Here is my collection by list, I will X mark ones I have already covered:
Phillips Scuba--------------------X
Victormaxx Stuntmaster----------X
Olympus Eyetrek FMD-200--------X
Virtual Research V8--------------X
Kaiser Proview 30 (PV30)
Vuzix VR920
HeadPlay
i-Glasses SVGA Pro
i-Glasses PC
i-Glasses TV
Liquid Image MRG 2.2
Trimersion
Vortek VR boom mounted display
A few of those shitty toy HMDs with built in games.
MyVu Solo
Fatshark Aviator
Generic chinese HMD (PS2 Headgame)
Ones I do not currently own, but have used:
PR1
Z800
Sensics X-Sight
Many cobbled together random test HMDs I have made.
#1: Phillips Scuba
This one is definitely a mixed bag, but the general idea is that it sucks.
Pros:
-Good FOV, about 40 degrees
-The rear head strap actually reaches around the curve of your skull, to the nape (Comfortable!)
-Audio sound stage is better than most HMDs. It keeps the drivers pretty far from the pinna of the ear, so the sound seems to be coming from in front of you, even with standard audio sources.
-There are a series of small slots in the visor underneath each eye. They do not leak very much light at all, but allow you to see your desk/keyboard/cables you are messing with very easily. This was actually one of the things I liked best about this particular unit.
-Fairly small control box, very light, and runs off standard 9v power supply
Cons:
-The resolution is very, very low.
-The quality of the optics is very, very poor. Color distortion, blurry edges, the edges of the LCDs are cut off partially, and it is difficult to focus on for any length of time.
-The IPD adjustment is pretty much useless, as other people have noted, it just rotates the optics. Luckily, the stock IPD matched me pretty well, or things would have been even worse.
-The LCDs are interpolated, diamond pixels, ghosting, washed out, bad color balance and contrast, par for the course on these old HMDs.
-Despite the head strap, which is actually well designed, the entire unit is just too heavy to use without strain. The top presses on your forehead, and if it is not strapped completely tight against your face, then the sag presses down on your cheeks, and makes it hard to breath through your nose.
It is a shame, because the headstrap is so well designed that I might steal it for an HMD that is lighter that would benefit more. The entire unit practically screams “quality” at first glance, in terms of build quality and all those little things you know some designer worked long and hard on (The eye slots in the visor, the head strap, the cutouts on the outside of the speaker modules to open up the treble a bit, the thick, solid cables and plugs), but the end experience is very lacking. It is really a shame, because if a major HMD maker went with a form factor like this, the technology is at the point where they could actually use the extra space to make a really, really nice HMD. I guess I would categorize this as a novelty that looks back at a time when major companies like Phillips believed in VR.
#2: Victormaxx StuntMaster
Picture of the prototype, taken from http://www.frerichs.net/fvt/stuntmaster.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
A fantastic video showing off the unit in full glory:
[youtube]r58xRwqH_po[/youtube]
Picture of the unit and assorted cables:
Oh my. This this is atrocious. I am really straining to think of good things about it.
Pros:
-The manual is pretty funny. “For maximum awesome, use your state of the art Virtual Reality headset with games that stand on their own without text.”
-The “head movement tracker” does work.
Cons:
-Heavy, uncomfortable, strap padding starts to fall apart practically by design, completely unbalanced. Hurts every part of your face.
-LCD is square, not 4:3, and distorts video to fit. It ghosts, has awful resolution, makes a high pitched whine from the CCFL backlight inverter, and suffers from every problem you have ever seen with a bad quality screen, yet even worse.
-The optics are equally bad. You are basically looking through two credit card magnifiers that have been stacked together at a single small LCD. Field of view is perhaps 20 degrees. If they would have at least used centered fresnels (Two for each eye) then it MIGHT be bearable... But it really is just awful.
