No problem finger. The key is the top and back strap. You have to have the lower back strap go under the curvature of the back of your skull. Since its elastic it shouldn't be to hard. This also depends on the top plastic piece. Those two are the key, then you cut your Velcro and test fit before applying it. Will take you a few tries to get it right but it isn't difficult.

FYI I have a pretty large head and I have a nice curve on the back of my head lol so this works great for me. It puts the weight right on the Velcro on the top of my head because the elastic band is securely under the back portion of my skull, pulling the HMD close to my face and level on my nose. It's almost perfect and comfortable.

Obviously YMMV depending on your head shape. Don't give up, think of it as a fun project.

@ brantlew: yep, there seems to be more HMZ stock about. I mean, they have 2 units on demo at the sony store just down the road from my work, and they are selling it on the NZ website as well for $1200. I think the initial buzz might be slowing. Almost tempted to buy one and see if I can flog it for the same price in US$

I didn't get the 'sweet spot' issue at all, and I was wearing my glasses under it. However, i'm very used to smooshing my Z800 HMD up as close to my eyes as possible, so that may account for it. The closer you get, the bigger the FOV and sweet spot.

Totally agree about the image, I nearly bought one on the spot just because of the quality of it as well. The lack of 3D popout I believe is due to the optics that extend the view distance. I have exactly the same type of 3D on my Z800.

I want one - but using one, I'm strongly reminded of the problem with VR nowadays. The problem is, we don't have VR - just head mounted displays with low FOV.

The FOV is 'ok' but still not even as big as the Virtuality systems screens. No matter how much fun it will be to play games using it, its unlikely that people will feel true immersion for more than a small percentage of the time. Its a good step, but it just serves to convince me that we need high FOV more than anything else such as resolution, weight, etc.
I'll probably still buy one (or a ST1080) to replace my current system, but its looking more and more like if I want real VR, I'm going to have to build my own HMD

@WiredEarp: I hear ya about FOV...but that's not going to happen soon. Well maybe Palmer can help us out there (hey Palmer where u at ?)

Anyway I know you have soured a bit on the ST1080, but I'm excited about it again. After seeing that Sony first hand, I'm sort of doubtful that the next version will be much more appealing. I suspect an incremental approach to address the comfort issues, but I think their basic approach will still be geared towards passive media instead of "active and mobile gaming". An inertial head tracker would be really great - but who knows if that's in the works. So that seems to leave the ST1080 standing alone as the choice for active motion VR.

Well even with the "low" FOV of the HMZ you start to miss important stuff in the HUD and game because of the peripheral vision starts to kick in somewhat at those angles. I do not see any use for greater FOV until the graphics card drivers and games start to support resolutions needed for higher FOV. You will also need a hefty gfx card, lets say you need 1080p for the center parts, and then you need as much or more for the peripheral vision parts of the screen. Todays game and drivers have problems scaling down on screen graphics so the peripheral vision parts would have to have about the same details as the center parts which would mean lots of GPU power. Also, game developers for the most part cant even bring us descent 3D support, I have a hard time believing any game will support higher FOV in the next 10 years.

And the games that lets you set unlimited FOV are almost limited to ID Tech engine games, and even those do not support the custom ascpect ratio resolutions you would need for such FOV's

Thats my two cents anyway.. As the game market is today I do not care much for higher FOV, but it do irritates me that I cant get focus on the entire picture, I've tried everything expect dismantling the unit (The next step I guess)

Yeah I'm really still very excited about the ST1080. Going to hold off till its out and reviewed and compared to the HMZ. For moving about I'd say the ST1080 would be way better, the designer of the HMZ had NO idea. The announcement of the new HDMI modes is great, 30 fps @ 1080P would probably be fine for most of my applications. I think as long as vsync is off most games will still be quite responsive. Inertial trackers are everywhere so thats not really an issue. It IS nice to have built in if they can do it cheaply tho. The Z800 one is quite acceptable really for VR (still suffers from 'drop forward' like most gyros however).

