I was going to post it!

Finally a professional manufacturer of HMDs is stepping in the consumer market. Call me excited!

Awesome.
I have no words.

ALso, I could see this being like when sony first got into console market with ps1. ALthough I wonder if a built in android thing will be able to compete with the next gen consoles? Not that I care, but some people will use any excuse to dislike such things witout ever trying them.

I wonder how much latency the tracking going through the android device will add for PC apps.

Call me excited! Though I can't find hard specs yet. I would imagine that to hit consumer expectant pricepoints the FOV will be quite a bit smaller than their Zsight units. That being said, these guys know their optics!

It was REALLY smart of them to include hand tracking and the design looks really robust (and probably pretty comfortable). A little worried about the whole "app" based infrastructure as it relates to graphic horsepower and software support but I'm hoping there's a solid avenue for PC support in there.

VERY interesting

*EDIT* Here's a fairly informative diagram showing the raw systems. More excited now! (if the FOV is decent!)

Wow! Things are really heating up here. This product sounds amazing. Hopefully it will have all the features we want (good FOV, HD res, low latency, etc.).

Only $23,980 US. It has to be about 1/20th of its current price to be competitive on the market. Certainly won't be going mainstream.

Nice FOV, even though they are very bulky.

Impressive, but sadly just another elitist's toy...

That is the Z-Sight, it has nothing to do with the SmartGoggles.

It definitely looks nice! They are not clear on how they plan to release this, though. Reading through the literature, it appears that they are hoping other companies will license the technology from them, which may mean they have no plans on releasing an actual product. I will try to get a look at their booth when I go to CES.

I want to be excited about these, but I doubt they will be close to being affordable for most.
At least they seem to be going the right direction for a full immersion experience, and the hand tracking is a great idea. If they can convince some developers to support this on consoles, I think that it could be a winner.
The problem at the moment is that the majority of game sales are on consoles, not PC. Since all the HMDs are only really supported (with head tracking, etc) on the PC, not consoles, they miss the majority of the market segment.
Lets hope the xbox720 or whatever it may be called supports this, like the nintendo ON hoax that was being played with before the wii was released:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61G07Z8a ... re=related

Android, I guess the price will be about the same as the sony hmz if it came out now, and it has the console built in. At least that is my interpretation of the small amount of information provided. If the hmz is sucsesful, I would guess this could be released for half the price in two years. 150% ipad price, 300% performance. It might sell.

I would easily pay 1500-2000 dollar for a product with 120> fov and good head tracking... Problem is that i do not think there are many more that could think of paying that kind of money, there for the demand will be lower than the HMZ and they have to higher the price even further...

Also the problem with high FOV is that todays games are not designed for it... The hud etc are often in the lower corners of the screen, these will not be easy to read with a high FOV

It's difficult to tell what this actually is with the very limited information provided, but if it is similar to the other products they have, I assume a similar price range. So maybe $10-20k. Even though this could potentially be produced for the same price as the HMZ, i really don't think they would sell it for that. There's not enough VR nerds in the world to make it viable.
I don't think there will really be a powerful console built in. While it mentions being android powered, I would think this is likely to be for interpretation of the sensors and interface for setup. May be able to do some basic augmented reality, but not have full VR worlds.

I'm pretty sure you could do VR with Android that would be better than most of the VR we have had to put up with so far.
Even basic smartphones has more graphical power than many dedicated graphics workstations in the past.

Lets face it tho, there is pretty much no information about this HMD, its just vapourware currently. We'll have to wait until they actually release any specs before we can critique it ;-(

Sorry guys, its more pie in the sky http://smartgoggles.net/feedback-featur ... and-prices

They are building a developer/military device $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ and licensing the tech. So no different to another company coming out with the concept from scratch for a consumer product.

Wow, talk about teasing vaporware! Licensing the tech is fine but don't tout the thing as a certainty and then back-paddle to say "Oh sorry guys! We meant to say that this is just conceptual and we're going to license out our highly speculative tech to whoever bites first.".

PalmerTech should do this too. "Hey World! Here's my flashy website for the PR4 and its going to blow the doors off of 3D gaming entertainment! Invest now!". The big difference is that Palmer actually has something practical to show off. Actually Palmer, you really should do that!

So, the HMZ-T1 and the ST1080 are the only real options, currently. Depending on what is seen and heard at CES in one week, the HMZ may or not become the only option. Personally, I feel confident in the ST1080 for some reason. But if SMD doesn't make a good showing at CES and present a convincing, near-term (Q1/Q2 2012) release date, there's no reason not to buy an HMZ-T1. I'm glad I have mine.

I haven't discarded the cinemizer oled yet, should appear int the next 6 months as well.

I don't think it's HD. Why wouldn't they officially confirm it, if it is? I asked a Zeiss representative on the official Facebook page, and he quoted the FOV, dodging my question about the resolution.

If it's not HD they will upset a lot of people waiting for it, even the prototype was 720p.

The FB guy... posting muppet videos and lot of offtopic there, not very serious. He propably didn't knew what you meant asking for pixel count

There was a video floating around with some racing dude using the Cinemizer. I think it said it was 600P or some strange resolution. Definitely he mentioned it was not HD.

Also, as excited as I want to be, these SmartGoggles are most likely vapor.

You mean this one? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fHiX4QU ... re=related

If you go to page 2 of the comments the tester states that it has 720p.

