Sony has demonstrated the prototype of their HMZ-T1 personal 3D viewer at the beginning of this year and later on has announced that the product will soon be available on the larger markets due to the huge consumer interest in the product (no availability is still announced for quite a lot of countries though). This is about to happen and the company has started to take pre-orders for the device and the expected release date of the product is October 26th (in USA) and that is in less than three weeks. Currently the price of the device is set to $799.99 USD and that is making it the most affordable 720p Head Mounted Display on the market and probably the best one specifications wise for consumers. So no wonder that a lot of people are interested in the product and are eagerly awaiting for the HMZ-T1 personal 3D viewer to become available. The fact that the device supports displaying not only 2D images, but stereoscopic 3D as well and the interface being used is the industry-wide HDMI 1.4a standard further increases the user interest…
What most of you probably don’t know or remember is the fact that HMD devices are not something new for Sony, the company actually had a similar product line available commercially back from 1996 (the PLM-50 model – to see the original press release auto-translated from Japanese to English). The device was called Sony Glasstron and was available in multiple models with slightly different specs, but the production and distribution of these products was halted in the year 2000, either due to lower than expected volume of sales or reevaluation of company priorities. Nevertheless during its existence the Sony Glasstron line of head-mounted displays was considered to be one of the best such products on the market by many. There were actually quite a lot of other companies besides Sony that were trying to get into the market for HMD devices in the end of 20th century and the beginning of the 21st and while there was a significant user interest in such products, the high prices and technological limitations were the most likely reason they’ve remained a niche product used only by some enthusiasts and organizations with specific needs and requirements. Some of the more recent interesting products of this type that are still available on the market (and supporting stereo 3D) are Vuzix’s VR920 and 1200 VR and eMagin’s Z800 HMD. It seems however that now Sony considers it is finally the right time for 3D-capable head-mounted displays to finally take their rightful place in our lives and not just be part of sci-fi movies anymore.
But let me get back to the Sony HMZ-T1 personal 3D viewer. Originally it seems that Sony considers this device to be mostly used as an alternative of a 3D HDTV for playing games on the company’s 3D-capable PlayStation 3 console and/or for watching Blu-ray 3D movies with it and a dedicated Blu-ray 3D-capable video player. But as 3D content expands there will be much more possible uses for this device for watching not only stereoscopic 3D content, but for 2D as well and one of these is PC gaming of course, including in stereo 3D as well. Thanks to the use of an industry wide standard such as HDMI 1.4a you should be able to easily connect the device to your computer and use it for 2D or 3D gaming as both AMD and Nvidia do offer stereoscopic 3D support for gaming in stereo 3D with HDMI 1.4a device. I have no information yet if AMD will support the device for sure in stereo 3D mode, but they should, and as far as Nvidia goes, it should get supported in the 3DTV Play software soon after the device becomes available on the market. So good news for PC gamers into stereo 3D gaming, and apart form games you should also be able to watch 3D videos and browse through 3D photos, maybe even watch TV in 3D and so on.
I don’t know about you, but I’ll be getting one Sony HMZ-T1 personal 3D viewer as soon as it becomes available (will probably have to import it from somewhere else), not only in order to do a review of the device, but also because I do plan to use it. What about you?
Head mounted displays are not a new concept, and although their boom was probably back at the end of the last century and the beginning of this one, they never became mainstream and kind of disappeared lately from the market. But users’ interest hasn’t disappeared in them at all and during CES 2011 last month Sony has rekindled this interest by showing a new prototype of a Head Mounted Display that may or may not become available at some point as a commercial product. With Sony’s device however only the specs were upgraded from previously available similar products, but apparently there are also people working on new concepts that are very promising and that try to implement completely new ideas that can help overcome some of the limitations of the HMDs. The video above shows a few concepts for a future possible HMD device, 3D capable as well, developed by Deisler De Leon Vargas that shows a lot of promise, and he has even patented some of his ideas. The problem however is that he does not yet have the resources to build a prototype of the device himself, but maybe his idea will be picked up and further developed. Take a look at the video above to see what he is proposing as a new generation of an HDM device…
eMagin Z800 3DVisior is over 4 years old, but still remains as one of the most technologically advanced consumer HMD (Head Mounted Display) with Stereoscopic 3D support, although if you want to use the device in S3D mode with up to date hardware you’ll be disappointed. As with most similar products released prior 2006 this one also relied too much on Nvidia’s Stereoscopic 3D Drivers the support for which was dropped quite some time ago. So if you want to use the Z800 with a GeForce 8xx0 series or newer Nvidia video card or with ATI-based hardware you’ll have to rely on other software as Nvidia Stereo Drivers has support only for GeForce 7xx0 or older GPUs. Otherwise you’ll only be able to use the HMD as a secondary display with resolution of 800×600 pixels, that is providing you with a very good image quality as it is actually using OLED-based displays. Currently eMagin Z800 3DVisior is being officially sold for $1500 (it was cheaper before), but you can also find some pretty good deals from time to time on eBay that are worth taking advantage of if you are interested in the device.
One recent ray of hope was the Iz3D drivers and the use of their Shutter Mode as I’ve already described here with the help of i-O Display i-glasses PC/SVGA 3D HMD (the procedure is the same for Z800). There is however one requirement in order for your eMagin Z800 3DVisior to be able to work with Iz3D’s Drivers and there is one drawback that is still making the Stereoscopic 3D mode that you can achieve with it not very usable. The requirement is to have firmware version at least 6.38 available in your Z800 HMD and this means that if you were one of the early adopters you are out of luck, or actually not completely out of luck. eMagin is selling firmware upgrade kits which require you to replace the old EPROM chip with the firmware with a new one that you’ll receive, thus making your product compatible. The latest firmware available as an upgrade kit is version 6.40, but anything from 6.38 or above should be Ok. But now we reach to the issue you are going to face when using the Z800 with Iz3D and that is the loose of the synchronization for the left and right eye (Z800 uses frame sequential mode) and thus dropping out of S3D mode. This happens quite often because of the application framerate drops below the refresh rate set to be used on the HMD (minimum 60Hz) and that does happen even on top end video cards with not very heavy 3D applications. It seems that Iz3D is working on improving this and providing an actually usable 3D mode for the owners of eMagin Z800, but so far (I’ve just tested the 1.10 final driver) it is still not happening and the Shutter mode is still in a beta stage. We all hope that in the next version, most likely 2.0 this issue will be fixed and we’ll be able to use the Z800 in stereoscopic 3D mode after quite a long time not being able to take advantage of its S3D features.