We need someone to come out with an affordable tiled display or something for high FOV, or a cheap 3" high res screen so we can make our own high FOV displays. We need at least 1024x768 resolution to work with modern games. Its starting to look like led/laser projectors could be a way to achieve this...

hmm, 30hz and vsync off.. I cant turn vsync off in stereo 3d mode... If I rotate the viewport with vsync off It's i get a very jittery result.. It could be because i use SLI, the guys with single GPU systems have to report if they get the same results...

With AMD and the iZ3D driver, you can force v-sync off for any application. I'd suggest RivaTuner for excellent control of Nvidia cards and drivers.

yeah well, the problem is not to turn it off. You can do that out of the box for nvidia cards under 3d settings for the nvidia control panel.. The problem is that if you turn it off you get judder, jitter and tearing (atleast for me with SLI)

Was playing around with a pretty cool demo that I found on Steam - called QUBE (very simular to Portal). While it is not an approved 3d game, I simply ran it through Tridef and tried Pierreye's Skyrim script (to try out the head tracking). Looks like a fun VR puzzle game if I can figure out how to map the buttons in a script as the left mouse button uses your left hand in the game and the right mouse button uses your right hand. Other than a jump button I believe this is all that is required...

Change the code here to map the button for mouse button.

var.LeftMouseButton = joystick1.button8
var.RightMouseButton = joystick1.button7
var.MiddleMouseButton = joystick2.button2

I see. I thought is would be the opposite - smoother with vsync disabled @30hz (assuming you can render more than 30fps). I cant remember which is Nvidia SLI and which is AMD Crossfire, but I know one method splits the screen and uses one card to render the top and the other card to render the bottom, but the other is each card renders every alternate frame. Can you disable SLI in the Nvidia control panel, or simply remove your second card? This should at least tell you wheter it is SLI causing the problem. I have a similar issue with AMD, but when using 2 monitors, the second jitters and tears sometimes.

Doesn looks like its related to framerate, I get 120-180 fps in Battlefield 3 and it still jitters with 3d and vsync off.. Not a biggy, it works nice with vsync on...

Can you disable vsync in 3D? My understanding with 3D Vision is it will always set the vsync to ON regardless of the setting in the game.

Yepp, I had no problem doing it

I am trying to find a way to set the Sony to use the side by side stereo setting without the use of the interface on the Sony HMD itself.

I poked around this forum a little bit, but after 65+ pages ... sorry if this has been asked already.

The idea goes like this, my company used the Z800 for awhile now but we want to switch to the Sony HMD. One of the problems is that every time you turn off the Sony and turn it back on, it doesn't keep the stereo settings we had previously set up (we are using side by side stereo). We are looking for a way to do this automatically via driver or calls from c++ code or from a batch file.

We are running on a PC using windows 7 with a NVIDIA GTX 570 card.

Thanks

I do not think that is possible. There is no way to call the Sony interface via HDMI. It does pass through play/pause commands from the headmount, but that is in the opposite direction.

One idea would be to just leave it on all the time, since the panels turn off when it is not mounted to a head. When it is in that sleep mode, the power use is negligible.

Also VRZach you could probably just wire into the existing controls on the HMZ and then use a standalone microprocessor (arduino etc) or even just your PC to control them that way.

Im thinking of buying this to drive my HMD directly on the box internal 5volts. The Lipo my RC Quadtrocopter uses are 11.1V 1000mAh 10C ones.. Do you guys think it will work?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Castle-Creation ... 20c3ccb25b

I measured the internal AC transformer output 5.6v DC. Thinking to get this adjustable DC-DC stepdown regulator. The previous DC-DC stepdown is fix output at 4.96v.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/LM2596-DC-DC-St ... 0203948090

When you measured the voltage did you also measured the current?

Didn't measure the current but based on the specs, 15w = 5v x 3amp. So I assume 3A is the max.

15 Watts is on the 220 side, some is lost in the AC-DC so its probably little less then that... Let me know how it works out, might get one if it works, the one I linked to is tested by lots of people in the FPV scene so i know it will work well

So I finally bit the bullet and ordered the HMZ. Got overnight shipping, so it should be here on Wednesday. Very looking forward to this.

Cool. Good luck.

Nice! After some modding I think this product can be really good!

Nice, I think you'll be very happy with it (once the mods are done that is!). I was very impressed by the picture quality.

