Today, Silicon Micro Display has announced that they’ll be attending the annual Consumer Electronics Show which will be held from January 10th to the 13th.
CES is a huge consumer electronics exhibition (likely the largest in the US) and is a platform where tech companies go to announce, launch, and demo products that they plan on making and marketing through the coming year.
As I’ve watched a friend play Skyrim over the last few days, I’ve been blown away by the immense world that Bethesda has created. Not only is it huge, but it’s rather beautiful as well. “Slap on an HMD,” I thought, “and this would be a wonderfully immersive virtual reality world.” But as I continued to watch my friend play, I noticed how the interactions between the player and the non-player characters seemed to lag years behind the graphics. They were stale and scripted, unlike the sandbox world that contained them.
Much of the dialogue in the game has a non-player character (NPC) talking to the player about the world. The player gets to interact by selecting from a list of canned responses. Sometimes, the questions you want to ask or the things you want to say just aren’t in that list, and this truly detracts from the immersion. You don’t feel like you are in control because you’re limited to just a few choices. Your character doesn’t even speak the lines aloud; you just pick an option and the NPC starts responding. It also makes the NPCs feel less real because they seem like they are just a robot reading a script (probably because that’s what they are).
A world like Skyrim would be far closer to immersive virtual reality if the NPCs were able to not only hear your voice (through a microphone) but understand it and respond appropriately. Not only would you be able to ask the questions you really wanted to, but you’d have to be more immersed in the lore of the game to even know what to ask.
Voice recognition difficulty aside, having an NPC respond naturally to nearly unpredictable input is definitely a huge challenge, but it’s certainly possible. Games will become far more real when we achieve a level of AI where this is possible, and we aren’t as far away as you might think.
Though Sony oped to get their HMZ-T1 to the market prior to the holidays by putting it up for sale on 11/11/11, it is now officially listed as “backorderable”. What does that mean? Well, for one, it means that even if you buy today, you won’t be able to get one in time for the holidays. It’s unclear if even those who pre-ordered the Sony HMZ-T1 will get theirs by that point.
Though Sony’s HMZ-T1 is just going on sale today, you’re going to see reviews pop up from a few privileged sites that got to play with the futuristic looking 3D head mounted display early. Gizmodo Australia is one of those sites and their Sony HMZ-T1 review is already posted!
The reviewer gave the HMZ-T1 a rating of 3.5 stars; considering some of the evidence that sounds quite fair.
I’ll won’t spoil the entire review, but it sounds like the HMZ-T1 excels in visual and audio performance but there’s a big hurdle when it comes to comfort. The reviewer says that without spending time getting it to fit properly, it will be very uncomfortable. Even after getting it to fit just right, long sessions put strain on the neck and head. One image of a large red mark on the reviewer’s head after a long session of use was particularly illustrative. We shouldn’t be too surprised about this considering the 420 gram (.92 lbs) weight of the device.
The Sony HMZ-T1 and Silicon Micro Display ST1080 are some of the highest quality head mounted displays to ever step into the consumer market. I’ve seen a number of people ask, “which is better, HMZ-T1 vs ST1080?” I’ll be up front and tell you that, because I haven’t had direct experience with either of these HMDs (yet), I won’t be able to give a definitive answer to that question. However, I will compile here for those interested, a comparison of relevant specifications between the HMZ-T1 and the ST1080.
In addition to a retail model of the ST1080, Silicon Micro Display will be launching a less glamorous version of the ST1080 targeted toward developers. They are calling it the ST1080 DDK (display development kit). As with the ST1080 production unit the price is not yet announced but the company has confirmed that the DDK will go on sale in December. Alongside it, the production model will become available for pre-sale.
Silicon Micro Display CEO Paul Jin has confirmed that pricing will be announced for the production ST1080 on December 1st, and we’re expecting to see the DDK go on sale the same day. Presumably, the DDK will be less expensive than the production model because it appears to be quite a bit less glamorous and might use older prototype components. The thumbnail above is the only photo of the DDK that I’ve been able to track down so far, though the DDK might end up looking different than this.
For anyone who is seriously considering (and likely obsessing over) purchasing the Sony HMZ-T1 HMD, which is due out on 11/11/11 (just 3 days now), you’re head is likely mounted with lots of questions: Will the HMZ-T1 work with my current setup? Can I still have my HDTV hooked up to the source or do I have to switch back and forth between the HMZ-T1 and my HDTV? What cords are provided? Does the HMD need to be calibrated? What settings will I be able to toggle? Can I wear glasses while using the HMZ-T1? What input signals are accepted? Hopefully we can put a few of these to rest as the Sony HMZ-T1 documentation has come online a bit early, and there’s actually a good deal of information to be gleaned. Here they are for your perusal with some of the highlights below:
Silicon Micro Display announced the ST1080 head mounted display just a few days back through a press release on the 31st of October. The following day, they dropped dropped most of the specifications for the HMD on their site, including the impressive 10% transparent 1080p LCOS displays. We’re still waiting on the price which is to be announced on 12/1/11, but to whet your appetite, here is a gallery of early photos courtesy of the company’s website, as well as a full rundown of the specs of Silicon Micro Display’s ST1080 HMD.
The ST1080 HMD, which was just recently announced by Silicon Micro Display, is a consumer targeted HMD with dual 1080p displays. Pricing for the ST1080 has not yet been announced, though CEO Paul Jin says that that information will be revealed on 12/1/11.