-Standardized cables are good, right? Usually. Until you decide to use a massive, 80s era serial plug for not much more than a composite video feed and some sound. I have no idea what was going through their heads, they raped a set standard, and stuck a variety of bad, very thick and unwieldy cables together.
This is just so, so incredibly bad. The manual and box make it sound so cool! If I were a kid who had gotten this for Christmas, after wanting it so badly (As I want the promises on the box today!), I would have cried after finding out how awful it was. Or returned it, which is probably why Victormaxx went out of business. The thing is, I would not blame the team that designed it. From the old BBS threads I have found, the people who designed it had a well balanced design, but Victormaxx ended up ruining it. Sure, the tech would have still been bad, but at least it would not have been so awful in every possible respect.
#3: Olympus Eyetrek FMD-200
I like this thing a lot. Small and light.
Pros:
-The FOV is great, just above 39 degrees.
-The optics are of extremely high quality. No abberations of any kind, no pincushioning, focus is set at a comfortable distance of 10 feet or so, and the image stays clear and in focus when moved from side to side or up and down.
-Battery life is great, I get about 5 hours off of the small rechargeable pack, and spares are less than $10 on eBay.
-Control box is very lightweight, even with battery, and small to boot.
-Optical filter (Basically blurs the spaces between pixels) works really, really well. No visible pixels most of the time!
-The entire unit is very, very lightweight, and very thin, too. This is the closest to normal sunglasses sized I have ever seen. In fact, it can fit entirely behind one of my larger pairs! A very dorky looking pair, I must admit.
-Cable is thin, flexible, high quality.
Cons:
-Low resolution is low (180k pixels)
-Build quality is not bad, persay, but it is not as sturdy as it could be
-Headphones are not that great
-Only composite video input, svideo would have been nice.
I was really, really surprised by this one. It is definitely my favorite for watching videos on the go now, despite the low resolution! The free form prism style optics are similar to the ones in the Z800, but they seem to be higher quality, and not nearly as sensitive to placement in front of the eyes. I might try modding a different microdisplay into them, considering they use 0.5", which is close to the 0.44" Kopin LCDs.
One of the things that strikes you is just how lightweight these are, you barely feel them on your face! The image is large, at 39 degrees, and does not feel totally distant. They do not block your peripheral view at all, so this is a bad HMD for immersion, but for watching movies on a plane, it works great. Used them on 6 flights now, they are fantastic. They have good brightness and contrast controls, and the hype in the old PR material about the optical filter is actually merited! You cannot see the pixels in most circumstances, and you really, REALLY forget about the low resolution. It looks better than most 320x240 HMDs I have seen, even some 640x480 ones. If I could somehow magically flip a switch and have 720p resolution on any of my HMDs, it would likely be this one, just for the sheer usability; The setup is a no brainer, the whole thing is small, and is just easy to use in general. The headphones are a downer for me, but I use my own, anyways. They are better than stock Apple iPod headphones, but not by much. I am probably too picky, though, I am a bit of an audiophile, much to the chagrin of my wallet.
Bottom line is that these are worth a purchase if you can find a pair for a reasonably low price, especially considering their comparative rarity.
#4: Virtual Research V8
Internal shot:
Side shot of the unit, after modifications:
Front of control box with brightness and contrast controls, leads to HMD:
Back of control box, dual VGA inputs allow for mono, stereo, and a VGA passthrough to an external monitor:
A shot I took when I first got it, before mods (Much inferior camera!):
Pros:
-Massive FOV, 60 degrees!
-Fantastic optical quality, knocks the pants off most HMDs
-Adjustable IPD and eye relief distance is easy to use
-The 640x480 resolution is a "true" resolution, not a pentapixel arrangement. This gives it 3x more pixels than the V6!
-Headband is comfortable and well balanced, great build quality
-Cable to HMD is loooooooong, but thin and flexible
-Dual VGA inputs are dead simple to work with for stereo3D
-Blocks out the outside world very well with the soft, rubberized plastic light hood
-Looks like it means business
Cons:
-Has a fan, not a loud one, but see next con.
