Widescreen / Multi-monitor set up

[atledreier 10]

Thought maybe you guys would be interested in my project... Got most of the bits I need, waiting for the last two monitors to come back in stock.

Will be running TH2G and 24" screens.

I only sketched it up in racing config, i will have it easily changeable to flight , ARMA and combat flight too.

By atledreier at 2009-08-10

By atledreier at 2009-08-10

Edited August 10, 2009 by atledreier

[thales100 10]

Thought maybe you guys would be interested in my project...

Pics dont open, login is required --> "It seems that you are not allowed to download or view attachments on this board."

[atledreier 10]

Fixed, sorry!

Edited August 10, 2009 by atledreier

[thales100 10]

Fixed, sorry!

Looks good, it will be very immersive, btw i use the Logitech g25 too. :)

[galzohar 31]

How well do the multi-monitor setups support different angles of monitors (such as the ones in atledreier's post)?

[atledreier 10]

iRacing ( my primary sim) do support it very well. There you tell the sim your size of monitor, how far away, even the bezel size, and the sim give you a separate and correct viewport in all three monitors. Most games today have support for a single wide view spread across three monitors.

[DLcmdr 0]

how is specs demanding this triplehead thing??

Im planning in a future to buy three 22 inchers for a res of 1680x1050 and would like to know if the hardware requierements are 300% bigger than in a single monitor setup.

[Endless Nova 10]

Crap now I'll have to talk to the wife about next allocation of free funds. I hate you all :D

[atledreier 10]

'They' say around 30% hit to framerates. Depends alot on hardware. I'll let you know how I do in a week or two when I've tested this.

[thales100 10]

how is specs demanding this triplehead thing??

Im planning in a future to buy three 22 inchers for a res of 1680x1050 and would like to know if the hardware requierements are 300% bigger than in a single monitor setup.

No, not 300% at all, i get around 30 FPS all very high (AA set to high) at 5040x1050. Qx9650@ 4Ghz, 2 x GTX 280 here. It looks incredibly immersive, once you play on triple, you wont be back to single monitors.

[Baff1 0]

Get a GFX card with a lot of VRAM mate.

In the region of 1GB plus.

[bushlurker 46]

With TH2G you essentially channel all your graphics horsepower down a single monitor output to the box - so SLI and Crossfire, 295's in SLI mode, etc can all be used - your only bottlenecks are the bandwidth of that single line (discussed above), the split n blit that happens inside the box (hardware based and very fast), plus the extra burden on CPU and G card(s) of rendering an enormous res "screen"...

With SoftTH its a bit different... you need 2 graphics cards which output independantly to the 3 monitors (no bandwidth issue yet) - sadly, because they're outputting independantly you can't SLI or Crossfire...

Only one card does the actual enormous res screen rendering, so it has to be seriously badass - the best you can get for your budget - the other card can be almost anything, as long as it's on a pci-E bus like the other card...

(A 295 Gcard can't be used in SLI mode as the badass main card, but I think it CAN be used as both cards apparently! - so if you have one and a pair of just about any two old monitors you can give it a try!)

The bottlenecks with SoftTH are...

The split n blit is done in software (slower), then passed via the PCI-E bus to the other card (watch out for older motherboards with slow bus speed)...

B

*edit* I checked up on that using a single GTX295 thing, theres a post here on Kegetys forum about it...

http://www.kegetys.net/forum/index.php?topic=989.0

This reminded me the 295 in single mode is basically a 260, so from a serious SoftTH point of view you'd be better off with a 285 and a 20buck 8600... however, if you actually HAVE a 295 and you can lay your hands on a coupla monitors then it is possible to have a go with triplehead for no outlay at all...

Edited August 10, 2009 by Bushlurker

[Dcope 10]

I have just set this up last night using SoftTH and all i can say is wow, using a 9800GT and a 9400 for the secondarys on a 3.2Gig Oc'd C2D with 4 g ram, and it very playable once a few things turned down, and flying has never been so much fun.

[bushlurker 46]

Yeah... Wow indeed! :)

I can't imagine serious flying without the increased field of view now. I tried recently back on a friends singlescreen and it was like peering thru a letterbox or something... you just totally lose all the situational awareness...

If you're on a limited budget, SoftTH and a little Freetrack creativity and it's like a whole new world!... A view this wide - AND it moves when you turn your head! :D

B

Edited January 19, 2010 by Bushlurker

[thales100 10]

Yeah... Wow indeed! :)

I tried recently back on a friends singlescreen and it was like peering thru a letterbox or something... you just totally lose all the situational awareness...

