Dual-View

[schmerzbringer 0]

Today every graphic controller supports 2 or more Displays.

My dream is that I can use this in games too. So I can use 1 Screen for playing and 2nd for the map for example, or team-status or whatever. ´

Thats a great idea, or not?

[shinRaiden 0]

Then beg M$ to get their act together and cleanup DirectX so that it can adequately register and span multiple cards and monitors. OpenGL does it ok.

The problem is that D3D really only wants to play with a "Primary Display". Nvidia has a hack with Display spanning to trick Windows (and thus Dx) into thinking that your two monitors are actually one jumbo-sized one. ATI doesn't support that.

[DBR_ONIX 0]

This is possible in OFP, but, to use it for any use (It's totaly pointless justnow) you need to have 3 monitors..

With two monitors, it's impossible to aim, as your target is sliced in half

But, being able to have the map on the second screen, or the kills/deaths screen, or the message window etc on the other screen would be good

But maybe by the time the game is released, we'll all have graphics cards that support 5 monitors

- Ben

[shinRaiden 0]

Actually on two monitors it's beautiful flying a helicopter. You just set a corrected FOV, then pan back and forth in freelook like you'd normally fly. I'd love to see it on a pair of projectors...

[schmerzbringer 0]

ähm, suggestion thread?

[Mope528 0]

how about this, instead of buying THREE expensive monitors, how about just buy one helmet?

make VR a reality, GOOD VR that is, virtual reality is behind. c'mon people all the movies said in the year 2000 we'd have flying cars, but we ain't even got VR yet.

we're behind

I think it'd be cool to have a box you plug into your usb port

kinda similer to wireless mouses, and it detects where helmet is and how it's positioned, when you turn your head to the right your view looks to the right, when you look left the view changes to the left,. that'd rule

just a suggestion. I don't know if that'd be costly or not. shoulden't be since it's just SMALL monitors inside a enclosed helmet, and then sensors and stuff.

[shinRaiden 0]

3 high-end LCD's or projectors would cost you what a good medium-res head-tracking VR helmet would. And what about wear? I've got a Sony MDR-V600 pair of studio headphones that are falling apart after a couple years of constant use. They're commodity consumable items, as are monitors etc. VR helmets A) are not meant to be worn day in and day out B) you wouldn't want to put that kind of wear and tear on one, and C) a helmet liner such as the type used at gokart tracks and other entertainment places looks really dorky when you take the helmet off.

Also you need to be able to process 2x the normal FPS - even with offsets, not just shutters - until we get dual-channel video cards that handle the offseting natively. That would be what they call a "Professional feature", talk to an Nvidia Quadro account manager for more consultations.

[chipper 0]

not a helmet thats dumb all you need is sunglasses with a tracking thing on it

[DBR_ONIX 0]

Aye.. I remeber a few things like that, basicly sunglasses with two small LCD screenes in the eyes. And I also remeber reading about a head-tracking thing on this forum..

Both of which cost under Å100 I think

Put these two things together, and a hell of a lot of fiddling, tada, cheap VR

Could be wrong though

- Ben

[Scrub 0]

The glasses are variable transmission shutters.. Read: black to light grey translucent.  You still need a monitor and the ability to look straight at it.  No head tracking would work beyond a few degrees, as one of your eyes would not be able to see the screen, and the blocking, or shuttering, of the alternate eye would be visible, the illusion of stereoscopic vision would be lost. Besides the fact your head moves, but your eyes still watch the monitor.

[shinRaiden 0]

And shutter glasses reduce the fps by half since the monitor needs to switch views in sync with the glasses. That means your monitor (not the game) needs at least 120hz refresh at your game resolution. Which first of all means that you can only use them with a CRT monitor, LCD's are out of the question. Second, 120hz is at the (un)realistic limit of what a video card can push. Looking at the Nvidia Mode Support appendix to the Forceware release documentation, 1024x768@32b is supported in theory from 60 to 200hz, 1280x1024@32b from 60 to 150hz, and 1600x1200 from 60 to 100hz.

