Best product to try out VR

[CyberVillain]

Ive been waiting for a highres, high fov, high compability HMD for years now, im tired of waiting and want to try this even if the consumer HMDs are not ready yet.

I want one with stereoscopic vision, and thats working with w7 and latest nvidia drivers.
Iwear VR920 the only choice?

/Anders

[tritosine5G]

I would wait until they implement headtracking , together with a fast pc and rock solid vsync.


"/Anders" are you the , /Anders over diyaudio..?

[cybereality]

Well, sadly to say it, you will probably be waiting for a long time. There is nothing I know of on the market that fulfills the Virtual Reality fantasy of the 1990's, and in many ways the stuff they had back then was even more advanced then most of the stuff on the consumer market today. Even if you look at medical/military $20k HMDs, they still don't even have full HD resolutions or the kind of FOV you would expect in the year 2010 (almost 2011 now). I mean, there have been some interesting research projects in academia, but nothing that could actually play a retail video game out-the-box. At this point I am think about building a DIY HMD myself, and some other members on the forum have already started projects. It just seems that the market is not ready for a consumer level VR device (meaning a headset and any accompanying peripherals). In recent years it seems that Augmented Reality (AR) is gaining popularity and is probably where the industry is headed. So I think a see-through AR-based HMD may have a place in the market in the near future. But the traditional idea of a encompassing display helmet and data-gloves seems to be fading (as much as I'd like it to be real). Hopefully there will continue to be progress in this field.

In terms of what is available today, I would say the best option would be the Vuzix VR920. Its not the best headset ever made, but its the one with the best compatibility on modern hardware. Vuzix supplies a 3d driver that has support on all versions of Windows (XP, Vista, 7) 32 or 64-bit. It doesn't support a ton of games, but some big ones do work: namely Crysis, which no other driver developer has managed to get working properly (shadows and everything are supported). The VR920 also has a headtracker, which works somewhat alright and is supported natively on a couple of titles. You can also use mouse emulation, with a program called GlovePIE (however Carl Kenner got into some beef with the Vuzix team so he removed support in the newer versions). VR920 also has an SDK if you want to add support in your own 3D applications. In addition to the support Vuzix provides, the VR920 is supported on the iz3D driver, which unlocks hundreds of DirectX9 games for use with the device (this works on XP/Vista/7 + Nvidia/AMD). 3D videos can be played using the Stereoscopic Player. And if you have an old antique machine, you can even use it with the legacy Nvidia XP driver. So there is a ton of support. Pretty much any other headset you see on the market relied on the old Nvidia drivers to work, and are thus DOA on any remotely modern hardware/OS. If you really must have an HMD, then its the only reasonable choice on the market. That said, its not without its short-comings, but its decent enough to be worth $350 (or however much you can find it for). You can read a full review I wrote here: http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=120&t=12193" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Also, Carl Zeiss is slated to release a new Cinemizer OLED HMD sometime in 2011 ( http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11510" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ). It has support for HDMI 1.4 and thus will work with both Nvidia 3DTV Play and also AMD HD3D (not at the same time though, you have to pick sides). Those solutions are fully supported (and in some cases only supported) on Windows 7. There are rumors this may be a 720P display, but its been quoted at as low as 640x480. FOV however is still in the 35 degree range, not much more than the VR920 or its knock-offs. Still, something to at least look forward too.

[CyberVillain]

Thanks for the reply, no that is not me

Cyber, thanks for the info, ill probably pick one up to play with. Will it work with Arma II?
It's the only modern fps i know of with headtracking and would be super cool to play with the HMDs.

I have a core i7 with 12 gig ram and dual GTX 295 (quad SLI) so i should be able tp play it
Nicely in stereo...

I read somewhere that Apple as a patent on a HMD thats using fiber optics, maybe that will be something of a product someday

[tritosine5G]

They wont sell that imho, even though It would be cool alternative to picoprojectors .

[CyberVillain]

Checked your thread about the Carl Zeiss HMD's, sounds like i should wait for those to arrive.
I really hope they will have 720p

[cybereality]

SLI, especially Quad-SLI, is notorious for having issues with stereo 3d drivers. Even Nvidia has just recently (like in the past year) figured out how to get SLI to work properly in 3D and I am not sure tri/quad SLI is fully supported across-the-board. And the Nvidia drivers do not work with any HMDs anyway. So for the IZ3D driver you may have problems with that setup. Even if you got a game to run, it may have worse performance than if you just ran it with one core on one card. If you got an Nvidia 3D Vision package, however, you should be able to use your existing setup.

[CyberVillain]

Strange to me it sounds more natural with SLI (Two images being rendered, two cards doing the work)

[ERP]

I believe that NVidia is still using AFR in SLI even with stereo, i.e. one GPU renders both left and right eyes, and they work one frame ahead.
Which gives almost perfect scaling for the cost of an additional frames latency, unless the game does something dumb like lock a resource the GPU is using during the frame in which case it gives 0% increase in performance or less.
Unfortunately there are still a few games that do this, they show 0 or negative scaling with SLI.

I believe 258.96 kind of worked with Tri SLI in 3D.
Very few people seem to find Quad SLI acceptable.

personally I own 2 SLI machines and I'd strongly advise people to buy the fastest single GPU they can and forget SLI unless they have no choice, still too many issues IMO.

As for HMD's on the commercial side I think the issue is that big bulky units are out of vogue and you simply cannot create wide FOV optics in a compact package. That coupled with the fact that there has been little effort to make very high res small displays (most of the eyeglasses type solutions are under 2 inches), and in a lot of ways things are worse than they were 10 years ago.

Laser projectors offer some hope, since if they can make retinal projection actually work with an adequate exit pupil they don't require complex optics. But I wouldn't hold my breath, that tech has been around 10+ years as well.

[CyberVillain]

Laser projectors offer some hope, since if they can make retinal projection actually work with an adequate exit pupil they don't require complex optics. But I wouldn't hold my breath, that tech has been around 10+ years as well.

Oh, i actually had a dream about this last night. I had a HMD with retinal projection and full FOV, head and eye tracking, sad to wake up

[rowanunderwood]

Also, Carl Zeiss is slated to release a new Cinemizer OLED HMD sometime in 2011 ( http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11510" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ). It has support for HDMI 1.4 and thus will work with both Nvidia 3DTV Play and also AMD HD3D (not at the same time though, you have to pick sides). Those solutions are fully supported (and in some cases only supported) on Windows 7. There are rumors this may be a 720P display, but its been quoted at as low as 640x480. FOV however is still in the 35 degree range, not much more than the VR920 or its knock-offs. Still, something to at least look forward too.

Also worth mentioning is that the 1.4 support would make the Cinemizer compatible with the PS3 for 3d games and movies!