Carl Zeiss Cinemizer OLED review part III: XBOX 360 gaming in 1080p and 3D

The big question about the Cinemizer OLED is how its resolution can cope with 1080p and 720p.You probably think the screen will turn to garbage with squished text and weird scan lines aliasing  everywhere. I thought so too ... till I started playing games on the old Chevvy 360 ...

Playing Xbox 360 games using this most excellent addition to the hmd field.. is/was a revelatory experience:

First : I played around 6 hours today (not healthy for normal living organisms) and the first tale I have to tell is that once again the battery unit remained cold, no really cold, after 6 hours the only heat it had was transferred from my hands to it when I was checking to see if it heated up..

Second : comfort, 6 hours is a long time some of that was spent filming but none of the time whether playing in 3D or 2D  FPS or fast moving racing or flight sims ever generated any feeling of nausea ala the old HMZT1 ... perhaps my many months with the HMZT1 made me immune to hmd emesis .. It is also so easy to put the Cinemizer OLED on and take it off .. you do it without thinking.

Third : I wanted to address that other fear of would be hmd owners re are blacks black and how black is the black ..is the black black .. ? etc etc 

Fourthly : I cannot convey to you enough how vivid the colours are when you use the display or how sharp the picture is across the entire display, and easy to move your eyes around, this hmd needs to make no excuses for sweet spots or bleeding light issues because there are no issues. I can show you a very poor approximation with mine iPad filming some of the action. 

And now on to the testing 

Question :Can a 870 by 500 OLED hmd handle a 1080p and 3D console display?  Answer : Yes we can and in style and comfort too..

Proof : I spent 6 hours of joyous Xbox 360 gaming looking for problems like scaling artifacts , text that could not be read and other weird hmd mumbo jumbo 

Setting up the Zeiss with the Xbox : I did not need to change anything the Xbox 360 settings show the display at 1080P with 3D enabled. Simple. And wonder of wonders the Xbox interface and growing wall of weird and less and less useful services which now has taken a Windows 8 Metro appearance all displayed in perfect clarity. So no scaling issues at all so far.

You can navigate with speech and gestures   with Kinect just like  Johny Mnemonic or TC in Minority Report  only sans gloves! Gibson .. Philip K Dick what would they know right?

Onto gaming 

And what better way to test Ghost Free 3D than with

Ghost Recon Future Soldier 3D 

With the Zeiss we are supposed to select 3D formats before launching games, but with Ghost Recon all I needed to do was pop the game in the 360 and the console together with the Cinemizer OLED set the 3D format with the game launching in full screen 3D no black borders.. 

Now we come to the question of how the Zeiss handles this 3D game : The display in game is awesome light shafts, glints , smoke dust sand and environmental detail are razor sharp.  

I can read every piece of hud info down to the names of my squad all the little bits of info etc that decorate the HUD that the Ghosts are famous for. 

In fact I can read the lets roll tag on the Ghosts helmet , see the groove and glint on the screw that fastens the helmet, the components that make up his helmet camera and I can see the sun reflecting off the dust that is covering rust that is just on the guys head gear.. Now none of that detail would be expected to be  possible at such a low res but it is . Whatever the Zeiss folks are feeding their scaling algorithm  guys and girls is paying dividends.

The colour is mind blowing really, there is no difference in playing this on the Cinemizer OLED to the HMZT1 in terms of colour . There is one big difference though, you can play for hours on the Zeiss, move your head around ,take it off put it back on, take it with you, fitting it as easlly as a pair of glasses. With the Zeiss you actually move around, read the hud from corner pixel to corner pixel with no curvature or distortion of the image.. wait I lied there are so many differences ... Playing the same game on the HMZT1 gave a curved edge and had all the sweet spot issues as well as comfort issues ..and that's the thing  you may try out a few games on the HMZT series you wont play them.. with the arrival of the ST1080 and Cinemizer OLED you can ...

The 3D itself is very effective in this game, I filmed gameplay with an iPad, you will not see the 3D or the true colour as I am filming through the iPad lens through the Zeiss lens to the display behind this distorts the image and gives the image a slightly blue hue..but this is the best I can get out of the iPads camera.  In reality it is the most vividly coloured display I have tried since the HMZT1.

You can clearly see your character seperate from the background which itself has layers , so in the scene at the start of  the Bolivia mission you are foremost, a pillar is in the 2nd layer of 3D and your squad occupy other layers in a street that stretches out with depth.. 
I can see every little red and yellow triangular flag. Tiny details you would think would mess up but this looks and plays better than on the HMZT1. And lets not forget you really can play it without causing and kind of discomfort.