Hehe thats true ;)

[Dcope 10]

Way ahead of you with the free track had that setup first:)

[skruis 180]

I also set it up yesterday and its pretty cool. I've got a central 24" widescreen and 2 19" 4:3 monitors on the sides. I wish I could get them to line up better for a more seamless experience but oh well.

Has anyone else noticed stretchiness on the sides? From what I read, it has something to do with how the ingame camera works but Arma is so configurable that I'd be surprised if someone didn't figure out how to work around it.

---------- Post added at 04:30 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:27 PM ----------

Oh, thought I should post my specs also...

q6600 oc'd to 3Ghz

2 8800GTS's w/ 640MB DDR3

6GB Ram

Win 7

I have the resolution @ 2880x720 (I played around with it for hours just to get that to work) and pretty much everything is on low or normal and my framerates are in the high 20's. The view and the experience are well worth the fps drop though.

[thales100 10]

I also set it up yesterday and its pretty cool. I've got a central 24" widescreen and 2 19" 4:3 monitors on the sides. I wish I could get them to line up better for a more seamless experience but oh well.

Yes, its great, as you said to run 3 identical monitors would benefit a lot the overall wide experience, but anyway its great.

You can try to adjust the aspect ratio in the .ArmA2Profile in My Documents\ArmA 2\ and open it in Notepad, look for these lines:

fovTop=

fovLeft=

And edit these values to match your aspect ratio, i.e. for 3 x 16:10 :

fovTop=0.8;

fovLeft=4;

Save changes and launch the game. Your new aspect ratio is automatically selected and should be listed as 'Custom' in the advanced video options.

You may also check in the same .ArmA2Profile if this line is set to "1" (HUD should be positioned on central monitor) :

triplehead=1

[bushlurker 46]

foV setting is worth a tweak to get correct aspect when you're using mixed screens...

Arma2 triplehead default is 12:3 (3x 4:3 monitors)... For example, I use 2 x 4:3 side monitors - turned Portrait so they're actually 3:4! - with a 16: 10 centre screen - so my actual Aspect ratio is what???

Your guide is the little "circle within a square" on the Video options menu... The circle should be round - the square should be square... SoftTH is pretty configurable, so it's all just down to fooling with resolutions, bezel allowances, etc in the softTH config - plus the FOV parameters in Arma2.profile.

I wish I could get them to line up better for a more seamless experience but oh well.

Do you mean "lining up" as in lining up the horizon line so it looks like a continuous unbroken sweep across the monitors???

I use "UltraMon" for a variety of things with my triple monitor setup... it does lots of handy little things like multimonitor wallpaper and stuff - but also has a slightly improved "display settings" menu, where you can adjust the relative "height" of the side monitors individually - and on a per pixel basis..... I set my two side monitors to be "-40" pixels and the horizon lines up just nicely...

Another occasionally handy tweak I've heard mention of - if you're an Nvidia user - is the "custom resolutions" options in NvidiaCP.....

Lots of configging and tweaking to do sometimes - but hey! - thats a good thing - lots of configging and tweaking is possible! Which means that however unlikely and/or mismatched your setup is - it IS likely you'll get it to work....

... besides - the tweaking is the fun part! :D

Way ahead of you with the free track had that setup first

Way to go Dcope! - the Full Kahuna! You'll never look back! (sideways a lot, maybe :))

B

Edited January 21, 2010 by Bushlurker

[AndresCL 10]

I didint read it all, but cant this be done with the ATI 5850, 5870 and 5970 cards instead of using TH2G?

[bushlurker 46]

cant this be done with the ATI 5850, 5870 and 5970 cards instead of using TH2G

"Eyefinity"

I haven't checked that out in detail yet - but I believe so... tho I think you need special monitors... not sure...

B

Edited January 21, 2010 by Bushlurker

[jasonnoguchi 11]

Can the HD4870 1gb run triplehead? This is like the final piece of gaming gear i need to complete the ultimate arma experience...hehehe

[thales100 10]

Can the HD4870 1gb run triplehead? This is like the final piece of gaming gear i need to complete the ultimate arma experience...hehehe

Yes, but youll need a matrox triplehead2go adapter. Maybe it would be better to upgrade to a 5870, you wont need a matrox adapter but one DisplayPort compatible monitor, or an active DP / DVI adapter.

[jasonnoguchi 11]

geee.... looks like more replacement of new parts...hehehehe my current monitor and 4870 are new...so....

[bushlurker 46]

@jasonoguchi

If you have a second PCI-E slot spare on your motherboard you could add some sort of cheap Graphics card - then all you'd need would be a couple more monitors - even old CRT's to start with - and you can triplehead with SoftTH... theres a performance hit compared to Matrox, but there's much less wallet hit :D

B

Edited January 22, 2010 by Bushlurker