-The stock headphones carry the vibration from the fan into your ears, it is a quiet hum all the time
-Long cable is a bit too long, needs coiling on one end for desk use
-Power brick that plugs into the wall is huge!
This HMD is by far my favorite! I am sure some of you have seen reviews for the venerable V6, all favorable. In essence, the V8 is a V6 with much higher quality LCDs, which lend it higher contrast, color accuracy, and most importantly, resolution. 3x the pixels make a massive difference in usability for modern games! Text is actually readable, and everything is much sharper in general, especially when you are in stereo, and feeding your brain information that it smoothes into a single stereo image.
The 60 degree FOV looks even larger than it sounds, too. At first glance, an extra 25 or 30 degrees more than most headsets does not sound that impressive, but keep in mind the rules of increasing screen size. Compared to a 32 degree VR920, you have nearly 4 times as much screen real estate! I have played a lot of games in the FPS genre with this, and one thing that is great is that in games like Team Fortress 2 or Portal, you can very easily adjust the FOV of the game to match the FOV of the HMD itself. This lends a huge immersion factor, much better than the weirdness of low FOV headsets with high FOV games. Racing and flight simulation are also great fun. Also, POV videos in a certain genre!
Stereo3D is super easy, just dual VGA using IZ3D drivers. Not much to elaborate on, except to say that the 3D effect feels much stronger with a larger image size, something owners of 3DTVs have noted as well.
When I first got the unit, I was very pleased with the sound quality of the speaker modules, Sennheiser HD25s, but there was a problem: Being mounted to the frame, they carried the sound of the fan very well, right to my ears. You could not just flip the speakers up out of the way like you can with some HMDs, either, so my only option was to take apart the unit and remove them. I am glad I did! I usually use earbuds, or for better comfort, Koss KSC-75s, and the unit is lighter on the whole now. That, along with the fact that my ears do not get warm as easily, mean that I can use it for long periods of time without any stress. The headband is very comfortable, and has good adjustment.
If you have any questions about the V8, I would be glad to answer them. Sadly, I am very much considering selling this unit.
I do not get enough use out of it, which lead me to almost sell it a while back, but I could just not bring myself to let it get away from me! Unfortunately, I need the money pretty badly for personal reasons that have come up these past few months. In light of that, I will probably be making an eBay listing tonight or tomorrow morning. I will link it here and in my signature, if you guys know anybody who would buy it, I would really appreciate you pointing them to it.Kaiser ProView 30 (PV30)
I got these as a set of two, I got to keep one of them!
Pros:
-The head mount is probably the best one I have ever used. Very, very comfortable, foam with leather padding, well balanced.
-IPD adjustment is very easy, as is height and tilt
-Optics are only 35 degrees, but they are very, very high quality, and comfortable on your eyes!
-Lightweight for the size, and like I said, very well balanced, thanks to the rigid frame with the cable coming out of the back.
Cons:
-My pair does not have a functioning driver board for the 1.3" LCDs it uses.
-Hard to gauge any other cons, considering this.
-Dual input is nice, but it is s-video and composite only.
This one was great, it came from a hospital, with a fiber optic headlamp, too! It was marketed under a 3D laparascopic surgery system, the "Vista StereoSite". It was apparently one of the test systems, because it came with a huge book full of details for hundreds of surgeries it had been used on, mostly tumor removals, and in the back was a contract detailing how it was a loaner system from Vista to the hospital, to be leased for free in exchange for survey and testing information. Looks like they never got it back, after they went out of business! I wish it was fully functioning, but oh well. I plan on ditching the optics and LCDs, and using the mount for some DIY projects. I plan on taking lots of 3D pics before tearing it down, though!
Another relic from the golden age of VR, when these things were the future.
More reviews tomorrow! I meant to write more, but I had to work out my Paypal account being limited. Crazy bastards!
