Quote from Bob Smith :

Actually with look steer I find I hardly ever look directly into the side monitors. They are for peripheral vision and immersion. Strange that you spend all this money on setting them up and then never look at them, but that's how it works.

I find that with the side monitors, the main purpose of them is to be able to feel the speed because of the things moving by you quickly in your peripheral vision and its a lot easier to not bump into people because you can see them pulling up on your side. Most turns are visible in my main center monitor, but sometimes sharp S turns can be seen across two or all three monitors and it makes those WAY WAY easier, especially if you don't know the track or are playing a new game.

Quote from wtf im nameless :

couple of things, #1, that pic is using three "4x3" LCD monitors. The proper way to do it would be using three 16x10 widescreen monitors which is what I am doing myself. The only issue is you cannot use TripleHead2Go unless you want to run a non-native resolution. Using SoftTH I am running at 5040x1050 and with my new tweaked settings I am running at 30-40FPS online racing 10-12 people now. That being said, I have a much wider center screen than what you showed in your pics and the anyone who has raced in my setup has agreed so far, once your sitting and racing you actually cannot see the bezels (unless you stop and look for them) because you are so into the race.

My only issue with the way its being done right now is my rear view mirrors and edges of the screen are all distored. The way the other thread you are talking about is going to distort the picture even worse. If you run multiple camera's, especially with projectors you can have over 180 degrees of vision with almost no distortion and no border at all.

For 180 degrees I think you would need atleast 5 monitors or 5 projectors. But yeah I used 4:3 monitors because that's what I have in front of me so it was easy to take screenshots Edit: Actually since I used 45 degrees FOV in these screenshots, I guess you would only need 4 - but then you would not have a center screen.

I believe Juls' suggestion in the other thread was for single display setups - which is what the majority of LFS users have.

Quote from Stang70Fastback :

Try driving with TWO monitors. You're constantly staring right AT the 1" thick black bar! Although after a while you completely learn to ignore it. Still odd cause it makes anything in front of you seem a lot wider - be it the car or the road.

I'd imagine you'd get used to it, but with triple monitors your really dont see it at all. With double its kind of hard to miss considering your eyes keep moving over it every turn or every few seconds.

Quote from Technique :

For 180 degrees I think you would need atleast 5 monitors or 5 projectors. But yeah I used 4:3 monitors because that's what I have in front of me so it was easy to take screenshots

I believe Juls' suggestion in the other thread was for single display setups - which is what the majority of LFS users have.

No, you can do it with 3, if I have triple 120 inch projectors in a U shape (but squared 90 degree corners) I can sit my cockpit which is a lot smaller in the middle of it in a way that the side projectors actually go behind me.

Quote from wtf im nameless :

No, you can do it with 3, if I have triple 120 inch projectors in a U shape (but squared 90 degree corners) I can sit my cockpit which is a lot smaller in the middle of it in a way that the side projectors actually go behind me.

hmmm... well I guess I can't comment since I've never sat in a 3 projector setup with 3 camera angles! But I would think that the angles between the 3 projectors might be too much.

I tried the 90 degree setup with my cockpit and forza 2, the monitors were too small, it was like wearing a large VR helmet. I had all three 22's wrapped around my face and my cockpit was below me, I couldnt see it at all. It was the most realisic visual I have ever had from any home sim period. The only issues was the monitors were too small and it was hard on your eyes to play for more than one race at a time.

My goal is to do this same setup with projectors, but its hard because not all games have the proper software support... In my quest to build the ultimate racing sim my biggest hurdle is finding which software has the best balance of:

(in no particular order)

a) support for cockpit gauges and multi screens
b) online play
c) cars and tracks
d) Physics
e) Graphics
f) Multi screen support

This game is fairly high up the list.. graphics are good, physics are good, online play is fun.. support for the gauges and LEDS is one of the best... A lack of cars and tracks hurts, but it doesnt hurt the gameplay itself. Multi screen support would be a big thing in my case.. but I understand not everyone runs multiscreen so for developers its not that high on the list of things to do.

Quote from wtf im nameless :

My goal is to do this same setup with projectors

Check out the PDF in this post for "improving wide angle viewing for web conferences". They use a 5 camera hardware array (with each camera having varying FOV's) to capture the video, stitch the separate images together into one, and then apply warping.

The technique in the article used for generating a single, non-distorted flat image. But if LFS could do something similar then you could use a curved screen or dome and a single projector, with a lens that can evenly distribute the light across the entire curved surface, then you wouldn't need 3 projectors. Of course I think these lenses cost ~$20k!

Anyway, I'm talking out of my butt. I don't really know much about this stuff. But, I too am looking to build the ultimate sim setup

I was in the middle of starting a new thread about this, but found this one.

I definitely agree. One of my favourite features of rFactor is that it supports 3 screens properly. Instead of stretching a single render-viewport over the whole resolution (leading to nasty stretching at the edges as it tries to render a rectangular viewport onto a cylindrical viewing area), it uses three cameras arranged so that they line up, creating a much better effect with the minimum of image stretching.

I doubt it would decrease performance significantly over normal 3-screen use, as the only difference would be a call to directx to move the camera 3 times a frame as each viewport is rendered. Those with low-end hardware wouldn't be using 3 screens anyway so would have it turned off.

Quote from Crashgate3 :

I doubt it would decrease performance significantly over normal 3-screen use, as the only difference would be a call to directx to move the camera 3 times a frame as each viewport is rendered.

Whoo there, not that simple. There's a huge difference between drawing one really wide view into a single framebuffer and drawing three separate views, with different transformations, across the same framebuffer. For one you'd have to do three passes over all geometry in the scene instead of just one. For a game which is already quite CPU bound in scenes with lots of graphics detail, this added overhead would probably hurt badly.

That said, I'd still like the option even if the performance was bad.

It'd be three passes at the resolution of one screen compared to one pass as the resolution of all three. I imagine it'd be better for cards with less memory. Maybe.

At any rate it'd be an option and people could turn it off if they wanted.

Quote from Crashgate3 :

It'd be three passes at the resolution of one screen compared to one pass as the resolution of all three.

Resolution has zero impact on the CPU load involved in rendering a frame. What's producing this CPU load is generating and sending the actual commands to the GPU (API and driver code), and that's the same no matter what the resolution is.

So, if rendering makes up 50% of the current CPU load (I think it's a lot more), you're looking at a 100% increase in CPU load. That means that in CPU bound instances, which is most of the time on recent hardware, three viewpoints could halve your framerate compared to one view. That's significant in my book.

Now this CPU load could obviously be significantly reduced by rendering code that uses modern GPUs and 3D APIs more appropriately, but then we're most likely talking a significant code rewrite, and not a simple fix.

Meh. People running 3 screens are more than likely to have the hardware to back it up. LFS isn't exactly Crysis.

If I only got a 50% reduction in frame rate when using SoftTH, I'd be more than happy.

Quote from wien :

Resolution has zero impact on the CPU load involved in rendering a frame. What's producing this CPU load is generating and sending the actual commands to the GPU (API and driver code), and that's the same no matter what the resolution is.

Rendering for multiple viewports instead of one does not look like an increase of CPU load for me. Meshes, textures are sent once, shadow volumes are calculated one time...most things done three times are 100% on the GPU.

What increases the CPU load is the objects and texture count....but with 120 degrees FOV on one viewport this count is the same than with 120 degrees FOV 3 viewports.

Mirrors are done with an additional viewport...does it double CPU load?
....and mirrors take a LOT more CPU time than viewports because it doubles the object count. So you expect side viewports would take far less time to render than mirror because they cover the same FOV....no need to change scene like for mirrors.

+10 from me