SimHQ.com - Technology Zone - Review: Emagin’s Z800 Head Mounted Display

Emagin has made a bold attempt to bring a HMD to the general consumer. In my opinion it has fallen short though. I want to make it clear that the 800 dollar price tag is not a factor in this opinion. When considering a good LCD monitor runs around $400.00 USD, I would gladly pay $800.00 for a Z800.

The problem lies in a few areas that are far from insurmountable. Please try to keep in mind that none of the cons I have written about are complete shows stoppers. The unit is functional and after awhile I imagine a person could become more comfortable with it. For the purpose of this review, and in my opinion, the Z800 could use refinements before I would call it ground breaking technology.

First, the eyepiece focus issue needs to be addressed. It may be a simple fix, but it is by far the most important one in my opinion. One eye going out of focus frequently quickly becomes tedious and is a real strain on one’s eyes. The eyepieces need to be fixed in place somehow.

Second, I would like to see a greater range for the eyepiece travel horizontally to accommodate a larger selection of eye widths. I am an average sized man (7 ¼ hat) and I found the eye pieces were slightly too close together. A wider range would surely benefit the unit and may reduce the loss of focus I mentioned above.

Third, the resolution really should come up to at least 1024x768. As I have said the 800x600 is not really a problem performance wise. The problem lies mostly with software. Maybe software designers in the future will take into account that 800x600 still needs to be available to some of the consumers out there. Personally I feel 1024x768 should supported by the Z800 because 800x600 quality is a little lower than what most users are accustomed to. The wide screen effect does compensate this to a reasonable view. Small details like the needles in a cockpit, such as the A-10’s barber pole for airspeed, can get muddy in appearance. Very small detail also suffers some degradation regardless of whether it is rendered in 3D or normal view. These are a mild annoyance at most. It just seems it could be better.

Finally, the refresh rate has to come up, especially in a product using 3D. I cannot tell you if this is technologically necessary. It stands to reason that a higher rate would reduce some of the panning problems, or eye stress at the very least. My opinion.

I had very high hopes for this product when I received it. Many of those hopes have been realized. With a few refinements I am confident that the Z800 has a very good chance of being as useful as a Track IR and HOTAS to flight simmers. Emagin is on the verge of one of the greatest technological advances in simming, gaming, and/or personal viewing technology. HMD’s look to be in our future, with a little attention to detail, that future could be very bright.

See the video preview at Emagin’s web site here.

Z800 Headset

Reviewer’s System Specs

AMD 3700+ San Diego
2GB RAM
GeForce 6800 GTOC @78.01drvr
Audigy 2ZS Platinum

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