swing hitting, grabbing, tossing and reloading.

Also, the Z800 headtracking program is not bad and the most problem free if you play standing up. Also, (with a lot of tweaking) you can duck and jump (I just go up on my tippy toes for safety) with this program.

Last, there are several reviews on this forum on the z800, check them out. (It took me forever to find a sound solution I was happy with) .ect.

Oh, and We know that an HMD is a love or hate thing so if it is just not right for you then it is just not right for you. I would say that many if not half of the people that try them don’t like them:)

Forgot! drivers.... the easy answer is the ones off the Nvidia webpage. They work as good as any other nvidia drivers for a 7xxx GPU (at the moment) with the exception of Id games like doom3. But 162.50 work great for all the same stuff AND DOOM3. But to be honest. most very new games are not playable by anyone except IZ3D owners at this time. But that may change soon:)

People mention that there's a registry hack, but don't say what it is... I believe it's:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\NvCplApi\Policies] "ContextUIPolicy"=dword:00000001

I believe that one also must make sure that one has the same version of stereoscopic & forceware drivers.

I was very disappointed with my 3DVisor when I bought it, but after adjusting settings for a few months it's so much better than a screen. Just the fact that when you move your head around it changes your view is very immersing. Even if the stereoscopic doesn't work ... Crysis is awesome! All I want now is a higher resolution version.

Also, you've got to play with the lights off and a fan to cool you down

Good evening.
Faced with an issue does not show anything in glasses.
When connected in the second VGA monitor opportunity Clone is, when you connect the points visibility there, but when opening the properties panel image is lost.

Try to Dell XPS M1210
162.50 install failed.
Give how to act?
In what direction to seek a mistake ...

I was actually blown away by how much better it was than I expected. But then I had an Icuiti DV920 before, with 640*480 resolution and a pitiful 26 degree field of vision. The Z800 is hands down the best HMD that a normal person can hope to afford.

I really like my Z800, although I do wish HMDs had more generous fields of view. I support Z800 stereo & headtracking natively in my game project (thread) and it gives me great results. The one thing that annoys me with it is the frame-sequential input. I investigated various ways to keep the stereo in sync regardless of the framerate but had no success and gave up. crim3, did you say you had managed to do this?

Today I stumbled across a possible clue that might explain one of the problems I was having with the synchronisation.
I saw the frequency 59.94 Hz mentioned on Miranda Technologies' website.

Is "60 Hz" actually 59.94 Hz, for some reason? Does anyone know anything about this?

"The superior conversion quality of the XVP at both 50 and 59.94Hz..."


crim3 - Yes, it's very natural to use "you" in the way you described there. "You" nearly always replaces the pronoun "one" (meaning someone). "One" is only really used in formal writing, and (in the UK at least) when doing an impression of the Queen

What drivers do I need for a GeForce 8800? do the 162.50s work, and what stereo driver will I need?

So I thought, but I lose sync even using high definition timers. Also found that about 60Hz not being exactly 60.

What is clear is that the nvidia driver activates some kind of signal that, undoubtly is known by emagin people, because I have never experienced a lost of sync using them with the z800. A really robust frame sync solution for sure. The first time I experienced a lost of sync with nvidia drivers was testing my shutterglasses.

Anyway, It's been months since the last time a did something with directx. I like flight simulator too much

You can try as 162.50s as 91.xx. In my notebook with nVidia 8600M GS the 162.50 stereo driver does not works at all, but successfully work 177.xx video-driver + 91.xx stereo-driver (under Win XP).
So, I think you need do a serie of experiments before you will find your optimal drivers configuration.


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Laptop Dell Inspiron 1720, C2D T8300, 17", 4gb RAM, 250GB HDD, 3D Vizor Z800

crim3 - Someone told me that the Z800 can be synchronised using the DDC pin on the monitor cable. A long time ago, I tried using an nVidia stereo driver with my Z800, and noticed that it managed to get the eyes the wrong way round - consistently - each time I ran the test program. So I thought it was probably sending out that sync signal. I think that's something that only a video driver can do though

Other frequencies I've seen mentioned are 60.004 Hz and 60.015 Hz. At some point I should try my timer test again with those values and with 59.94 Hz.

