I can buy the HMZ now, in my country, for NZ$1,199.95.

Or, I can buy this, for $860 or so.

The only thing holding me back is the FOV. I want every scrap of FOV... but I dont know if the extra fov is worth another $340, and a drop in resolution.

I want them for VR. Someone please convince me either way... ;-/

I’m back on the fence thanks to the full payment upfront, PayPal and the very scary terms and conditions page.

This language in the return section sounds concerning:

SMD is asking for a ‘deposit’ equal to the full price – so, this reads as we need to pay them an additional $125 to return a unit. I really want to give these guys the benefit of the doubt, but this sounds sketchy.

The $125 restocking fee is a bit high, but sounds reasonable. I was hoping to be able to use my credit card purchase protection as a secondary ‘insurance’ option, but having paypal in the middle makes that much more complicated.


Any manufacture is going to have some minimum order quantity. If they don’t generate/have enough cash to meet the cost of the MOQ, then it might not matter much if they are making a ‘profit’ on each individual order.


I wish SMD and everyone who preorders the best of luck. Really looking forward to seeing this actually shipping and some first hand user reports.

The HC3100 has a 6-segment color wheel - so, each color is displayed twice on each rotation. There is a picture of the color wheel in this review.

so, I think the effective color refresh rate is closer to 480Hz. And it might be actually higher, because a 48Hz refresh should have noticeable flicker. Imo, most projectors will internally refresh at at least 72Hz even with a 24 or 48Hz input signal.

True, didnt think about that each color is displayed twice

If you are willing to mod the HMZ-T1, I don't see why not getting one now!

Let's look at this analytically.

1. If you keep on dreaming about VR setup, then get one now!
2. 1080p vs 720p. If you use this for gaming, 720p 60hz 3D is the only mode supported, so no advantage for 1080p. For movie, I would go for 1080p panel.
3. FOV - HMZ > ST1080.
4. Comfort - ST1080 > HMZ. With the mod I'm not sure if HMZ is comparable to ST1080 but no problem for me to play for 3 hours straight.
5. Exit pupil - ST1080 > HMZ. You need to have patient to find you best position for HMZ.

Back to first question - can you wait? I know I can't which is why I pay for eBay price and no regret. Totally new experience playing FPS and Skyrim in VR.

pierreye- Once you start playing, does the HMZ stay in place or do you have to adjust it alot? Especially in skyrim where you would be moving your head around alot. Also, how hard would it be to mod it to go into a a different helmet, ski goggles, etc?

With the latest mod, once I got the right position, it seldom will move around. Comfort wise it's fine for long hour gaming, the only con is it will mess up your hair. As for ski mod, need to wait for Palmer feedback as I'm afraid if I go for ski mod, I can't get both eye pieces parallel.

The external headphone mod is more comfortable than build in headphone as it no longer press against my ears.

when talking about the FOV difference between HMZ and ST1080, does that mean the HMZ will have a much bigger simulated screen size?

Not a whole lot bigger...but yes FOV directly corresponds with simulated screen size.

Does anyone else think viewing a 720P image on a 1080P screen might look *worse* than viewing a 720P image on a 720P screen? I know from experience with LCD monitors the image quality looks like crap if its anything other than native resolution.

Also, the HMZ has a decent advantage when in comes to virtual screen size. Although it is "only" 6 degrees more of FOV, that actually makes the virtual screen area over 20% larger. Seems significant to me.

It depends on the scaler. If you have a good scaler, 720p looks quite good on 1080p panel but no 1:1 pixel mapping. I don't think a HMD will include good scaler due to cost and power consumption issue. Also, the lag might increase due to additional processing needed for scaling. Someone had done a testing on projector that 720p had higher latency compare to 1080p on a native 1080p projector.

so has anyone made a pre-order yet?

I haven't. The $125 return fee just for opening the box made me pause.

Good point re scaling. I suspected that would cause it to look blocky, however, it doesn't look too bad on my 1080 monitor when I drop it down to 720P, so maybe its not really going to be a problem...?

Maybe SSAA downsampling from very high resolution to 720p would help, some folks get great results with it.

There is a tool provided by german 3d Center forum wich works with any modern graphics card, well, you need enough FPS performance overhead to keep games playable though.

http://www.forum-3dcenter.org/vbulletin ... p?t=481802

1680x1050 native



5040x3150 downsampled back to 1680x1050



I've seen even better examples without shiftet colors, i'll try to find em if there is interest.

