Preparing for VR : CRYSIS 3 1080P 3D HMD GAMING WITH HEADTRACKING ON THE SMD ST1080 AND CINEMIZER OLED HMDS

This is Crysis 3 at 5120 by 1600, this the res I typically play PC games at, happily upgrading hardware along with the rest of PC gaming kind .. the next move was to add two more or four more 30 inch screens ... until some semblance of sanity was returned to me ...

The problem with ultra high res PC gaming is those monitors not only cost , they require power , space and that you be chained to your gaming rig.  At a point where I was about to create a wall of 30 inch 2560 by 1600 screens ..thereby negating the need for central heating in my house or ever leaving it .. the consumer hmd revolution started.. with the HMZT series for me which was quickly replaced with the smd ST1080 and Cinemizer OLED hmds ..

These have kept me busy over the last year , especially since the arrival of the Cinemizer OLED headtracker and LEAP Motion prototypes..  

I have till now purposefully been testing hmds on igpus like the Intel HD3000 , to show among other things that you do not need quad gpus or Nvidia or ATI gaming gpus to use hmds , game in 3D or add headtracking, voice recog, LEAP Motion VR leaning controls to your game..But I also want to explore how the difference in 720p 3D to 1080p 3D changes HMD gaming ..

Today we are going to be using the smd ST1080 and the Zeiss Cinemizer OLED to game with headtracking at true 1080p res in 3D . Both these hmds are next gen, they produce a perfectly flat screen of 100 and 40 inches respectively . Both weigh in at around the 180g mark WITH the headtracker attached and are thus the only hmds you can actually game on ..anywhere ..use or develop for now..take off and put on with one hand ..... So let us do so with one of the most gpu and cpu optimised games out there  and also one of the coolest engines .. Crysis 3 and Cryengine 3

With the ST1080 and Cinemizer OLED hmds we can game with VR leaning control and  do this at 1080p in 3D with... a gaming GPU ...my ageing HD5970 Black Edition and 5 year old gaming machine , consisting of a Skulltrail Mobo , 4gb RAM  and a QX9775 CPU ... This should mean anyone out there on average hardware should be able to reproduce what I am about to show you even without resorting to going through a major upgrade ... 

With the smd ST1080 and Cinemizer OLED we achieve this in different ways. And each has different strengths. Frankly I do not see any negatives to being able to play Crysis 3 on 180g hmds with 100 inch or 40 inch screens powered by a usb cable .. if you are reading comments to the contrary by industry or AV blog luminaries ask them how much time they have on these devices and what they have actually tried to do with them ... and ask yourself if they have a rival product to plug ..

I am also going to control the game using VR leaning controls .. namely the Carl Zeiss Cinemizer OLED headtracker and LEAP Motion .. to show ...again that you can have lag free and latency perception free multiple VR leaning controls in your game now ..whether you are a developer or a  gamer ...

Attaching the Cinemizer OLED headtracker to the smd ST1080 .. I had my crack team of engineers come up with this contraption to enable me to use the Zeiss headtracker , I thought  of Kickstartering the design for my headtracker splint but I am simply not that evil and John Carmack was unavailable to hype my design, you can of course build your own ..using a bbq skewer (wooden) and some surgical tape .. kind of like how I could build my own VR goggles with a LCD screen/phone, optical lenses and a empty box of cornflakes (what people used before 3D Printers) ...

Attaching the Cinemizer OLED headtracker to the Cinemizer OLED hmd is of course elementary .. 

Once you play a FPS game with headtracking , you expect every FPS to move it's fov with your head movements and you are loathe to go back to knuckle dragging a mouse ... Let me be clear , there is no drift , or latency issue when using the Zeiss headtracker that you as a gamer can perceive in any existing game at this point , across consoles and PCs .   

It is the light weight and excellent ergonomics of the smd ST1080 and Cinemizer OLED that make hmd gaming with VR leaning controls like headtracking a reality and elevate these consumer devices beyond rival diy VR goggle dev kits ... the road to VR  being a long and arduous one..

All the following pictures and video are from an actual game session around 5 hours , across both hmds  , for those interested in such things I had to drop the difficulty from Super Soldier to Veteran  ( criminal I know ) in order to be able to show how I can aim using the Zeiss headtracker as there is no  screen cursor using the Super Soldier setting...

I  want to see how the experience of hmd with headtracker gaming change with the jump from 1280 by 720 (720p 3D to  1920 by 1080  (1080p) 3D : and  compare how a scaling 1080p hmd like the Cinemizer OLED compares to a true native 1080p LCOS hmd like the ST1080.. 