Specs: http://smartgoggles.net/products/natalia/

64 degree FOV!

Ok, slightly more excited by the working mockup:



Specs don't sound too shabby either:

• SmartGoggles inside. Includes the full power of the SmartGoggles architecture.
  
• On-board 1.2 GHz dual-core processor with graphics and 3D co-processor running Android 4.0 allows execution of on-board applications without requiring connection to a PC or a gaming console.
  
• First-person hand tracking provides real-time tracking and location information of the user’s hands. Hand position can be used to drive user interface, identify gestures and interact with the game.
  High-end virtual reality goggles including:
  
• True 3D display
  
• 360 degree use
  
• Embedded head tracker for head angular position and linear acceleration
  
• Dual SXGA (1280×1024) OLED displays. Also supporting 720p
  
• 64 degree field of view for excellent immersion
  
• Embedded stereo audio and microphone
  
• Battery operated
  
• On-board WiFi and Bluetooth services.
  
• LibSensics API providing application developers full access to the goggle capabilities.

64 degree FOV isn't too bad. Something most of us could live with. 720p support is acceptable too! I actually really dig the design, it reminds me of the VFX1 that I wanted so bad back in the day (Pretty robust looking too. Not the kind of thing you'd easily break) What I'm not so keen on is the emphasis on the onboard graphic processing and Android app-sphere/compliance. I understand why they want to market it that way but I'd like more clarity on whether or not I can utilize the full horsepower of my PC for PC based gaming and applications.

If they can bring all of this in at under the $2000 mark, I'd be very interested. Looks far less vaporware to me now though!

I still don't understand why there are so many cameraholes on the front. To present a panoramic image for AR?

Being a reference only it could still be outsourced to a manufacturer that decides 30 degree FOV is good enough and half the other features missing. And it would be incredibly sad after all these years if we had to wait for Android or (god forbid) Apple be the vehicle for the VR software and apps to take off for a decent HMD..

I guessed some of those are camera sensors for relative head tracking and and to track the hand gestures.

Hmm... looking a lot less like vapor now...

I don't understand at all that they consider Android or mobile phone tech in general, to me its looking more like a stationary scaled device and not something you could pull out your pocket easy. They should have implemenented wireless HMDI instead to ensure free movement and not this 1.2ghz Android stuff with dated gameplay and ressources, no game developer touching it right now for serious game programming.

On top of that, the Android market is a such short life sector that at the day the device would be available all the people would be concentrated already at the successor OS and tech. The really need to make the CPU & stuff swappable then.

It seems that they have a bad marketing/decision making department there at sensics, not really connected with what the people ( gamers ) want or even with what makes sense.. a dilemma.

So i don't think that they will have much success in licensing this stuff to any mass producing company. I bet that we never see this device for a affordable price.

I believe they are aiming for those who wish an integrated solution. For example, if the other underlying tech was there already, i'd buy a set of these (say, 16) and build a laser tag app running on the integrated processor etc. That way, people could run around your AR augmented laser tag arena, shooting rockets and other virtual weapons at each other.

Pretty sure thats the type of thing they are wanting to enable, but for now they will probably sell for other purposes. One (for example) could be archaeological tourism, you could wear them and walk around and see virtual buildings as they used to be, overlaid over the actual ruins.

However (and this is for another thread I keep meaning to make) the underlying tech to allow this still doesn't exist IMHO. I am talking about a wide area, absolute positioning tracking system. Something like magnetic tracking, but using wireless would be perfect. That way, you could tell where each headset was with pinpoint accuracy, enabling a wide variety of games and other applications.

Whoever invents a tracking system like this will be very rich IMHO, as it will enable much better VR as well as AR.

It seems that it's just a matter of a few years that VR and AR break through and totally take off.

Look at the upcoming display tech and UHD stuff, not really needed for cinema stuff because you reach the point where it doesn't matter at what resolution you look beeing able to use only 45° FOV. It will be the high FOV HMD area with headtrackng where it really shines. Emotions making me cry thinking in the years to come with VR and the possibilities of online gaming competion or just e-sports beeing totally immersed.

will they ever make one for consumers ?

Here is a hands on by TheVerge (A blog I really suggest adding to your favorites, BTW. They split off from Engadget when AOL bought Engadget out and subjected them to "The AOL Way" of "journalism")

http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/9/269577 ... s-on-video

Looks good, shame he didn't mention the FOV, or show any shots through the googgles tho.

Are those optics segmented? Its hard to tell because they are in conventional lens shapes unlike Sensics other goggles.

Engadget hands on:

http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/10/sens ... s-on-video

When will we see the ST1080?

I am impressed so far. If only PC and DX game developers had the foresight to allow full degrees of motion in their control schemes this helmet would be the killer rig but it must rely on Android at the moment with zero support base to take advantage of its hardware capabilities. In saying that I'm sure its tracking features will very quickly be ported to a wireless linked PC interface so you could still have head tracking/movement and even the basic head tilt in many pc games. This thing has massive potential.

Now if only some company takes on the idea of producing these and does a good job of it. Until then its still vapourware.

here comes the time when we have 'huge' helmets and i was complaining abt HMZ......

Its big, but as the guy testing it said it is well balanced so you hardly notice the weight. The HMZ is said to be front heavy which is an issue if not modified.