About the Launch Date

EDIT: called the Sony NY store today, they now suggest a launch date of November 14th...
The Sony store in NY still maintains that they will have some units available for sale from November 4th, although they had previously assured me that it would definitely be available from October 26th on, so I'm not sure what to make of that.


Sony Electronic's Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/sonyelectronics) on October 31st quoted November 7th as the launch date.

I called the Sony store within Harrods in London on October 31st, they assured me that Sony would be shipping the HMZ-T1 internally from November 9th and that it would be available there from November 15th.

The current state of the different Sony online stores:

US: available on or about 11/04, priced at $799, preorder available

Japan: available on 11/11, priced at JPY 59.800

UK: available for preorder at £799, no release date

Germany: no info, no price

France & Spain: not available, priced at €799, no preorder
Switzerland: not available, priced at CHF 999, no preorder

Assuming that Sony at least internally has a plan, what's going on here? For instance, the HMZ-T1 was  available for preorder at €799 in the German online store with a launch date for mid-December until just last week, why would they all of a sudden remove all of the info as well as the option to preorder?

At the moment, I believe the only thing we can be certain of is that there's some sort of delay, but I wouldn't trust any other info at the moment - they keep pushing this back, and it's pretty clear that most of the Sony representatives that both I and other people have spoken to have no idea about when this thing will actually launch.

As always, follow me on Twitter @hmz3dgaming or keep an eye on the blog for any updates, I'll let you know as soon as I hear anything!

MTBS3D GameGrade 3D database

As suggested to me, here's a link to the Meant to be Seen GameGrade 3D database.

It's basically a community-built database that shows how well different games work with different stereoscopic drivers, namely DDD's TriDef, iZ3D and NVIDIA 3D Vision.

NVIDIA 3D Vision support would most likely be the ideal setup for the HMZ-T1 (assuming NVIDIA keeps their word, this would allow framepacked full quality 720p stereoscopic gaming); for TriDef and iZ3D, we'll have to wait and see how things work once we can actually test the headset - it seems that side-by-side stereo 3D would always be an option, albeit probably at reduced quality (see here for a comparison).

Twitter

Just set up the Twitter account for the blog, follow me @hmz3dgaming for all the updates and news on the HMZ-T1 and anything related to 3D PC gaming on Sony's upcoming 3D headset.

Input Formats

So it seems pretty safe that the HMZ-T1 will accept stereoscopic content in 720p frame-packed as well as side-by-side and top-bottom format.

Frame-packed 720p at 60 Hz would obviously be the optimum choice as the images for both eyes would each have the full 1280x720 resolution. This should be possible with NVIDIA 3D Vision plus 3DTV Play or ATI's HD3D, in each case via HDMI 1.4 output.

In case this does not work, or for games that do not properly support 3D Vision or HD3D, iZ3D and TriDef drivers should be able to generate side-by-side stereoscopic images in either 720p or 1080p, which would then be displayed in stereo 3D by the HMZ-T1, albeit with a loss of quality as the images for both eyes need to be compressed (quite literally) into a single image of either 1280x720 or 1920x1080.

Battlefield 3
Skyrim
FIFA 12

How bad is the loss of image quality? In order to answer this, I've taken three screenshots from games I'm looking forward to playing with this (namely Battlefield 3, Skyrim and FIFA 12) and simulated the expected quality for native 720p (e.g. framepacking), side-by-side 1080p and side-by-side 720p:

The assumption here is that the HMZ-T1 would accept 1080p input for side-by-side and that the image would be split and then downsampled instead of the other way around, which I'm hoping will be the case.

To be on the safe side, I've downsampled and upsampled again using a bilinear filter, which I guess should be of lower quality than the downsampling algorithm used for side-by-side 3D images and the upsampling algorithm of the HMZ-T1 - keep in mind that the device has an external box for handling these things, so I suppose we can expect a certain degree of quality.