Crysis 3 played at 1280 by 720 in side by side 3D using the Cinemizer OLED hmd and Cinemizer OLED headtracker 

With  720p in game side by side 3D in Crysis 2 and 3  you can  see blurring in the HUD text , in game world details are still impressive though ,with every setting at Very High. This is due to to the way the in game 3D is generated and not the res of the hmds being used. 

and here is the play session using the Cinemizer OLED hmd and headtracker , all fov movement and targeting is through use of the headtracker alone :

The Cinemizer OLED does great with Crysis 3 maxed out at 720p side by side using the native in game 3D options . Remember when you play it is OLED colours and refresh rates that you are seeking to exploit as much as the 3D .. And my old 5970 has no problem pumping out this amount of detail

720p 3D on PC is different to consoles in that we can max out every detail even in Crysis 3   , exploit Direct X11 features ...that are not possible on consoles. Crytek famously listened to PC fans,ensuring  this iteration of Crysis would take full advantage of PC GPU and CPU supremacy...   

Both the smd ST1080 and Cinemizer OLED can use the  in game side by side 3D option without the need for any additional driver 

Playing with headtracking is awesome to say the least , on the Cinemizer OLED you have a more comfortable ride with OLED benefits and clear 3D separation ,depth of field effects . The dark really is the dark , using the ST1080 you have a larger screen or fov and clearer hud text ..but  

Using the Cinemizer OLED or ST1080 like this is an excellent way to play, but we are not fully exploiting either the power of the hmds or the PC ...

Crysis 3 played at 1080p side by side  3D on the smd ST1080 HMD with Cinemizer OLED headtracking

The smd ST1080 is technically the most powerful consumer hmd in terms of raw res and it looks like it will remain so until smd release the 4K version . It is also the first hmd that I owned that had a clear flat screen , with text legible from one side of it's hundred inch screen to the other . Each of it's two LCOS screens has true native 1080p resolution . What this is means is not only can we can throw Crysis 3 at it in side by side 3D using the in game settings we can actually read every word of text on the Windows 8 desktop before hand to launch the game,write this blog post on it for instance . With a gaming PC we can run everything at Very High (which is Crytek for insanely detailed) and see every pixel of that detail without any warping or scaling .. When you fill the ST1080s 1080ps worth of pixels that is when it literally shines .. 

Another strength of the ST1080 .. is that it has the widest support of 3D formats of any hmd in existence at this point Frame Packed/ Side by Side /Top Bottom at a myriad of screen resolutions and frequencies  . For Crysis 3 this means we can jump straight in using the in game 3D option for side by side 3D at 1080p with every thing set to Very High.. 

Needless to say 100 inches of 3D ghost free true 1080p res Crysis 3 at very high settings is impressive , what really takes you there though is the fact that you are controlling the field of view with the Zeiss headtracker without thinking about it , you already tend to look around a screen when you play a game , with the Zeiss headtracker you are also moving the fov when you do this .

Here is a 2D capture with written commentary of playing Crysis 3 at 1080p with very high settings and using the Cinemizer OLED headtracker for fov movement and aiming .. 2D let's me comment in writing "in video" to show you how the headtracker changes the way you play ..

You can see the Zeiss headtracker is so easy to use, not fussy at all or prone to tantrums , so easy going that even strapping it in a rudimentary fashion like this to a completely different hmd let's you game with ease. Oh and setup? Just connect it to a USB port and leave it still for 5 seconds . 

The Cinemizer OLED headtracker is a beautifully engineered piece of kit , weighing a few grams , easy to set up and instantly compatible with every game you own on PC  and with a little work on your part all your PS3 and Xbox 360 games too.. 

As you can see there is nothing stopping you gaming with it using the ST1080 exploiting the true 1080p res of the hmd and the full power of your gaming rig..

true 1080p 3D is great , but how about using the most comfortable hmd in existence , the Carl Zeiss Cinemizer OLED ..


Crysis 3 1080p 3D played with Cinemizer OLED headtracking 

With the Cinemizer OLED we have two options for 3D gaming at 1080p res. 

1. Frame Packed 1080p  and 2. over under 1080p  .. using the hmds 3D settings you will see the Line by Line and Top Bottom options available to you .. 

Crysis 3 however in game 3D settings do not have over under or Frame Packed options that are compatible with the Cinemizer OLED ..

