[HMD] TRIMERSION or eMagin Z800

[Kosen]

Hej VRgeeks,

I have the opportunity to buy one of these HMD ( TRIMERSION or eMagin Z800).
Could you give me an advice on wich one to buy. What's the one who fit the best for a VR experience.
I was thinking that the Z800 would be the best solution, could you confirm it.

Sincerely

Kosen

[Jan Ciger]

Hello Kosen,

Well, the Trimersion HMD is really crappy one compared even to the (rather crappy and expensive) Z800. If you cannot get a newer and better HMD, like the Sony HMZ T2, the ST1080, or you have the Z800 for a bargain price, go for the Z800. However, it certainly isn't worth the $1800 they are selling it for new! The Sony and the ST one cost half of the eMagin one with better FOV and much better resolution.

Regards,

Jan

[Sébastien 'Cb' Kuntz]

Also if you want to have stereoscopy with the Z800 you will need to have OpenGL quad-buffer stereo.
And I'm not even sure you can use the sensors on Win7 64 bit, last time I looked at it it was not possible, maybe it has been updated.

Balthazar should know that, he's been struggling with that :)
cb

[Balthazar Auxietre]

Hello,

Indeed, If you want to use the z800 correctly you'll probably have to use it with a win7 32bit version because the drivers for the headset haven't been updated since... hum... a long time! 

Maybe you can use the "Glove pie"soft but I don't know how to use it myself. I neither did use the stereoscopic option and I doubt it's easy to configure with a 64 bit version. Perhaps you can find some info on mtbs3d.com forums.

When it works, the z800 is not so crappy, of course the fov and image quality is a lot weaker than The Sony but It is very lightweight in comparison (plus it doesn't have an integrated tracker). That said, I think it will be probably even more complicated with the trimersion with this.

good luck!

Balthazar.

2012/11/27 Sébastien 'Cb' Kuntz <sebasti...@nowan.net>

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Balthazar Auxietre

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[Sly]

You can get 3D for Z800 with nvidia card on win 7,
by plugin the nvidia 3D usb emitter,
or by tricking the driver to believe there is one plugged.

Sly.

2012/11/27 Sébastien 'Cb' Kuntz <sebasti...@nowan.net>

Le 27/11/2012 15:25, Jan Ciger a écrit :

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[Kosen]

Thanks for your answers.

What about the vuzix products such has the Wrap 1200VR.
About the Z800 I can get one for almost 150 euros, is it still a good deal.

Sincerely

[Maxim Lysak]

How do you want to use it? Vuzix have nice up to date SDK, which works fine with modern Windows. FOV/Resolution wise it is not so impressive, but to compare it with Z800, I would go with Vuzix, it have much better head tracker, plus stable drivers and SDK support.

[Jan Ciger]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 6:26 PM, Kosen <remi.c...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks for your answers.

What about the vuzix products such has the Wrap 1200VR.
About the Z800 I can get one for almost 150 euros, is it still a good deal.

Wrap 1200VR has lower native resolution and worse FOV than Z800. Wrap has only  852 x 480 native (everything else is downscaled), Z800 has true 800x600 displays. If you have the $600 for the Wrap, rather add 200 extra and get the Sony HMD instead. The Vuzix gear is not really worth it, IMO. I have the older Vuzix VR920 and it the image is terrible, it is *very* uncomfortable to wear and cheap, fragile, plasticky feeling. The "Wrap" version are the same thing as the "non-Wrap" ones, only adding the "sunglasses" outer shell around.

J.

[Kosen]

What about if I add some headtracker to the Z800, such has the ususal sony HMD hack.
I'll have a nice screen (indeeed not as good as the sony HMD) and a good head tracking.

[Jan Ciger]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 6:36 PM, Maxim Lysak <maxim...@gmail.com> wrote:

How do you want to use it? Vuzix have nice up to date SDK, which works fine with modern Windows. FOV/Resolution wise it is not so impressive, but to compare it with Z800, I would go with Vuzix, it have much better head tracker, plus stable drivers and SDK support.

What "drivers" do you need for the Vuzix kit? The stereo sync and tracker have been both reverse engineered long ago, there are open source drivers for it. The tracker is also rather poor - it is certainly worse than the Z800 one. I don't think that the new Wrap 1200 has a significantly different tracker than the older VR9200 one.

The tracker in Z800 has been reverse engineered long time ago as well and there is even a VRPN server available for it (no need for the vendor driver). For stereo you need a normal, frame-sequential signal with sync over the DDC pin - Nvidia's 3D Vision or a Quadro will do that just fine.

If you want to play games on these, you would be screwed either way, because Vuzix relies on shipping their own patched DLLs to install over the DLLs of the game in order to enable tracking and stereo. Unfortunately, these are rarely (if ever) updated and are intended for ancient versions of the games. If you install that, the game will most likely start crashing or stops working completely. The Z800 doesn't really have game patches for it, as it is targeted on a different market.

So on the software front both HMDs are pretty comparable. However, I do prefer an HMD that can be actually comfortably worn and that has decent resolution/FOV - the Vuzix one isn't really a good choice there.

Jan

[Jan Ciger]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 6:49 PM, Kosen <remi.c...@gmail.com> wrote:

What about if I add some headtracker to the Z800, such has the ususal sony HMD hack.
I'll have a nice screen (indeeed not as good as the sony HMD) and a good head tracking.

You certainly can do that, but the Z800 has an OK tracker built in. It does tend to drift a bit over time, though. That is mostly an issue of poorly programmed drivers :(

Jan

[cybereality]

The Vuzix 6TC tracker that comes with the 1200VR is a whole lot better than the older one built into the VR920. It has less jitter, and is overall more accurate. It also has a magnetometer that helps reduce drift. Overall not a bad product, and the SDK is easy to work with and works on Win 7 64-bit.

However, the picture quality on the Wrap 1200 is pretty poor. Aside from the low resolution, the image is blurry, and colors are not great. It does not even hold a candle to the Sony or ST1080.

Also, it uses side-by-side 3D so it will work with most any 3rd party software. You do not have to use the Vuzix drivers for gaming. The only problem is that this cuts effective resolution in half, so the picture quality looks even worse.

I would not recommend the Vuzix headsets unless you really needed an all-in-one kit or really couldn't afford something better.

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