What's my verdict? Unless the optics are truly phenomenal, I very much doubt that the difference between framepacked 720p and side-by-side 1080p would be very noticeable. Apart from text (look at the cockpit display in the Battlefield 3 screenshot, for instance), I would say that since apparently the pixel structure isn't even visible, the difference should be negligible - not for 720p side-by-side content, but for 1080p side-by-side at least.

Collected Materials and Previews

(I'll try to keep this updated on a daily basis to make sure it includes all the latest previews and reviews; if you find anything else, please do share in the comments!)

Official SONY material:

How to use Sony Personal 3D Viewer Headset (Youtube)
Sony Trailer (Youtube)
News Release

Reviews and articles on the demo units:

Engadget Hands On
PCPro First Look
Gizmodo Hands On
Techradar Hands On
TrustedReviews.com First Look
CNet Hands On
Downunder Audio Preview
Amazon.com Customer Reviews
3D Vision Blog, has a few reviews in comments
Arstechnica Hands On
WAnderson75.net Hands On
JustPushStart.com Hands On
NYTimes.com Article

My Current Setup

In case anyone is interested, this is my current setup that I'll be using as the base case for any benchmarks, support guides and my impressions of what works:

Intel Core i5-2400
ASRock H67M (B3)
8GB PC3-10667U CL9 RAM
OCZ Vertex3 60GB SSD
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA HDD
EVGA GeForce GTX 580 1536 MB

I suppose that with 3DTV Play support, NVIDIA would be a better choice than ATI for the graphics card, as NVIDIA seems to have an edge concerning stereoscopic 3D gaming on the PC at the moment, see here for instance.

A single GTX 580 seems the best value for money for this particular application - if I wasn't looking for stereoscopic gaming, a GTX 560 Ti would probably suffice, and it may very well turn out that excellent performance requires a dual GTX 580 SLI setup, but for now this is my starting point.

N.B.: Please don't turn the comments into a fight on NVIDIA vs ATI - I choose NVIDIA after looking around and seeing that the general perception clearly is that NVIDIA is the best choice at the moment; if it should turn out that I was wrong about this, I would probably consider selling the GTX 580 and going for an ATI Radeon HD 6970, for instance.

I'll be very curious to see the differences in experience and performance people get on their various systems, please do share them! The more we know about what works and what doesn't, the better for any prospective gamers stumbling across this blog and looking to get into this field.

Useful Forum Threads

There's a discussion over at the 3D Vision section of NVIDIA's support forums concerning 3DTV Play support of the HMZ-T1 that you can find here.

Additionally, check out this thread over at AVSForum.com which has a lot of info on the device as well as rumors and speculation on the launch date.

If you know of any other relevant and interesting forum threads that may be of interest, let me know in the comments!

The Current State of Affairs

At this moment, the launch date of the HMZ-T1 seems a bit uncertain - it was initially scheduled to launch in the US on October 26th, but that date has been pushed back to November 4th, which is what is presently listed on the Sony Store webpage. Recent rumors however suggest that the release date might have been pushed back to November 22nd, so we'll just have to wait and see what Sony finally decides on.

Concerning 3D support on the PC, the HMZ-T1 is HDMI 1.4 compliant and NVIDIA has already strongly hinted at the suggestion of supporting it via the 3DTV Play extension to its proprietary 3D Vision ecosystem.

As an alternative, ATI's HD3D technology also allows stereoscopic 3D output via HDMI 1.4 using DDD's TriDef driver or the iZ3D driver, which should then work out of the box with the HMZ-T1.

Welcome

Hey everyone, this new blog is dedicated to 3D gaming on the PC with Sony's new HMZ-T1 headset.

While Sony's focus surely lies on making the HMZ-T1 work perfectly with the PS3 and their 3D Blu-ray players, it seems like a good idea to have a central go-to for enthusiastic PC gamers looking to keep each other posted on what works and what doesn't, which games have great 3D support and how to get everything up and running - that's what this blog is intended for.

I for one can't wait to try Battlefield 3 and Skyrim on these :)