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It's straightforward to do this for 3D games, because the system has real depth information. Just use shutter glasses and render alternate frames with the viewpoint shifted by one eye separation distance. That's easy, and looks good if the system can render upwards of 70 fps.

Nvidia already offers stereo 3d drivers which work great with my eMagin 3d visor. As you say the games already have Z depth information to render a realistic environment, which the software just renders from a slightly offset perspective. I believe it is 30Hz from each perspective for a combined 60Hz. Though, the HUD and crosshairs could use a little work in some games, since the game creators always give them depth. But if it is distracting then they can usually be disabled if you can't get them to line up properly with the 3d background.

The best stereo 3d effects are in games which have a lot of close at hand objects. Looking down the barrel of the gun in Call of Duty for instance is pretty darn cool. Or climbing up a ladder where the ladder looks like it has real depth. I'd say virtual objects out to about a virtual 10 feet or so, just like in the real world, are really compelling in 3d.

Why LCD, why not OLED? OLED has higher density and lower power requirements.

SVGA+, 852x600 16.7million colors, 12.78mm x 9mm (0.61 inch diagonal)

I have eMagin's Z800 3dVisor (It is from the company that came out with the borglike EyeBud prototype at CES)

The Z800 is the real deal for $900, with dual 800x600 OLED displays which are much better higher quality than LCDs at that small size. If you have followed HMDs, it is a big leap in quality for under $1000. Stereoscopic 3d with headtracking in First Person shooters and flight sims is really cool. I haven't tried any MMORPGs with it. You can find out more about at their website.

Once we get past the blogdreck, the vendor site and the product site are more informative. The original article should have been titled "3DVisor head-mounted display now comes in low end model for Apple iPod." This is really a virtual reality display, originally with gyros for head movement sensing, that's been dumbed down for TV viewing.

We finally have a decent stereoscopic 3d Head mounted display under a thousand dollars and nobody takes note?

The emagin z800 is 20 years of geek dreams finally made a reality and not even a nod from Popular Science?

But color, light and sound are pretty well covered with virtual reality HMDs already, considering you're fully immersed.

I did a lot of research before buying one a few months back. Here's the current "best one" (according to various metrics and studies) based on quality/price among stereoscopy fanatics:

http://www.emagin.com/html/consumer_products_produ ct.htm

Now all we need is smellovision!

I just got an OLED based VR visor from eMagin for $899, it has 800x600 resolution, headtracking, earbuds, and microphone built in. It was rumored for a while that it would be paired with the revolution for a complete VR experience, but that rumor has unfortunately since been dispelled. But I could definately see how the nintendo controllers could be paired with it to good effect.

At $900, the z800 is a big leap for VR in terms of quality. The closest LCD version sells for several hundred dollars more (many VR helmets costs many thousands of dollars) and is of lesser qaulity. It works very well with off the shelf first person shooters like HL2, Call of Duty, Doom and such and really adds a lot of depth to objects. It really helps, i mean both the wowness factor and being able to navigate and interact with close at hand objects.

At this point ATI doesn't support stereoscopic output, so you have to go with an nvidia card with their stereo 3d drivers.

Here is someone's (not mine) blog on what they have been doing with their eMagin 3d visor.

Maybe not ready for everyone, but certainly VR type equipment is starting to come back off the drawing board with many years of refinement and new technology being used to make the price and experience much better.

I've been saying since high school (17 years) that we need this technology.

Maybe, but I think technology might just skip right past the e-paper stage, and go straight to the 3DVisor

It's already something I'd like to buy, and the features are just going to continue to be expanded. Forget printing out a paper and handing it to your coworker. With 3D capability and a head tracking device, you can just simulate paper right in your visor.

When you say that they don't look like OLED, what do you mean?

Do you mean that it doesn't look as good as this SVGA OLED http://www.emagin.com/images/svgamck.jpg (or even their UXGA one)?

Regular LED drivers are even usually used for OLED (though you loose all of the advantages of the 0-energy-unless-image-changing aspect of passive OLED).

"...the equivalent of a 105-inch movie screen viewed at 12 feet." http://www.emagin.com/3dvisor/

I got mail over the weekend announcing the imminent shipping of the eMagin Z800 3D Visor, which looks pretty nice but is expensive. 800x600 OLED display (in stereo!), a 40 degree field of view ("equivalent of a 105 inch screen at 12 feet"), and an integrated headtracker. You can literally be inside the game, turn your head left and right, up and down, and see what's there, with standard games like UT, HL2 and Doom3, and an NVIDIA graphics card.

It sounds pretty cool, but here's the bad news: $899. Ouch. They offered me $50 off because I pre-registered for information but that's way too steep for me.

http://www.emagin.com/3dvisor/html/LearnMore.htm

800x600
Motion Tracking
Under $1000

No I don't work for them.

I recently finished William Gibson's Bridge Series and have been thinking, "Why can't I have a head mounted display like those eyephones for my laptop instead of a screen?"

