Wow - This is awesome my first 3d setup.

[peterept]

I've just put together my first setup and I've been playing good old Half Life Ep 2, and all I can say is WOW!

My Setup:
- HMD (i-visor FX601 - Twin SVGA 800x600 OLED displays) using IZ3d 1.09 Driver set to "Shutter (simple)"
- Tracker using a Gyration GyroTransport mouse (attached to HMD with wireless to PC) - [cost was $20]

OMG - It's amazing. All in 3d and accurate head tracking.

Now I've got to try more games and read the posts here.

And I think I'll see if I can get my Xbox 360 controller working too.

Peter

[budda]

Hi peterept,

Can you let us know if the IZ3D drivers v1.09 and the i-visor FX601 accepts a higher resolution mode, like 1280 x 960 and then properly scales it back to 800x600 in the HMD.

This is important for games and applications that do not have a properly implemented 800 x 600 viewing mode.

The related z800 3dvisor seems to have a problem with rescaling using nvidia drivers, so IZ3D may have solved this difficulty.

Thanks.

[cybereality]

Congratulations on your first 3d setup. Have fun.

[peterept]

Hi peterept,

Can you let us know if the IZ3D drivers v1.09 and the i-visor FX601 accepts a higher resolution mode, like 1280 x 960 and then properly scales it back to 800x600 in the HMD.

This is important for games and applications that do not have a properly implemented 800 x 600 viewing mode.

The related z800 3dvisor seems to have a problem with rescaling using nvidia drivers, so IZ3D may have solved this difficulty.

Thanks.

About the screen mode - it must be 800x600 or the headset just goes to black/wavy lines. (at least the modes I tried).

I think the FX601 and Z800 use the same video components internally - and from the discussions on iz3d.com the Z800 needs to have the latest firmware to work with 1.09.

HTH,

Peter

[chrisjarram]

1) How did you get the visor to work with simple-shutter and keep the eye ordering correct? :-/
2) How much did you pay for the i-visor and how does it perform? I heard they were horrendously overpriced but this was a while ago now.
3) Presumably you only have pitch / yaw with the gyration - just how effective is it, any lag? Is it full 360 degrees? Sounds like a potentially good compromise for visors that do not have headtracking, yet it must be a right pain aiming a weapon (which ideally should be done completely separately.

Keen to learn more about this - got any pics?

[peterept]

1) How did you get the visor to work with simple-shutter and keep the eye ordering correct? :-/
2) How much did you pay for the i-visor and how does it perform? I heard they were horrendously overpriced but this was a while ago now.
3) Presumably you only have pitch / yaw with the gyration - just how effective is it, any lag? Is it full 360 degrees? Sounds like a potentially good compromise for visors that do not have headtracking, yet it must be a right pain aiming a weapon (which ideally should be done completely separately.

Keen to learn more about this - got any pics?

1. Simply - I don't know but the Iz3d shutter mode *somehow* knows how to sync the eyes - at least it has never gone wrong yet. I've powered it up and down a dozen times and the left/right is correct in auto-sense mode. The FX601 does have one difference to the Z800 and that is it has a button to choose left/right sync on it.

2. I got one second hand for $350 so it was not expensive at all - they are hard to find however.

3. So get this - it is actually *easier* to aim with the gyro mouse as head tracking. The accuracy is fine - both lag and the incremental movement. I had very very low expectations as compared to using my TrackIR (which turns out to be not nearly as good as the gyro mouse). You can intuitvely quickly find the enemy by looking for him and get the crosshair in the exact spot 80% of the time, otherwise you use the desk mouse to fine tune by a few pixels. I am very suprised how good it actually is. There is 0 noticable lag.

I was expecting it to go wrong when I change both yaw/pitch at the same time (eg: look up to the right) and then look back to the center, but it handles it just fine. There is some "drift" if that is the correct word for it when you do diagnal head movements and then center your head back to the front (eg: I'm looking at a door, I look up to he right, and then back again - now the view of the door as changed a bit). But it is not that noticable.

For FPS games that use a mouse is the only issue to over come is that you turn your head but not your body (unlike cockpit/driving games where your body is fixed) so to look around a corner then you turn your head to see but you need to turn it back and move the mouse to turn the body. (if that makes sense) To overcome this I wrote a quick app to freeze the mouse tracking from a hotkey so that I can turn by head back to the front position and carry on - haven't quite got it working yet, will see if I can get that going tonight.

Update: My little app is working, so I have a hotkey that freezes the mouse so I can move my head back to forward looking position. Seems to be working pretty well.

[peterept]

Well so much to learn... Today I discovered GlovePIE and used it to do what my app did.

Here is the very simple GlovePIE script that locks the mouse movement when I press the side button on my mouse. It locks movement from the head tracker for 1 second which give me time to move my head back to the forward/neutral position. 1s was trial and error - it works really well.

// Mouse side button swallows mouse moves
// Use this with a head tracker in FPS games so player can move their head back to forward position
if Mouse1.Button4 then
Mouse2.SwallowMovement = true
Wait 1s
Mouse2.SwallowMovement = false
endif

Just paste this in to GlovePIE window and hit RUN. Then play your FPS games.