New Virtual Reality Headset

Well I always swore by the Z800 headset back when I was thinking of writing software, tools and games for the Virtual Reality market.

However a new bad boy has just come on the scene. The VR920 from eDimensional.


Now I have always liked ED because they are reasonably priced for some pretty top end geeky gadgets. I have had the shutter glasses for years now, and although I have had to wear them upside down because I use a projector (Image coming from behind me rather than in front of me). It still made games absolutely awesome. Plus with me writing games for the Wiimote for the PC, it made it possible to have a 3D wall with wiimote inputs making for some pretty realistic emmersive environments on my PC. There were limitations however that you could only see it when looking forward. Well the Z800 for £500 fixed that, and now so does this little gadget for around £200.

It contains pretty much the same stuff as the Z800 (Head tracking, dual visual displays allowing 1024x768 displays and supporting NVidia 3D Stereo drivers) plus earphones.

I do believe on top of this however, this one has also got a microphone to allow talking out as well.

I havent used it yet myself but I do fear that it suffers from one limitation of the Z800, it is wired. I see in the contents that it describes a 6 foot USB connection for it.

Now I totally understand why you need this, mainly because the power to run the screens, headtracking, microphone, and the sound would be too much for a battery pack, and would make the head gear heavy. But I do fear that you can turn round maybe 3 times before needing to turn back again (not helpful for the obsessive compulsives amoung us).

But yeah you would eventually gorrot yoruself if you kept turning one way and didnt untwist yorself at some point.


However I am eagerly awaiting a few reviews of this hardware, because like I say the shutter glasses were awesome, and with this being half price of anything else on the market, it could be the next step that pushes the PC far beyond the reach of a console capability wise, and brings us all that one step closer to full emmersion Virtual Reality.


I will keep you posted on any more news of this here.


Cheers,


Lindsay.