Wireless Personal 3D Viewer (Head-Mounted Display)

Parth Patel No comments

At last we have a launch date for Sony's Project Morpheus, the PlayStation 4 powered VR headset: the first half of 2016.
A new version was announced at GDC 2015 and gone is the 5-inch LCD display of the original prototype; in its place a 5.7-inch OLED one that will improve motion blur and enable low persistence. The display's refresh rate has been ramped up to 120hz, making 120fps gaming a real possibility.
The reported latency issues of Morpheus Mk1 have been addressed, with a new 18ms reading, and tracking accuracy has been tweaked with a total of nine LEDs now aiding the positional awareness of the headset.

Features and Design

While it looks futuristic – in an 80s-90s way – the way the Sony HMZ-T3W works doesn’t really need all that much explanation. It’s a headset that puts a tiny little 720p screen in front of each of your eyes, with a middle-man lens hiding that the displays are quite so small, quite so near to your eyes.

We’ve tried out a bunch of these kinds of headsets in the past. And most have been rubbish.

However, the Sony HMZ-T3W is the most successful attempt we’ve reviewed to date, not least because this is Sony’s fourth attempt at the idea. Until things like Project Morpheus and Oculus Rift are actually available for the average person to buy, this is where it is at, video headset-wise.

A few issues common to this category remain, though. The most obvious: the look.

With a smoky chrome front panel, there is a hint of typical Sony ‘cool’ to the HMZ-T3W, but Sony’s marketing images of hip young business types wearing one of these on a plane seems hopelessly optimistic. At least among British people.

The HMZ-T3W is big, quite bulky and will earn you as much attention as singing The Sound of Music tunes at full volume while walking down a packed high street. For the lounge or bedroom-bound cinema/gaming thrillseeker, though, it’s the Sony HMZ-T3W’s fit that is the issue.

While the plastic headset is reasonably light and there are pads to clamp your head at three different points, for even weight distribution, getting a good fit can be a long and uncomfortable process. This alone stops it from being something you can use casually unless you’re the only person who is going to use it – any alteration of the rear straps means you are back to square one.

You need to be quite precise about the positioning of your eyes too, as any off-axis positioning makes the image look blurred.