We could do with a thread about synchronising frame-sequential hardware / Z800. Someone somewhere must have a good solution...

If I were in charge, ALL stereo displays would take in a side-by-side signal. Imagine how much time that would save us!
We could all take up evening classes.

There is an old thread where Carl Kenner talks about his generic stereo-3D drivers attempt and explains that he was unable to activate a signal on the video card needed for page-flipping, and that it seemed only could be done at videocard driver level. I'm trying to find it but I can't.

Can the z800 work with a 8800gts/gtx/ultra using the nvidia driver hack method?

With a 7950gt 512 pci-e and a motherboard *without* an nvidia chipset; the 93.71 pair works great. I had almost the same setup with an nvidia chipset mobo and always got the BSOD no matter which pair... can anyone confirm they own an nvidia chipset motherboard and have been able to get a working nvidia driver pair?

The z800 is the best s3d I've ever seen; zero ghosting. The cons have been mentioned: hmd, eyestrain, not a lot of pop-out effect(at least of what I've seen), but they work with a lot of older games like Lands of Lore III, Wizardry 8, Rollcage, Rollcage Stage II... <---- those were examples of games that look perfect, the way the virtual boy should have and could have been. :: shakes head at nintendo :: Many of the games in the last few years work good like FEAR, HL2, PREY.. but I could not get Bioshock to work in 3D at all. I want to try the other stereo option that will run the z800 another time.

IMO the z800 is the best s3d solution out there because there is no ghosting, you don't have to even mess with convergence or separation - it's all automatically done. As far as trying to explain the size of the screens... the ratio where it is set - appears to be such that the depth begins right at your eyes then into the hmd although some games have a slight pop out effect(damage to monsters in Wizardy 8 floats up towards you in white numbering to your eyes.) If you don't want to mess with the SDK, to bypass the auto-shutoff just don't use/disable headtracking and buy the adapter and don't use the 1 foot usb cord that comes with it. Mine doesn't shut off every 10 mins anymore and I don't think there have been any new drivers for this in some time.. anyone know?

Peace

What I did is set the biggest time-out that is possible with Labtool (available at 3dvisor.com) and I don't mind about it anymore. But I must be careful and turn off the displays manually when I'm not using it.

same issue - auto shut off even when connected to laptop and used as secod. monitor ....
also i noticed that it takes ONLY 800x600 @60Hz no other lower resolutions like 640x480 etc will work - EXACT 800x600@60Hz!

is this unit so fragile that without auto-shut off - it will burn out ?
Can i use this to watch DVD using the VGA converter - will this operation burn out the visor ...?
please advise

It's to avoid ghost images that displaying the same picture for a long time can produce. I have never had that problem, but I know of at least one person who played WoW for several hours in a row and the HUD of the game burn out the displays and had a ghost image of the HUD of the game. It dimmed away with time, though.
Basically the same problem than plasma TV's.

Also, the OLED displays become yellowish over time, so you don't want them to get worn displaying images you are not watching.

I still recommend my own advise about changing time-out with labtool and being careful to turn the display off with the button at the console when it isn't in use.

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overall i am not happy with z800 as i compare it with headplay -
headplay : Great LCD but bad optics - if they 'd have worked hard on optics , usb voltage and provided non reflective LCD it'd have decimated z800...
Z800 : Great optics but resolution NOT great [headplay's lcd is way above z800] more AV inputs needed as headplay, no upsacling /downsacling needs 800x600@60Hz ONLY

So my search for a perfect HMD [great optics , great LCD] continues....

Not sure if you guys noticed (since no one replied to my thread) but it seems IZ3D may be providing support for the Z800 in their next driver:
viewtopic.php?f=120&t=12380