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Stardate: 20230810.2104
Location: Family Room
Input Device: Steam Deck attached to HMD
Audio: ABBA on aNONradio open mic
Visual: nano, amber cool-retro-term full screen in HMD
Emotional: Slight nausea
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Since I have been spending much time on the couch, I had the
opportunity to spend time with my Steam Deck. I picked up the Steam
Deck awhile back and it was supposed to be my gaming replacement for
my aging Alienware Alpha R1 (steambox), which it has, but I think I
spend m0ar time using it for general purpose desktop linux tasks and
tinkering. It is a really nice device and I'm glad I pulled the
trigger on this purchase.
Today I decided to bring out the Sony HMZ-T2 Personal 3D Viewer. It
is a Head Mounted Display (HMD) that came out around 2012, before
the Oculus Rift and all the recent VR models. There's no head
tracking or any of the fancy features like today's VR stuff. It's
basically just a display that connects via HDMI. Oh, it's also good
for 3D Blu-Ray.
I have been experimenting with the HMZ-T2 attached to the Steam Deck.
The Steam Deck is attached to its dock that has a wireless keyboard
and mouse receiver in one of the USB ports, USB-C for power, and
an HDMI cable going to the external black controller box for the
HMZ-T2. The box has the other end of the HDMI attached to it, a
power cable, and a cable for the HMD. Wifi is being used for the
network connection. The setup is a bit cumbersome and has too many
parts! I store all the parts in an old attache briefcase, which
can contain the external parts when using the device. I have it
on a folding TV tray. I am also using my zero gravity lawn chair
for this setup, since the HMZ-T2 seems to work best when laying
down with my head resting on a pillow. A La-Z Boy recliner would
work perfectly, but I don't have one. The lights are off in the
family room, but the ambient light from the kitchen allows for some
visibility without too much impact to the immersion.
One of the things I dislike about this unit and my past experience
with devices like these is how much of a pain it is to set up and
tear down. There's usually a mess of wires and most of my time is
spent trying to set it up and getting comfortable with it. I think
I spend m0ar time fussing with it than enjoying it. Anyhow, I
decided to give it a try with the Steam Deck.
Once everything was set up and I got comfortable, it was actually
enjoyable. The resolution on the HMD is much better than the
Olympus Eye-Trek FMD-200, which I use for my cybah rig. [1] Doing
stuff in the terminal is good, with the right font size. Cool-
Retro-Term looks really cool in full screen (which is what I'm
using to interface with nano for typing this phost.)
I tried streaming some video, which was good as well. Oh, I have
the Steam Deck connected via bluetooth to my home theatre receiver,
so I don't have to use headphones. Much better that way since there
is already a mess of wires and the HMD just has a headphone jack.
The problem I ran into was with motion sickness, especially when I
connected to the SDF Minecraft server. This has always been a
problem for me with head mounted displays. I played on there for
about 45 minutes before I reached the point of chunder and had to
log out. I wish I could play longer, but no dice.
For me, the HMZ-T2 works best for viewing video or desktop tasks. A
2 hour movie (2D or 3D) or 3 hours doing desktop tasks is fine.
Anything more and I start feeling nauseous. Certain games are fine,
but anything 3D, like Minecraft is very limited and accellerates
chunder mode. It seems to work quite well with the Steam Deck, but
the choice of games is limited. Maybe it would work better with
something like a visual novel or some puzzle games.
[1] gopher://booji.mutated.net/1/projects/cybah_rig
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