Why bother with 1080p 3D at all when side by side 720p is available? With Crysis 2 and 3 , in game side by side 720p 3D on consoles and PC blurs HUD text , at 1080p that text becomes clear , crystal and what is interesting is this holds true for the  Cinemizer OLED with it's lower native res as well as the true 1080p res ST1080 . The Cinemizer OLED hmd of course is going give you additional benefits , some of which may not be obvious and you won't find commented on in tech reviews..  Foremost of these is the fact that you really don't feel it when you wear it , it is THE most comfortable HMD with the finest optics to date. 


Frame Packed 1080p with OLED is vastly superior to side by side 720p , the same is true for the few Xbox 360 games that allow this .. Halo AE ... and PS3 games too...

However we want speed too so over under/top bottom is going to be more desirable for some..

to achieve this either your game has those options , or since I have Tridef as an AMD user we can use that to give us 1080p 3D 

Option 1. Using the Crysis 2 profile from Tridef will let you run with the Frame Packed Option ... the problem with this is it comes a high cost in CPU and GPU power . The AMD HD3D driver is latched onto by the Tridef software .. which gives us Direct X 11 framepacked 3D which looks great but is impossible to film : FRAPS just captures it as 2D : So you will have to take my word for how impressive it is on the Cinemizer OLED hmd .. in 3D but this does give me an opportunity to comment in the video . Black is insanely black with OLED displays , for FPS gaming you cannot wish for better colours and refresh rates .  

Option 2 : Tridef over under / top bottom is far better , we want to play the game maxed out and have Tridef do minimal work, I also want to be able to capture the raw 3D gameplay with FRAPs ...to show how headtracking works with Crysis 3.. 

From Tridef go to the options settings , set the display to standard , underneath select the option for top bottom . Then add Crysis 3 to your Tridef app box . Use generic settings, or select a profile for a game that uses top bottom 3D and now you will have 1080p 3D over under Crysis 3 that has minimal impact on performance , so if you are not packing quad gpus , or even if you are you can keep your max FPS intact and still game in Crysis 3 in 3D at 1080p like so : Note the sandbox nature of Crysis 3 is an excellent medium to use to demonstrate hi def 3D gaming with headtracking and hmds and this is several hours into playing 

People will scoff at the lower res of the Cinemizer OLED .. in practice .. go try one .. you will not see the difference between a game at 1080p on the Cinemizer OLED and other higher spec devices ..really it is the most impressive aspect of the hmd . What you gain is that OLED refresh rate , that is essential for FPS and fast PC gaming .And on PC you can tweak aliasing and other details too if you need to adjust the image produced. If you want to work on a 1080 p res desktop then the ST1080 cannot be bettered at this point and I would not use the Cinemizer OLED for that kind of work ..however ..

Resolution on hmds in a game or video  does not work the way it does on your desktop display , pixel size , screen ratio, optics ,or lack of optical distortion , the quality of lenses or prisms used to magnify and enhance the images all come into play .. 

For long term use though , whether you prefer wearing a device due to it's comfort trumps all , you are more likely to use a comfortable device with lower specs for hours or minutes of gaming over a high spec device that is less comfortable . We are not going to be sitting still watching hi res 3D movies or staring at static pictures , I intend to be moving my head around  as much as I would in a real world game of Crysis ... with the Cinemzer OLED hmd and headtracker ..it is effortless 



Effect of higher and lower resolutions on Cinemizer OLED headtracker function 

There is none ,  the headtracker works just as well at extreme resolutions ( beyond 2560 by 1600 ..like my 5120 by 1600 desktop) as it does in 1080p 3D and  720p 3D .. most significantly it does not require any extra CPU or GPU power or additional code. This is the advantage of using a solution that can invoke both mouse and dof axes ... your game works right now , if you want to take time and optimize dof axes code you can ... gamers your audience ..like me are still figuring out how best to use headtracking in games ...games that we want to play ...all the games we own now across all the gaming devices we own now...

In the next part to this test  I am going to be adding  LEAP Motion into the mix ... oh and it runs fine at 5120 by 1600 too ....

check it out here : 

Preparing for VR: LEAP Motion+Cinemizer OLED headtracking at 5120 by 1600 using Crysis 3 and countering multiple VR controller fatigue

You can find the rest of my VR ,HMD , Cinemizer OLED  and ST1080 coverage here 

UPDATE :! 

Zeiss Cinemizer OLED + headtracker   is available now for purchase , so now you can get in on the fun of playing PC , Console games just like me in 3D with lag free headtracking or develop with the sdk.. and see for yourselves the awesomeness of the a headtracker and OLED hmd combo that just works .. and works now ...these are going to sell out faster than light people ..hurry ..

 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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