Hello

I recently tried 2 and 3 monitor setups with not acceptable results for me. The main reasons were too much space and cables and very narrow viewing spot for proper horizon alignment.
Actually i had to return a Dell U2717DA because of the terrible "PLS glow" (not existent with my old U2711 IPS) and washed out colors.

So i decided to go with a VA ultra wide panel.
But before i do, i did a test with my favorite games to check the current 21:9 support.

As you can see from the image, Richard Burns Rally (with fixup plugin) and Beam NG support the ultra wide ratio and getting more viewing area left and right (always with the same default FOV).

Live For Speed and X-Plane handle this differently, mostly i think due to the integrated multi monitor support they have. They both actually crop the viewing area, more wide means more cropping occurs, bottom for X-plane and centered top-bottom for Live For Speed (both games always set with 100 FOV). The obvious fix for this is to change the FOV but then again this changes my perspective i may have already set.
This is good for multi monitor setups but not so good for an ultra wide.

I would like to know what you people think about this and if anyone has tried something different or has a suggestion, maybe something that i completely missed.

Thanks

I think LFS and X-plane just do what they should. The FOV is set to 100° and is consistent in all cases - you always see the same horizontal portion of the view. In RBR, the actual FOV is narrower at 4:3 than at 21:9.

I agree, all 4 games do what they should in different ways, not wrong ways.
My argument is that FOV and viewing area are two different things in virtual environments. For the same given area (pixels), one has to increase the FOV to see more (distorted), in real life you have fixed FOV and larger viewing area, like RBR and BeamNG do, adding more viewing area left and right with the same FOV.

So, LFS and X-plane crop top and bottom area and make everything bigger, while RBR and BeamNG add left and right keeping everything in the same size.

Please, let me rephrase: is there a way in LFS to add left and right area without changing FOV?

Maybe in the future we could change this with a switch for either ultra wide screens or multi monitor setup.

The difference is between games that use vertical FOV and games that use horizontal FOV. LFS is the latter.

When the screen is wider, the same FOV will cover the same distance, therefore you will see less vertically.

To display more horizontal, you should just increase the FOV. This will distort geometry more as you are squeezing everything down. There is no way around this. Any option to "add left & right" areas would do exactly the same. The only way to remove all distortion is to use a physically correct FOV, but most people prefer to see a bit more. The usual FOV is also very distorted but you are just used to it.

LFS also has options for additional left & right viewports for triple (or more) screens. These can be angled to match the angle of the display which reduces the distortion a little depending on the FOV, however on a super widescreen display you'd be able to see the seamline where the viewports touch.

If you adjust the horizontal FOV to match the same vertical height in LFS, the same area covered by the original screen and the new screen will have the same distortion, not more, not less. The distortion only appears more because of the extra area which wasn't rendered before.

Quote from PeterN :

...games that use vertical FOV and games that use horizontal FOV...

That was my hypothesis also, thank you for the confirmation.

Quote from PeterN :

however on a super widescreen display you'd be able to see the seamline where the viewports touch

Except if you set the "screen angle" at 0 degrees (if i understood correctly).

However, i have tried the "multiple screen layout" and on ultra wide gives the exact same result with half "main screen FOV".
As you already said, there is no way around it, so far.