HMD Suggestions?
 

My apologies if this has been covered before, but our lab could use some advice on a new HMD. We've been using a Kaiser ProView80, but it recently died for good. We are trying out its replacement, the Kaiser SR80A, but are having some serious reliability issues with that. Unfortunately, the SR80A seemed to be the best compromise of price, FOV, and resolution.

Can anyone provide some advice about what's worked for you? We're currently considering Nviz, but are concerned about the small FOV, and Fakespace, but we found the visual quality lacking when we demo'd it at VSS. We would love to find something with >60 degree diag FOV, decent resolution, and rugged enough that we can (gently) walk around with it in a 12m x 12m VR environment.

Thanks for your input!

as alternatives to the SR80, we can recommend

nVisor SX 120 (has nice wide FOV of 120 degrees and stereo 1280x1024 resolution)

Wide5 from Fakespace Labs (with 170 degrees field of view, but 'only' stereo 800x1200 resolution per eye)

Sensics piSight with up to 180 degrees field of view and high resolution everywhere. it's a multi-lens setup, so the tradeoff here is dark/fuzzy lines between the lenses, which are more or less pronounced, depending how well you can fit the unit on your head and adjust, and how much you are moving (when the HMD moves on you head, the lines get more visible). despite it's trade-offs, this HMD is currently the only option if you need high resolution in the outer periphery.

all above HMDs can be ordered thru WorldViz for the same price as you get them from the manufacturers. we do quality control and adjustements before sending them out to customers, as well as integration work for integration with tracker etc.

have fun!