The answer is of course, money, resolution and power. I did, however, find one HMD that looks like it has some potential. http://www.emagin.com/3dvisor/html/LearnMore.htm 800x600 resolution,relatively low power consumption (powered by the USB port), and relatively cheap (900 bucks, out of my range, but it's better than a lot of HMDs out there).

In some ways HMD's make more sense than standard LCD screens. OLED displays for both eyes would (I think) take less power than a full 12-17 inch LCD screen, plus give you better immersion with whatever you're doing (VR desktops anyone?). If they can get the resolution on these up to 1024x768, 24 bit color, and about 500 bucks, I won't be suprised if I start seeing them around in lieu of LCDs.

The thing that is holding LCD back from filling the 3d stereoscopic role is the refresh rate. OLED screens inherently have a much higher refresh rate and manufacturers are just starting to come out with products.

This Company is coming out with a 3d stereoscopic visor (HMD) for just the type of application that the poster mentions.

The OLEDs will certainly be higher end to start like every other new technology, including LCD. But I think we should see OLEDs being the best of both worlds with fast refresh rates and very high resolution.

The guys at eMagin are about to release this headgear... http://www.emagin.com/3dvisor/ They should be out in a month or so. I'm psyched.

i thought the most interesting thing is that 800x600 oled hmd displays are coming (finally) vs. the currently on market 640x480. of course, how long it takes for the emagin unit to make it into consumer-available (and affordable) technology remains to be seen.

emagin is alrady making micro oled displays for gaming and other applications.

here

No I'm not karma whoring, already at max.

For those of you with spare cash.

Emagin has a developer kit available to make your own wearable displays.

For those of you with spare cash.

Emagin has a developer kit available to make your own wearable displays.

Though admittedly they will not shine a laser in your eye :)

Here the citation:

Full-color displays also require expensive red/green/blue filters made of dichromated gelatin--fish glue.

from A Bright Future for Displays - April 2001

check it check it yo

motorola is already using them
(and i swear that Sanyo or someone will be releasing full-color phones shortly in Japan with 'em.)

eMagin has beautiful dk's available. i want one!

some talk from a year ago.

do you like to dream?

umm... soOOoo cool

4 or 5 years ago a company called Virtual Vision had sunglass based consumer displays. They nearly went under when they found there was no market for them.

They are still around and they do mostly vertical market stuff now and they've become a subsidiary of eMagin which makes super small LCD displys (like 1280x1024 in less than 1 inch)

Since the sunglass thing they also make Borg like half sunglass attachements. The uses I've heard of are for example, a surgeon can wear one and have all your vital signs in his view (or just at a glance to the side of his forward view) at all times so instead of having to look up at all those machines hanging over the operating table he can concentrate on the surgery.

Another I've heard of is supposedly it takes a truckload of manuals to cover maintainence on commerical airliners. Well, they made a belt worn wireless networked computer connected to one of their displays with voice input so instead of having to bring the truck over and search through the paper manuals while trying to fix something the mechanic could just call it up on the display he's wearing and glance at it while he works on the problem area.

PS: My Father works for that company.

I had the opportunity to view the MicroVision demo unit at the US Display Consortium's investor's event in Manhattan a few months ago. The monochrome unit wasn't bad, but as pointed out, there are better and cheaper microdisplays out there from companies like eMagin's Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED)-based technology and the displays from Zight (formerly Colorado Microdisplay) and Three-Five Systems which are based on Liquid-Crystal on Silicon (LCoS)technology. The only advantage I see (pun intended) is that you can see through the MicroVision device. It is up to the end user whether that functionality (which will undoubtably be matched in the near future by the other technologies) is worth the considerable expense.

I also tried it out myself at the US Display Consortium's Annual inverstor conference in NYC last week. Impressiuve, but they still have to get the steering mirrors onto one chip. Until they do, the accompanying optics will continue to be cumbersome and expensive. It was an interesting demo, though. I believe that hi-res SVGA microdisplays in near-eye mounts are significantly superior, and much more useful in field appllications. I was able to compare the eMagin OLED microdisplay to the MicroVision device, and the OLED creates a fantastic image that is much better and therefore mopre useful. The Inviso microdisplay is based on Liquid-Crystal-on-silicon (LCOS) technology, and also provides a very good image for near-eye apps. smartalix.com

I also tried it out myself at the US Display Consortium's Annual inverstor conference in NYC last week. Impressiuve, but they still have to get the steering mirrors onto one chip. Until they do, the accompanying optics will continue to be cumbersome and expensive. It was an interesting demo, though. I believe that hi-res SVGA microdisplays in near-eye mounts are significantly superior, and much more useful in field appllications. I was able to compare the eMagin OLED microdisplay to the MicroVision device, and the OLED creates a fantastic image that is much better and therefore mopre useful. The Inviso microdisplay is based on Liquid-Crystal-on-silicon (LCOS) technology, and also provides a very good image for near-eye apps. smartalix.com

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