Bear in mind that your video card is in all practicality not going to be able to reach those limits normally, this is just the rated ranges enabled in the driver. Your monitor range may be significantly lower. I have a pair of average 19" CRT's, and they won't function at faster than 85hz. If you want to crazy, you can try the mother of all reference-grade CRT monitors the Mitsubishi RDF225WG, but even it is straining at some gaming resolutions and failing at others:

<span style='color:white'>can anyone guess what I want for Christmas?</span>

Quote[/b] ]

640 x 480 @ 50 to 160 Hz;

800 x 600 @ 50 to 160 Hz;

1024 x 768 @ 50 to 160 Hz;

1280 x 1024 @ 50 to 127 Hz;

1600 x 1200 @ 50 to 109 Hz;

1800 x 1350 @ 50 to 98 Hz;

1800 x 1440 @ 50 to 92 Hz;

1856 x 1392 @ 50 to 95 Hz;

1920 x 1440 @ 50 to 92 Hz;

2048 x 1536 @ 50 to 86 Hz

You see where the shutter glasses are really targeted? The 800x600 85hz interlaced SGI Irix market. They also take about 50 years off the lifespan of your eyes. The previous generation's prothesis was dentures, our generation's will be Mr. Yakamoto's Discount Eyeballs. I can't stand to look at my CRT's at less than 75hz each. Besides, you still remain within the constraints of a narrow box, unless you invent a 'mystical holographic projection dome mirror theature'

This is why a full-headset with twin hi-res micro LCD's running in simultanious offset stereo is the only practical way to go. It solves the refresh problem, as well as the immersion problem. It also costs your arms and legs, so you're better off just buying an Apple 30" Cinema Display, then junking it when Windows Vista won't play DRM'd dvd's on it.

[schmerzbringer 0]

? OK !

thx 4 the journey shinRaiden

What do you think about the improvement in Battle-overview through the 2nd-Screen for the map etc...?

[shinRaiden 0]

That's actually not that clearcut useful.

First you have to decide what you want to use multi-monitor rigs for. There's two options : expanded view and accessory view. I discussed expanded view above, now here's my thoughts on accessory view. OFP has a lot of scripting functionality vias the CreateDialog system, VBS has a major Observer system, Doom3 has it's PDA system, BF2 commander view, and so on. The exclusive interfaces all are due to two factors : the smaller than life-size scale on the screen, and the normal single tasking behaviors. If it's your job to be doing command and control, it's not your job to be in frontline action or rear-echelon guard.

For those usability reasons, it actually makes more sense to use a single task switching display.

Now for expanded display systems, you obviously want all the monitors you can get, which due to crappy DirectX limitations, and likely DRM-locked further in Windows Vista are limited to 2 displays (with the exception of the 3 display Matrox Parhelia's). Even if BIS were to switch over to OpenGL, you'd need some funky and extremely expensive hardware to genlock sync the cards together to render the same frames. That would also have a major impact on the ability to port code to the Xbox. Me personally, I'd rather see portability to Linux than to the Xbox, but that's because I'm a techno-geek instead of a console fanboy.

The other option would be to get a dual-LCD 3d stereo VR headset. Very cool, and using dual screens it gives you the FPS that shutter splitting doesn't, but they cost between $20K to $60K depending on the quality, features, and resolution. Plus you have a funky driver that meshes with the Nvidia 3dstereo controller to camp the buffers to dynamically stream the offsets.

[schmerzbringer 0]

so...in view words: you don´t think that it would be an improvment,right?

I often wish that I could view on the map on my 2nd Screen, when I play OFP. Maybe I should print all the maps and stick it on the 2nd Screen . That would also have a more realistic effekt.

[shadow 6]

I would like to see the map screen, objectives and my inventory on a second screen. It would help to stay ontop of the situation at all times.

And it would work nicely because last time I checked, the map and the "book" was 2d and not 3d so no problems regarding DirectX' limitations and rendering.

[shinRaiden 0]

The map is 0z dynamicly rendered data. Well, there is some Z, the paper texture underneath. The Objects though are very much p3d's.

[schmerzbringer 0]

thx again shinRaiden, but I don´t understand a word.