A little update for those interested, most things are working quite well now and I added Direct3D 9 support too. At least the following games more or less work:
- LFS
- Operation Flashpoint
- LOMAC
- Richard Burns Rally (GUI is stretched over all 3 monitors, and needs FOV forcing which causes some occasional artifacts on the screen edges)
- Oblivion (My video card can't quite keep up though, ~17-25fps outdoors :P)
- rFactor
- X3 Reunion
- GTR 2 (Runs but mouse only works on middle screen, plus gui is stretched on all three so you cant start the race :P)

I also added a "border" feature that renders the frame even wider, and leaves out an adjustable amount of pixels from between the monitors. This makes the transition from one monitor to another look better as there is a bit of invisible zone where the monitor bezels are. LFS doesn't like it though as it no longer detects it as a triplehead screenmode and renders the GUI wrong...

Here is a fraps recorded video of RBR using it. It feels like I'm really going fast now

Quote from Shotglass :

i was thinking more along the lines of triple 1280*1024 for 2 tfts which is roughly twice the amount of pixles i currently use (1920*1200) and on my sys the highest i can go with my single 78gtx for constant 60+ fps

I tried 3x1280x1024 now and I still got ~60fps when alone on the track and 45-60fps when racing with a full AI grid. This is with my unoverclocked 7900GT, so it still would be quite playable.

One thing that also would be possible is rendering only one side monitor at a time, ie. render only a 2x1280x1024 frame, cycling between left and right views on each frame (center view on every frame). Though it would cut the FPS on the side monitors in half compared to the middle one, which might look a bit odd.

Quote from Shotglass :

so it wont work with a sli setup then ... bad news i guess a single card just doesnt seem to be up for the job of driving those massive resolutions

I dont know, if SLI doesn't let you use three monitors then propably no... The resolutions aren't that big though for newer video cards, for example 3x1024x768 resolution is only ~22% more pixels than 1600x1200.

I also did some quick test with other games, and with minor tweaks I got Operation Flashpoint and LOMAC working quite well with it.

Quote from Vain :

That modification is pretty impressive.
How does it work? Via a modified D3D8.dll like some of your other modifications?
If so, would it work on other programs aswell?

Yes, it's a d3d DLL. It should be possible to make it work with any D3D game, though currently I have only tried LFS (And it propably wouldn't work with anything else right now either as it does some LFS-specific assumptions)

Quote :

As I understand the secondary videocard is just a "drawing-slave". Would any (D3D 8) videocard work, like f.e. a 5 year old PCI-card?

Yes all the D3D rendering is done on the primary card and the others just display the parts of the rendered frame, but you need PCI Express for an useable framerate. (Even a non direct3D card would work as it uses Windows GDI to draw the side monitors) I tried it earlier with AGP+PCI combo but the best I got was around 10fps, PCI has very limited bandwidth and everything in AGP seem to be optimized for sending data from system RAM to the AGP card, not the other way so it ends up being very sluggish.

Quote from Shotglass :

what fov is that ? it looks larger than the 120° lfs usually has as maximum

Should be 120. I do have some code to force it wider, but as LFS isn't aware of the change cars/objects that are outside the 120 degree FOV disappear when using it, so it's not very useful

Here's a little video of it. Running in 3840x960 resolution now, i put the side monitors to 1024x768 16bpp color to minimize the bandwidth required (they are downscaled from 1280x960 32bpp, so it looks good still)

My quest for cheap triplehead continues. A few weeks ago I got myself a PCI express system, and today I got a secondary PCI-e videocard (a GF6200LE). I coded up a test DLL and so far it looks good; I get ~50fps in 3072x768 resolution with 4xAA, three monitors: http://junk.kegetys.net/softTH.jpg

The FPS hit is pretty big, since in single screen mode, 1456x1092 resolution I get well over 100fps most of the time, but it still runs very well and is very playable. There propably still are some tricks to optimize it a bit more... But its not bad for a 29e setup(price of the 6200LE) compared to the Matrox Triplehead 2go

The setup I made it with is:
Intel Core 2 Duo "Conroe" E6600 at 3,45GHz
Asus P5W DH Deluxe (Forces PCI-e 8x mode for both cards )
GeForce 7900GT (Does all the rendering, and displays right monitor picture)
GeForce 6200LE (Displays left monitor picture)

Quote from Blackout :

I just wanted to point out that better flag system would prevent some crashes...

A bit offtopic, but also different levels of yellow flags would be nice, like if the car in question is on the track (opposed to being out on the grass) the "yellow flag" text would flash orange, and flash even more rapidly if there are multiple cars there. Right now it is impossible to know how "severe" the yellow flag condition is, while I believe at least in F1 they seem to use more flags and wave them more aggressively if there is a bad accident.