Good choice. I would get ready all the necessary items for the mod.

You definitely won't be disappointed. Just take your time when deciding on how you will mod it. I would recommend starting simple and get it all fitted out of the box. This helped me figure out which mods would work the best based on my head size etc. Your comfort mod might vary depending on yours as well.

I think I’ve spent a total of 4-5 hours here and there to find what works best for me. I’ve tented to stay with the most minimal velcro mods based on what mayaman came up with. Since my forehead tends to sweat causing the lenses to fog at times I stayed away from other mods.

I’m also looking into possibly mounting a micro blower fan to help reduce moisture build up. I’ve actually found tiny blower fans as small as 9x9x3mm. I just need to figure out if it would provide enough air flow in the right area to work well. I’ve had this issue with my other headsets as well.

Nice thinking, this could be a really big problem for my upcoming Skigoggles mod, migh have to get a fan for mine too :/

I'm looking into these http://www.digikey.com/us/en/ph/Sunon/M ... iFans.html

I just need to figure out if they will work and how to power them with a battery.

They are on 3Volts so if you connect two serial they will get ~2.5 volts each if you power them from the interal 5 volts on the HMZ

This company makes some fantastic "drop-in" components for adjustable voltages. I believe you could use this little component for stepping down to the voltage you need.

http://www.dimensionengineering.com/DE-SWADJ.htm

Guys, if you use my mod and add Velcro to the back rubber strap in three pieces, in other words two on the side and one in the middle, your able to stretch it nicely and it fits perfect because the Velcro grips your head. Give it a try as it moves the headset nice and close.

I returned my original HMZ due to comfort/fit/focus issues, but decided to grab another as I felt like seeing if I could make it conform to my needs. Stock head phones had to go, focus and fit issues had to be addressed, so I just tore the thing apart from day 1 this time. Wanted to see if ski goggles could work, grabbed a cheap (but fairly rigid with a heft strap) pair from amazon, and put the theory to the test as you can see below (forgive my ugly mug there). HMZ bits are not connected to headphones in any way, both are separate, goggle visor was dremeled out as needed, an aluminum plate was attached to existing holes on the remaining bits of the HMZ, 3 tabs are bent up from that plate to secure/bolt it to the remaining goggle visor. Some spacers are added to allow for adjusting eye to lens distance/tilt/etc... Foam you see on the sides there added so I can adjust IPD without light getting in. Locking gear removed, HDMI cable is attached to side of goggles strap on left side for strain relief. Can't see from this pic, but cut away a bit of the visor below the eyepieces so I can see under it a bit (to see keyboard or such). Just covered visor with electrical tape to black out things for now.

Will likely will redo things in a more "professional" looking way, at the least add a light weight cover, but was really just an experiment to see how much I could improve the HMZ to meet my needs. The results are hard to beat (for me) though as it is now, may just leave it be. Comfort issues are completely gone, focus good every time, no fiddling required. Thing stays put, no worries of you/it moving a mm or two and losing focus.

Any way, just thought I throw this out there in case anyone was wondering about such a mod, how it can actually work out. Hope somebody finds it helpful, or inspires better ideas. For me, it makes the HMZ something I'll definitely be keeping this time around, night and day difference. Everything is reversible by the way, could be put right back to stock, but no chance I'll be doing that -unless perhaps I sell it when the st1080 arrives (preordered one of those when the sale was on).

Nice mod. Sucks that people have to mod this thing so much just to make it acceptable.

Im about todo this, more pics, more pics! So its possible to remove the entire casing, the other dude on youtube left the boittom part, this is good because my nose is a bit big and i have to press the noserest on my nose to get focus..

edit: by the way, dont reverse it if you sell it, probably get more money for it this way

How much weight is removed?

I second that - more pics - more pics!!!

@SDM: Nice mod.

So I finally got my HMZ. Thing looks even better than I expected (even though I tried it already in the store). Sound quality blows, and there were some comfort issues, but overall its a really nice product. I really can't believe how far we've come in just a few short months since I reviewed the Vuzix 1200VR. The difference is night and day. Now I just have to find a good headtracker, as that really is half the experience.

Glad you are pleased Cyber! Please keep us posted on the tracker of choice!