By Andres Hernandez

Introduction

Head-mounted displays (HMDs) have long been the stuff of science fiction flicks and childhood dreams.  I know I sure wanted one after seeing The Lawnmower Man!

In many ways, HMDs were at the core of the virtual reality movement of the late 80's and early 90's.  The idea is that the headset would contain two miniaturized screens (typically LCD displays), one for each eye.  By displaying slightly different images on each screen, the user would be presented with a stereoscopic view of a virtual world.  A head-tracker could also be used to allow the wearer to freely rotate their head around while having their view in the virtual world change accordingly.  HMDs were usually cost prohibitive, and only affordable to academia or government entities.  Over time, consumer models were gradually released that were more reasonably priced and consumer friendly.  Today we will be looking at one of these consumer-level HMDs - the latest effort from the Vuzix corporation.  Will the Vuzix Wrap 1200VR lives up to the hype, or is just another pretender?

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Thanks cybereality for this well thought out and comprehensive review. Extremely good insight here!

Hmmmm, my birthday is still 6 months away. Can I wait that long???

Nice review.

In regards to the issue you had with switching to and from 3D manually, on the Wrap 920 double clicking the bottom left Back/Cancel button switches between 2D and your last 3D mode; I would assume it's the same on the 1200.

On the 920 I also have issues with the down button. If you click it twice quickly it cancels out of the menu.

Very interesting indeed. I still don't like the sunglasses-design, but that's superficial...

How would the 1200VR compare with the ST1080?

Obviously the ST1080 has higher resolution, but apart from that? Which would be a better choice, as they're in a related price-class.

There is no competition. The ST1080 is MUCH better than the Vuzix in every way. The only thing that is interesting about the 1200VR is the integrated head-tracker. But the display and optics are a generation behind the ST1080. The Vuzix should only be worth about $300 these days. If cost is a concern, I would suggest the Vuzix Wrap 920 since it can be found used for $100 these days and is a good value at that price. But if you are thinking of paying $600, I would strongly consider paying a little extra for the ST1080.

I haven't tried the ST1080 yet, but I have the HMZ-T1 and its is way better than this Vuzix headset (at least in terms of display quality). What Vuzix offers is a decent quality headtracker, light-weight / comfortable design, and USB powered for potential mobile applications. But the display and optics themselves aren't great so the other points barely matter.

Also, Vuzix recently sold their military division for over $8 million ( http://www.marketwatch.com/story/vuzix- ... 2012-06-18 ). A bunch of that is going to repay dept, but hopefully they will still have enough left to come out with some better consumer products. Unfortunately they seem set on building smaller sun-glass style HMDs (with small FOV) and not the big bulky high-FOV headsets we need for VR. But it seems like AR is getting more popular recently, so maybe they will have some commercial success with sun-glass style translucent AR glasses.

Dear Andres Hernandez or anyone else. Did you actually get the seperate head tracking to work in Unreal Tournament 2004 with the Wrap 1200 or just the VR920? I recently got a Wrap with the 6tc and cant get it to work. Vuzix claims it works on their chart but a vuzix software engineer on the vr920 forum said it's not workin for him either currently with VR Manager 4. Im trying to find anyone that says it works on with their wrap. Thanks.

Yes, I got it to work. But it did not work with the Steam version of the game. I had one on disc (I think it was the Unreal 2004 Game of the Year Edition) and that worked.

Thanks for the reply Cybereality. So you got the separate head tracking to work with the WRAP 6TC making the head go one way while the mouse can make the gun go the other? I can get the simple mouse emulation to work with the WRAP in UT2004. But it doesn't roll, or use the UT mutator that is spose to allow "separate" tracking. I have tried several versions of UT2004 and Different computers. but thanks for the tip. If you say u got it working then it gives me hope to getting it fixed. Any idea of which VR manager you used? I think I read you sold ur wrap already. I really wanna get this working with my wiimotion plus/nunchuck so i can spin around my living room pretending to play dactyl nightmare that I never got to play.... got the motion plus part working. Just need this last piece. You seem like you have been around the VR world. Do you know of any other games that support "separate head and gun tracking in the game with the WRAP"? UT2004 is the only one I could find. Arma 1 "armed assault" does have seperate tracking but it doesn't work right if you want to stand up and spin in circles around the room with the wiimote. cuz when u turn ur head to the right then bring ur gun to shoot somthing at ur right that u see the gun moves ur view right another 90%. It uses track Ir and thats meant to be played sitting down watching a stationary monitor. I wonder if the UT mutator works this way. I hope not cuz I dont want to have to figure out how to mod it. I just dont want the gun movement to move the head. or the head movement to move gun. If that makes sense. Peace. Thanks again

Yes, I got the mutator working, so roll and independent head/gun-tracking. This is the only FPS game I know that works with the Vuzix this well.