The HMD boasts dual 1080p displays, which means that the ST1080 is packing 56% more pixels than Sony’s soon to be launched HMZ-T1 HMD which uses 720p displays. Thanks to the dual-displays, the ST1080 also supports 3D quite easily. The companion control box that will be used with the ST1080 has HDMI type-A (full) and type-D (micro) inputs, which means you’ll be able to easily connect to a range of devices from tablets and game consoles to computers and Blu-ray players.
While Silicon Micro Displays’s offering doesn’t use OLED displays like the HMZ-T1, it boasts an interesting display technology called LC0S (Liquid Crystal On Silicon) which allows the displays to be semi-transparent. The company says that the ST1080 displays are 10% transparent, which makes me think that this will be a formidable platform for augmented reality applications. The displays are only 0.74″ diagonally with 2,073,600 pixels per display — an incredible 2976.9 pixels per inch! Just for comparison, the iPhone 4’s pixel-packed 3.5″ 960×640 ‘retina’ display is only 329 PPI.
As games and films come ever closer together, I see a new genre of entertainment being born: the interactive movie. First, an inventory of where games are today:
Many of the latest games are already incorporating real-world actors into their environment by using motion capture, a technology that allows real-life body movements to be captured and used in place of hand-animation. This brings an impressive level of realism to a digital world. A behind the scenes video of Uncharted 3 (2011) gives a good idea of the process behind motion capture if you are unfamiliar:
Not looking to drop $799 for Sony’s HMZ-T1 head mounted display? I don’t blame you. That’s why this post is dedicated to exploring a few of the other mass market HMDs out there. The HMZ-T1 is definitely the highest performance consumer HMD to hit the market (with dual-3D, OLED HD, and virtual 5.1 surround), and while you won’t find a feature-for-feature match to the HMZ-T1, you may be willing to make some compromises if it means saving a few hundred bucks. So let’s have a look at some the options:
The HMZ-T1, Sony’s upcoming 3D HD head mounted display, has been pushed back in US availability from what Sony originally stated on their US site. Though Sony’s site originally showed that the HD 3D head mounted display would be available “on or about 10/26/11”, that date came and went while Sony continued to list HMZ-T1 as available for pre-order.
Checking in on the HMZ-T1 product page today (11/1), we can see that Sony moved the “available on or about” date back to 11/4. This is still a week ahead of the international launch of 11/11, but delayed still from the initially presented 10/26 date. I’m hoping that they won’t continue to push the date back to match (or surpass) the internationally advertised release.
Though the HMD isn’t out yet, the product page has a bunch of reviews on it. Most are just people expressing excitement, but a few are experiences form people who have had the opportunity to try the device on for themselves. Here is one of those reviews:
If you thought we were going to make our way toward immersive VR without naysayers, I’m here today to tell you that you’re unfortunately wrong.
There will always be people who are afraid of change and afraid of technology. Usually, they are hypocrites. They cry “video games are bad”, or “smartphones are ruining out society”, but they fail to acknowledge that this anti-technology approach goes against their living inside of a house, using a microwave oven, driving a car, etc.
In this same manner, you’ll find people that will believe that virtual reality is an evil thing. They’ll tell you that virtual reality ruins someone’s connection with the real world and real people, but they’ll never ask themselves whether or not that’s a bad thing.
Just this last week, the New York Times ran an article (published online and in print) about Sony’s upcoming HMZ-T1 3D head mounted display. Like any good hard-news writer, the author included an ‘opposing view’ at the end of the article. This opposing view came in the form of some snippets from Sherry Turkle, an MIT professor and author of the book Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other. I haven’t read Turkle’s book and want to make it clear that I won’t include her in the category of ‘hypocrites’ (that I mentioned above) before doing so. However, the way that her quotes have been used in the article from the Times certainly tries to peg her as an anti-technologist:
As I posted the other week, The Gadget Show put together an awesome Battlefield 3 virtual reality simulator which would be featured on their show. The only video we got initially was a teaser, and unless you live in Britain, you probably wouldn’t have access to the episode as it aired. Fortunately, The Gadget Show has posted the portion of the episode featuring the virtual reality Battlefield 3 rig to YouTube for us all to enjoy!
The episode gives a good amount of detail on the concepting and building process for the virtual reality simulator which is excellent for our purposes. I was curious to know how they were going to be tracking the player for the omni-directional treadmill and it was revealed that they were using 10 infrared sensors to accomplish this.
When the host ran through the level with the rig, he mentioned it being rather surreal and very immersive. I can only imagine that the paintball guns added an element of fear which would make one much more conscious of running out into the open. Adding real life consequences to in-game actions is a great way to enhance the intensity and immersion of a game (though some might find bruising paintball guns to be a bit harsh).
The host said he was so immersed that he actually tried to reach his hand out to drag his wounded virtual soldier away, and I’m very curious to know if this was his genuine knee-jerk reaction, or if it was just a bit of flourish for the show. Check out the full section of the show feature the Battlefield 3 virtual reality simulator right here. Do you think he was serious or just putting on an act?
Battlefield 3 is set to be one of the biggest games of the 2011 season thanks to its impressively life-like graphics and sound-design. I can tell you from experience, the Battlefield games have had some of the best sound design in the industry. Hooked up to the appropriate audio setup, you will feel like you’ve got your feet on the ground in the midst of an actual battle. Terrifying, and incredibly fun, but virtual reality it is not.
Remember when I told you the other day how awesome Battlefield 3 would be if it were hooked up with a VR rig? Well it looks like that wish is now reality.
