Virtual reality virtually here? Review of the VR920 glasses - PAGE 3

Installation & Setup

The glasses need two connections to your computer: one is through USB, another plugs into your video card. If you have an older video card that only has one DVI/VGA output, you can buy a splitter cable that will do the trick, but this is not included in the package.

The VR920 glasses aren't exactly plug'n'play. In fact, if the first thing you do is plug in your VR920's without installing the software, then you are looking at a minor headache: Windows will not identify them correctly, and will install a faulty device driver for them that has to be manually removed. However, if you read the well-written manual, it makes the installation process painless enough.

After the Vuzix software installed, the next thing you have to do is calibrate the headset. The headset  has three magnetic sensors and three accelerometers that track your head movement according to yaw, pitch and roll. You'll need to recalibrate your VR920 glasses every once in a while -- not often, but on a regular basis, because they are affected by the Earth's continuously fluctuating magnetic fields. The calibration program would have benefited from an animation illustrating the proper method of calibration -- as it is now, you have to read the manual to figure out the proper motions.

Sometimes setting up your VR920 support for games is not a simple process. For every new game we tested, it was a bit of a dice roll. One worked fine, right off the bat. Others were a challenge: files had to be manually copied over to game directories to get them working. You can expect that there will be some time spent wrestling with drivers in order to get some games going smoothly. If you're the type that routinely modifies config files while sleeping, then you'll be fine -- but for less tech-savvy folks, getting games working could be an exercise in frustration.

Physical nature: comfort, weight, shape

Has anyone ever bought you a pair of sunglasses for a gift? If so -- did they fit? Or, if you a vision-impared person, would you ever buy eye glasses off of eBay?

Unfortunately, the comfort of the VR920 glasses are challenged by an unavoidable problem. The problem is that human heads don't come in standard sizes. For some, the VR920 may fit like a glove. For myself, they just didn't fit my (perhaps unusually structured) face. The first problem spot was around the nose. Recent design updates added a nose bridge adjustment (a  wire clip) that is supposed to help the glasses fit. In my case, it was uncomfortably tight  -- I had to bend it almost to the point of breaking it off. But even if you had a nose that is not freakishly elongated as my own, I image this nose-clip would bother you, because it prevents you from really getting the LCD monitors close to your eyes. And when the monitors aren't close, a great deal of light is able to come in through the top and bottom of the glasses, which doesn't help immersive gaming at all.

Vuzix does offer an "immersive eyeshield" for the VR920 glasses that alleviate these problems slightly. This rubber piece fits onto the glasses and makes them a bit more comfortable, and helps cut down on interference from outside light. On the downside, they charge $14.99 (USD) for this piece of rubber, and it has to be ordered seperately.

Headphones

Again this unavoidable problem of the human head comes up with ear-bud style headphone speakers. They are mildly adjustable -- the headphones are fused onto the end of these maleable, rubberish arms -- but while I can imagine that the headphones might fit many people, I can only report on my own experiences, and relate that they did not fit well for me. While I could jam the earbuds into my ears, they were not comfortable. It would also seem to me that vast majority of gamers would presumably have superior speaker systems, or headphones of their own, so I see the inclusion of the VR920's headphones as somewhat superfluous.

On the positive side of things, the glasses do not weigh much (3.2 ounces) -- so long gaming sessions are not going to lead to a sore neck.

On the next page, we'll discuss how the VR920 glasses are for gaming.