Scaling down is not what I was talking about, that can look good. I'm talking about up-scaling, especially if the hardware uses a cheap algorithm. On the other hand, it could use a better method but introduce lag. Hard to say without seeing it and comparing.

Couldn't you use scaling down to offset the scaling up though? Displaying the 1080p version scaled down to 720p which is then scaled up to 1080p. I agree with your concern when it comes to displaying a 720p image on an LCoS display which is native 1080p if there is bad hardware scaling, but downscaling may help with the overall image quality.

Also, is GPU hardware scaling an option when it comes to 3D? There are some options with GPU scaling which make up-scaling look a bit better for standard output.

Didn't Palmer say these things rocked? I trust him

You can't use GPU scaling as we need to output 720p60hz 3D. 1080p is only at 1080p24hz 3D which is too slow for gaming.

I have no doubt they are awesome - I have pre-ordered a pair.
Thanks for the info on GPU scaling, I wasn't sure on that front.
Do you think in 2D mode 1080p runs at 60Hz (or higher)?

I have no doubt it will run on 1080p60hz @ 2D but you are missing out half of the fun without 3D. 3D is just perfect for dual screen HMD. Not sure on ST1080 but HMZ-T1 does give some sort of 3D illusion even in 2D mode, like 2.5D.

This phenomenon was discovered over 100 years ago. It was called the Synopter.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... aches.html

Yes I'm enjoying this effect, even in all games I feel more in the game. This thing has made my games more fresh lol. I don't play for more than an hour at a time, even with comfort band it is a tad heavy. Maybe version 2.0

Sounds exactly like the same effect achieved by collimated/fresnel displays.

Didn't know there is the term for this effect. I should try to watch The Matrix using HMD and see if I get the same effect.

I theorize this effect would be superior for simulators in some ways (not 3d cockpits however) but if you had a dedicated projector for the scene this would be awesome.
3D is great for giving a real 3D cockpit and I think it gives you a pseudo collimated mode for long distance that works for me.

@PalmerTech

On CES2012 you were able to play on the ST1080 which was connected to the PS3 Gaming Console running Gran Turismo.
As far as i know the PS3 can only output max. 1280x720 resolution right ?
Did you see any quality drop concerning the native resolution of the ST1080 being 1920x1080 pixels ?
Thank you !

When i change the resolution of my ACER Desktop Monitor ( native resolution 1920x1080 ) there is a big Picture-Quality drop when i switch to 1280x720.
Lets hope its not the same quality loss as on the monitor.

Using the stereo movie maker to view a 2D movie has the same effect: some depth, but not quite 3D. Cartoons wok much better than detailed movies for this. It looks less like 3D depth and more like cardboard cutouts at different distances.

Does this work with comics? I'd like to convert comics into 3D.

Well, it's not real 3D, it's just a trick like cyberreality described. I suppose you could try with comics but the effect wouldn't be that good. It works better with moving images but if the source isn't originally 3D it will never look as good.

So SMD posted some answers on their website and it looks like they updated their 3D specs to include the top and bottom format. They also wrote that other formats will be available in future releases. I hope they mean future software releases and not hardware release! Is it possible to convert half SBS videos into top and bottom formats? I have a feeling the conversion process would probably take hours

I think the conversion could easily be done in real time, but the quality would suffer since you would be starting with half the horizontal resolution and stretching it.

Since it has no diopter correction, I'll wait for the next generation.

Cool, top-bottom support is nice to have.

What would top-bottom mean in terms of 1080p 3D gaming?

I am a little confuse at ST1080's rated contrast ratio. This is what their website says "We state two contrast numbers, one for the capability of our microdisplays (1200:1) and one for the HMD system (100:1) which accounts for the LEDs that illuminate our LCoS displays. "

So what exactly is 1200:1 and 100:1? Full on/off contrast ratio or ansi contrast ratio? And how does these numbers compare to HMZ-T1?

Hard to say. I know they were really pushing the AR aspect with the 10% see through ability so that might effect the numbers?

The 10% see through crap is optional right? They will ship some kind of blocking filter with it right?

Yep, they have confimed that the ST1080 will be shipping with a blackout filter. They have been talking a lot about a 50% transparency version though for an affordable consumer HUD

It seems like they should have just designed it so you could swap out different transparency shields instead of offering a different version for each transparency level. Given the choice I would prefer the opaque one, but it would be cool if you had the option to test out different transparencies with a single unit.