I tried to show a little of the environmental detail too check out the flames and burning trees ..

All in all my first Cinemizer OLED Xbox 360  gaming experience completely negated my fears re the lower resolution of the Cinemizer OLED compared to other hmds.. 

Is this a fluke say a well optimised scaling game ?.. lets move onto Halo, I am going to use several Halo games in this test, partly because there is nothing to play on the Xbox 360 but Halo ..nothing that you cannot get elsewhere that is  and partly because playing Halo Anniversary is going to let me test 3D again on the Zeiss, 1080P 2D in Halo Reach and the black OLED stealth of it all  in HALO ODST . All of these games use a significant amount of darkness namely black to generate atmosphere. In a normal gaming living room there is constant interruption of your gaming world you feel disconnected to it as soon as someone walks in front or the bell rings or your toast is toast or usually when your better half switches the channel .. with a hmd nothing short of you going suddenly blind or the world running out of electricity can brake the bond between you and your game.This is what makes playing FPS games so great on hmds..


Halo ODST uses black and neon as a game mechanic so is the perfect candidate to test the blacks and colours of the Cinemizer OLED. And the experience ? Uniform blacks, bright neon colours all helping you feel like you wear that ODST heads up display helmet and the claustrophobia of it all locking you into pitch black New Mombasa's deserted streets with your HUD scanning and neon framing alien prey for you.  This is the closest you will come to wearing the ODST helmet. The screens you see here and the video below cannot  convey the actual quality of colour, black and image resolution that the Cinemizer OLED attains but they should prove you can game easily using this hmd..

The screen maintains a flat image across the whole screen there is no image distortion, perfect clarity you can read everything see everything and a few things that are not there too and make you jump. I think the stealth part of ODST is the best the HALO series has ever been and playing it with the Cinemizer OLED greatly enhances  your immersion in the game world ,it is also pretty great when you are getting your Banshee on...

Halo Anniversary 3D : On the Zeiss the game boots up and the hmd selects the correct 3D format, after a scary Bungie logo that only played in one side of the screen everything went fine. The 3D which I cannot show you is totally believable, corridors stretch out, your gun hand occupies a different layer, particle fx go off everywhere, people do the poking the broomstick or in this case boomstick 3D effect at you every time they speak to you. Cortana looks great etc etc. The screen is flat no curves no distortions end to end colour. When you fight and sparks fly , shields flicker and wee and large shimmering beasties attack in 3D it is most impressive. The technicolour light show you get with the Zeiss is worth the admission alone. But the most impressive aspect is how it handles the dark, the darkness has depth too in ghost free 3D. 

Halo Reach 1080p : shame on me a year after or 2 years after getting Reach and still not playing through it ..for with the Zeiss I finally have something to just play the game with without interruption. Playing Halo Reach on a glasses sized display that is actually being powered by the Xbox 360 through 1 simple USB cable ...did I mention your Xbox can charge the battery whilst you use the Zeiss ?

Now 1080p should mess up on this res display yes? Well no actually the game is razor sharp, it looks the same as on the HMZT1 only with clearer edge to edge picture with no distortion.

F1 2012 1080p  : the cars appear photo realistic in Codemasters annual update and viewed through the Zeiss there is an insane level of fidelity, there is not just one shade of black there are vivid shades of black with all the F1 Cars and drivers livery and decals easily discernible. The most impressive part though is when you step into your virtual cockpit and start your engine, this is out and out the most impressive experience I have had with the Cinemizer OLED, you can feel the speed are closer to the sound and without anything to interrupt your view you are in your own holodeck racing around Monza. If you are worried about the native resolution don't be, you can read every detail on the driving wheel all the telemetry data, speed, gear shift changes, see every reflection and glint on the paint of your car and every piece of gravel that flies up at you as you skid off track or sticks to your tires. Now if you add head tracking via Kinect you have your own wearable F1 simulator.

Check the videoS, again just an illustration, these are not the colours you will see using the Cinemizer OLED  , they are far more vivid and you cannot see the 3D effect but it should show you black is black and that 870 500 Cinemizer OLED handles scaling down hi res content without effort when it comes to Xbox 360 gaming.

feeling brave .. don`t need to read the next part of my Zeiss Cinemizer OLED experience ? Purchase  in the UK/EU the Zeiss Cinemizer OLED 3D iPack including iPhone adapter and in the USA the Cinemizer OLED , 

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