Difficult to pick three, but I guess at the moment I'd go for:
- Need for Speed
- Test Drive II
- Lotus III

Others great ones I can think of right now:
- No Second Prize (Still the best motorbike racing game there is imo )
- Stunt Car Racer
- Super Cars II
- Revs+ (First "real" sim I played, and with analog paddles. I recently tried it with my Momo Racing and it still is damn hard to keep the car on the track)
- Nitro
- Vroom
- The Last V8
- Racing Destruction Set
- GP1
- Stunts
- Lego Racers (Dunno why but I loved it :P)
- Colin McRae Rally

edit: ooh, and Carmageddon 2 of course
edit2: And SuperKarts!

Last edited by Kegetys, Mon 11 Sep 2006, 13:49.

Before nvidia added the functionality in the driver menus, you could add new resolutions by modifying the driver inf files.

Quote from Vain :

You can do a nice 3-5 mins break between the stages without dropping out.

How should I rejoin the tournament then within this time? I dont think it was more than a few minutes (I went downstairs, drank some juice and then re-started the game ) and no LFS GB tournament on the list anymore. Or are you not supposed to quit the game?

Are there any proper instructions for using the tournament thing somewhere?

Are you supposed to drive the whole rally at one go? I drove the first stage of the GB rally, then quit the game before stage 2 to have a little break and now the tournament isn't on the list anymore. The website says I DNF'd the second stage but I never even got to start it. illepall

Quote from Madman_CZ :

As this video shows, computers in control have a long way to go yet VIDEO

Quite offtopic, but that plane isn't flown by a computer as the narrator says. It does have fly-by-wire but it is still flown by a pilot, and (officially) the crash was also a pilot error. Wikipedia knows more.

Quote from NetDemon01 :

No problems here with IE, clicking the thumbnail opens a new browser and displays the full size picture.

You can't see the thumbnail if you really have displaying images disabled

Quote from Hyperactive :

Works well in Opera (maybe it's a firefawks bug?)

I use opera too, and it appears to be the same with Firefox also.

edit: The source is interesting:


illepall

Last edited by Kegetys, Mon 28 Aug 2006, 18:29.

Quote from Jakg :

did you try CLICKING it?

The forum has a bug/feature that if you have displaying images disabled then clicking at the link will open the thumbnail (the image in the IMG tag), not the link it points to.

Quote from CSU1 :

Hold on! How are you suposed to look behind you with trackIR? turn your head 180 degrees???illepall

This video shows how it works quite well.

Here's a video of me flying IL2 with it.

Quote from Burnzoire :

so that's 2/2 who don't use their's in LFS, why not?

I find TrackIR implementation in LFS is a bit lacking, since the view keys and the view pitch adjustment do not work anymore. I like to keep a few degrees of downward pitch on the view but with TrackIR enabled this is not possible (unless I'd center TIR with that much down angle but that is not very consistent and difficult to do every time) also as the view keys do not work I no longer can look behind me at all, nor can I take peeks to the left/right as fast.

The device itself is great though, I wouldn't want to play any flight sims without it any more.

Yes, but not in LFS

Quote from duke_toaster :

StarForce does supposedly reboot.

And here is the result

Purposedly causing any kind of damage to the user's system would be a very bad idea (removing files, rebooting, etc.). It would most likely be illegal in many countries (Any kind of "EULA" doesn't give you the right to break the law), such things happening to people would bring alot of bad publicity and the danger of it triggering for someone who has the game legally would be there (some problem with the LFS user database for example).

I certainly wouldn't run software that has such functionality built in, and hopefully my antivirus system would't even allow me to run it.

I think websites should and hopefully will stay in the same familiar format as they do now. Not that everything should stagnate to state that they are now, but any evolvements should come the same way as they have in the past with most of the web changing "together" so that websites work mainly the same way as others.

The web has moved on alot during the years, and most websites are both much better looking and have better usability than some years ago. Modern browsers also have a lot of nice features that make surfing the web easier, many of which do not work as they should with custom javascript/flash/etc. implementations. Also 3D websites came and went with VRML and I dont think anyone ever wanted to use those...

When I go to a website I expect it to work a certain way I'm used to with other websites, it is similar to when I pick up a magazine I expect it to be laid out in a way that is familiar with magazines I have previously read. I do not need to examine it first to find out which way the pages open, and I can find the index of the contents within a few seconds.

I dont mind if Javascript is used to do some non-essential enchantments, but websites that are controlled by some custom javascript implementation are pretty annoying. They almost never behave like other websites, with things like the back/forward button, bookmarks, links and browser special features like opera's "open in background tab" not working as expected or at all. It leads to frustration for me as it is sort of like having to re-learn some new interface just to use that one website.

In addtion to the current short welcome message, I would like there to be a "MOTD" window that pops up when you have connected to the server. This window would stay open as long as you click to dismiss it and it should be able to hold much longer text (scrollable) with some formatting also. It could also be re-opened from the esc menu...