iWear VR920

Players have been spoiled by the handheld portable market that allows unprecedented freedom of movement when playing games. Wouldn’t it be nice if a PC gamer could have that freedom when it came to looking at the monitors of his or her desktop machine …

Wait a minute! They can – and it all has to do with the iWear VR920 video eyewear from Vuzix and Icuiti.

Previous attempts at creating eyewear that brought the freedom of looking at a monitor to the user’s head have been all right, but the VR920 is innovative in that it not only has a pair of monitors that sit comfortably in front of your eyes, but it also gives you freedom of movement and allows the game to look around the environments. Yep, you heard that right, the camera follows the direction of the headset. Look to your right and the camera will pan to the right. Depending on how you configure the yaw, pitch and roll, you can also look up and down.

Want a sense of vertigo? Launch Microsoft’s Flight Sim X and wear the glasses. Over-calibrate them and even World of Warcraft becomes a bit of a nightmare, but once you get the calibration set correctly, the panning is smooth as silk.

Before getting into the specifics and in-game use, let’s look at some of the glasses specifics, as posted on the glasses Web site (http://www.vuzix.com/iwear/products_vr920.html):

Technical Specifications

• Twin high-resolution 640x480 (920,000 pixels) LCD displays

• Equivalent to a 62” screen viewed at 9 feet

• 24-bit true color (16 million colors)

• Visor weighs 3.2 ounces

• 60 Hz progressive scan display update rates

• Fully iWear® 3D compliant and supports NVIDIA stereo drivers

• Built-in noise-canceling microphone for internet VOIP communications

• Built-in 3 degree of freedom head-tracker

• USB connectivity for power, tracking and full duplex audio

• Analog VGA monitor input

• Support for up to 1024x768 VGA video formats

Advanced Optics: 

• 32-degree field of view

• 3/4" eye relief and 5/16" eye box

• 2-3/8" intraocular distance (IOD)

• Color corrected 10th order aspherical lens with diffractive surface

Features:

• 6-foot slim single-cable design with USB and VGA connectors

• Large field-of-view optics to allow a fully immersive experience

• iWear® 3D enabled for automatic 2D/3D control; no buttons required

• Built-in microphone allows users to communicate from anywhere in the world as if they are standing next to each other

• Integrated 3 DOF head-tracker lets users look around inside of virtual worlds as if they are actually there

A big part of this, as stated, is the set up and that includes getting your system to actually recognize the glasses. The glasses have a video connection and a USB connection – the latter handles the sound. Once you install the accompanying software and then plug the glasses into the system, you have to go into the graphical settings (depending on whether you have an nVidia or Radeon graphics card) and clone the main monitor to a secondary monitor, which should be showing as an option. It really sounds much more complicated than it is. For the ATI card used in this review, it was simply a matter of opening the Catalyst Control Center, going into the Display Manager tab and choosing the option that cloned the main monitor.

Once you do that, the graphics will be displayed on your main monitor as well as in the headset.

And this is a plug-and-play device, so there is no need to shut down your machine during the install process.

At this point in time, the glasses do not support all games. The list of games supported are: World of Warcraft, xPlane Flight Sim, Second Life, rFactor Racing Sim, Unreal Tournament 2004, GTR2 Racing Sim, HalfLife2 – Deathmatch, Quake 4 (1.4.2), Counter Strike, Pacific Fighters, MS Flight Sim X, Lock On Flight Sim. The team behind the glasses are working to integrate the technology into other games and that will be available into the life of the eyewear.

So, what are the results? The image has a bit of a grainy quality but the plus side is that you now look around to see what is in the world, making for a much more immersive experience. The glasses also lose some of the vibrancy of the graphics, but the fit is comfortable and the ear buds detach from the arms of the glasses and are not intrusive. The sound quality is also decent – not on the caliber of a 5.1 surround system, but the do a very nice job.

The glasses were worn for an extended period of time – about 2 ½ hours before a break, and while they initially feel a bit heavy, despite the cord that tethers you to the desktop, they did not feel awkward or intrusive.

The VR920 does a very nice job of bringing the game into closer proximity and immersing players with the way the camera is handled. Moving your head to actually look at something is intuitive and that is what is delivered by these glasses.

Pros:
The headphones are removable, but comfortable and the bridge of the glasses makes for a gentle fit on the nose. The glasses do a good job of staying on, even when tilting the head down. The way the VR920 integrates the camera rotation with head movement is truly terrific.

Cons:
The picture can be a bit grainy, depending on the game and the settings you are used to on your main monitor. The calibration can take a couple of times to get it just right so that the results are not jerky. The video is not as vibrant as a monitor, but still does a nice job of bringing the action up close.

Overall: 8.8
The images could be better, and while playing with a flight sim title and WoW, there were thoughts of other games that would be terrific wearing the VR920s. Still, this is a work in progress and for what is available, game-wise, and the way the glasses integrate camera, sound and even has a microphone for voice chat, the VR920 eyewear is a solid peripheral device.

For an interview with the makers of the VR920, please see http://pc.gamezone.com/news/09_21_07_09_51AM.htm