Hardware Review: Sony HMZ-T1 Personal 3D Viewer

At Digital Foundry, we enjoy 3D gaming but we remain unconvinced about the delivery mechanism - never mind the glasses, it's the nature of the screens themselves that we have issues with. The experience of going to the cinema and having your entire field of view consumed by the 3D image is a level of immersion far beyond what we see at home where the typical 3DTV can't hope to compete, presenting itself almost like a "window with depth" in the corner of the living room.

Sony's solution to this problem is one of the reasons we love the company - it'll quite happily turn ultra-niche, proof-of-concept devices into full consumer products, seemingly no matter how low the sales volumes are likely to be. The grandly titled HMZ-T1 Head Mounted Display places twin 0.7-inch 720p OLED monitors an inch in front of your eyes, the aim being - according to Sony PR - to emulate viewing a whopping 750ft IMAX screen from 20 feet away, delivering a 45-degree field-of-view without the need for a gargantuan projector...

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Hardware Review: Acer HN274H 3D Monitor

Another one of my Digital Foundry pieces. Here we have a comprehensive look one of the few 3D monitors out there that supports the HDMI 1.4 spec, while possibly having the potential to double up as a reasonable HDTV replacement.


Acer's unforgetably titled HN274H takes the form of a substantial 27-inch desktop display with a range of HDMI 1.4 compatible inputs and it also offers full support for both NVIDIA and AMD's 3D systems, meaning stereoscopic gaming up to 1080p60 - a format PS3 and its HDMI 1.4 compliance can't match. On top of that, if your PC graphics card is powerful enough, there's nothing to stop you running games at 1080p at 120FPS in 2D either - a very cool, eerily smooth experience we recommend you try out if you can.

With this all-formats support, the HN274H is a unique all-in-one product and the price isn't bad either: the display can be picked up for around £480 - not bad for a piece of hardware that supports all major stereoscopic 3D gaming systems, and happily works with other HDMI-based devices like 3D set-top boxes and Blu-ray players.

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Formula 1 2011 (Digital Foundry - Face-Off)

With F1 2011 Codemasters continues to refine the solid foundations laid down by last year's game. The handling mechanics have been improved, crafting an experience which is even more authentic than before, while the AI has been refreshed to ensure that seasoned veterans receive a strong challenge. The changes aren't particularly drastic but they do have a positive impact on the game: F1 2011 is easier to play for the casual fan whilst containing plenty of depth under the hood for those who go looking.

F1 2011's graphical upgrades are also delivered with the same kind of subtlety: enhanced weather effects and a small increase in track-side detail bring about a more polished look to proceedings. The raw aesthetics seen in the previous title - giving the game a clean, almost clinical appearance - are left practically unchanged from an artistic perspective, and this is once again backed with a constrained use of lighting compared to other EGO engine games such as DiRT and GRID. To all intents and purposes the lighting scheme works well even if it lacks some of the shiny bloom effects which made Moto GP 10/11 such a pleasure to look at.

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Dead Island (Digital Foundry - Face-Off)

First announced in 2006, it's taken some five years for Dead Island to arrive, and the end result is an ambitious, open-world first-person action title that borrows many elements from other games - most notably, Dead Rising, Borderlands and Left 4 Dead - while still trying to carve out an identity of its own.

The game is nothing like the memorable trailer; non-playable characters serve to give you quests rather than provide any emotional attachment, while most of the suspense is provided by chance encounters with respawning zombies rather than carefully directed scares. The focus throughout is one of co-operative play, with the missions and progression system tailored for this purpose. Up to four players can tackle the campaign, fending off the infected population while performing a range of standard-issue fetch quests, among other diversions. The overall feeling you get from the game is that Dead Island is an uneasy mix of game styles that's being marketed as an emotionally gripping horror romp on a lavish, sun-drenched island.

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Bodycount (Digital Foundry - Face-Off)

Conceived as the spiritual successor to Criterion's much-loved Black, Bodycount fails to make an impact on the battlefield, delivering an experience that feels rushed, unpolished and to a certain extent unfinished. It's a bitter blow for those hoping to get a current-generation taste of what made the Burnout makers' FPS so much fun to play. In that respect, the baton has been passed to EA stablemates DICE, and we can only hope that Battlefield 3 is the game that delivers.

But what about the multi-platform conversion aspect? Has Codemasters' new Guildford studio successfully provided a graphically solid experience on both formats? How well does the core technology hold up to handling a fast-paced shooter, where the rendering load can be particularly unpredictable?

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F.E.A.R 3 (Digital Foundry - Face-Off)

Since the original F.E.A.R. debuted in late 2005, the series has lost some of its impact in terms of delivering a dark and frightening experience and has evolved in new directions. Shifting into the hands of Day 1 Studios for this latest instalment, the team has made multiplayer a focus for the new sequel with the introduction of a robust co-op component, thus adding an intriguing twist to the standard F.E.A.R. gameplay.

The core technology underpinning the game has also seen a substantial change. Powered by a heavily modified Despair Engine (as utilised in Day One's last game, Fracture) this has resulted in several key enhancements and optimisations which help deliver a more polished experience across a range of platforms...

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