Vuzix iWear VR920 now offers expanded support for some quite old games
Can you afford a 62″ telly? No you can’t. Can you afford a 62″ telly that moves WITH YOUR HEAD? No, you can’t. But neither can this guy, and he’s got off his arse and found a solution:
He has not sold his eyes to experimental science; he’s bought a pair of Vuzix iWear VR920s (and spent the rest of his money on a lady who can do something quite incredible with her tongue, by the looks of it). The Vuzix iWear VR920s are a set of virtual reality glasses that simulates the effect of watching a 62″ screen being viewed from 8.5 feet away. Immersive, even if the inability to see what’s happening around you is somewhat hazardous.
That’s not all they do either. Harnessing the power of late 80s virtual reality technology, iWear 3D will track its users’ heads so that moving around a environment is as simple as moving your head; well, until some fire breathing demon jumps out at you and you run shrieking, face-first into the wall which you were unable to see.
Not all games support that though – some have to make do with straight up 3D effects. I’ve never tried a Vuzix system before, but if it’s anything like the 3D monitor I saw earlier in the year, it’s probably very neat but obviously a little more of a strain on the eyes than watching a normal 2D screen.
Clearly, a system like that is only as strong as the games that support it, so Vuzix has been making every effort to expand the line up. Here’s the list of updates made in the latest v2.2 software update, hot off the press release:
The following get “superior 3D visual quality and compatibility with virtually any graphics card on a 32-bit Windows XP or Vista system”
Halo: Combat Evolved
Lord of the Rings Online
Far Cry
Falcon 4.0
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
EverQuest II
Final Fantasy XI
PlanetSide
Spore: Creature Creator
Quake Wards [sic – unless Quake has expanded into Theme Hospital without telling me]
X-Plane 9.0
There’s a theme here. It’s that all of them are over a year old. Some considerably more so. Luckily the list of games that offer “Vuzix 3D Stereoscopy and/or head-tracking” is a bit better.
Call of Duty (multiple titles)
Roller Coaster Tycoon 3
Doom 3
Quake 4
Crysis
Half-Life (multiple titles)
Team Fortress 2
The Ship
Dark Messiah
Garry’s Mod
Dystopia
Hidden
Hypercube
Insurgency
Yep, there’s some actual recent titles in there (okay, two). Unfortunately neither CoD4 or the Half-Life 2 titles support the head tracking. Neither does Portal, which is a massive let down. It would have been an instant ticket to vertigo and motion sickness, but definitely worth it.
If you’re tempted, you can pick the VR920s up for around £250.
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