it certainly looks like such a setup will be heaps of fun to play with ... still i dont feel like paying some 1000€ for monitors which will br rubbish for movies
My 1 year plan is to get that and replace my monitors with 3 even 19" 4:3 LCDs. The computer becomes dedicated for racing and a new one takes place of the desktop for other games and admin work.
Does SoftTH allow the centre monitor to run at a different resolution to the side monitors? I have a single 22" 1680x1024 monitor at the moment but I have 2x 1280x1024 19" monitors. Could they be used together ok in LFS?
im not sure if it alows to use monitors with different resolutions but one thing it afaik definately doesnt allow is using reolutions above 4096 which from my understanding is the largest todays graphics cards can render at
and 1280*2+1680 is well above that limit
Different resolutions, yes, different aspect ratios, no. You gotta go all widescreen or not at all. Do you even need widescreen with 3 monitors? You're image would be uber-wide.
Anyway, ordered a X700 as a secondary card, damn those things are cheap now (was only a couple of quid more than an X300 so well worth the extra). Will see how I get on once it turns up.
Ok, that's a shame though although I am not sure what sort of frame rates I would have been left with anyway.
Not so much that I want or need to but what monitors I have available without buying anymore. Also seems a shame to loose the 1680x1024 widescreen which is only a few months old and bought for my LFS machine.
I was just confused by this bit on kegetys site:
Screen resolution used was 3840x960 32bpp, with 1024x768 16bpp on the left and right monitors
as it seemed to imply the middle monitor was running at 1762x960? After what you say though does this mean that the whole scene is rendered at centre screen resolution i.e. 1280x960 then the side images are further processed to a lower resolution?
I have a 17" screen I could try and my motherboard is crossfire capable so I believe the second slot will be fine. Like you say the X700 is now quite cheap and I would like to give this a try.
One further question you might be able to help me with is my main graphics card is an ATI X1850XTX. the monitor is connected through an analogue lead. Do both slots support this so I will need to buy an extra DVI/analogue port convertor and it will drive two analogue monitors?
George, how far do you find you have to sit for your three "22 inch" monitors to be comfortable? I'm very keen on the Triple Head 2Go for flight sim use but I've heard that its also good for LFS and Grand Prix Legends, My THREE Favourite progs!!
Not helpful unless his widescreen TFT will add black bars at the side, otherwise the centre image will be really distorted. And it if does add black bars, they're really going to detract from trying to add additional screens on the sides. AFAIK you're stuffed unless all your monitors are the same aspect ratio.
About the distance it depends, usually I put the screens very close when doing Race Sims, the sense of Speed and immersion is important. LFS looks very good, while Grand Prix Legends has unremoveable black borders on the top and bottom of the screen. That makes the picture quite wide, but thats not the case in LFS.
When I do some flyieng, I tend to change the placements of the screens so I see all switches and buttons in the Cockpit more easily. Here are some views with GPL and Flight Simulator.
I vaguely remember that when I ran the widescreen monitor at 1280x1024 it put black bars on the edges and kept it at 4:3. Bit of a waste but I guess I could just put the side screens in front to line up with this virtual edge which would mean only one screen border between them. I guess it would then depend if the vertical measurement of the monitors is the same. Worth it for a test anyway as I can't buy a third 19" of the same type at the moment as it is out of stock.
I have been thinking about this one too. I am in a rather similar situtation as you. With my limited knowledge of programming it doesn't seem like an impossible thing to do.
I am waiting a offical reply from Kegetys.
Using different aspect ratios is not currently possible, it shouldn't be too hard to add but currently I'm more worried about compatibility with different games. Also, as mentioned already the maximum texture size limit of 4096 pixels is propably going to cause problems with a widescreen monitor as the middle one.
A likely reason for the D3DERR_INVALIDCALL would be the resolution and refresh rate being not supported, but it could also mean a whole bunch of other things... If nothing seems to help you can get a better error description from direct3D by enabling the debug runtime & debug output. Unfortunately the only way I know to enable this is to install the DirectX SDK, the prodecure would go something like this:
- Download the DirectX Software Development Kit from microsoft and install it (~500MB download)
- After installing, go to start/microsoft directx sdk/directx utilities/direct3D control panel
- From the Direct3D tab set the debug output level to maximum and select to use the debug D3D runtime
- Get SysInternals DebugView and run it
- Run the game and let it fail, then look at the DebugView capture for the exact D3D error
If you do this, remember to set the retail runtime back and disable the debug output when you're done or you will get a quite large performance hit in D3D games.
Am I the only one who thinks it doesn't look that great? I don't see any real advantage to having it other than being able to see in the left hand mirror easier, and the outlines of the monitors would annoy me.
I would rather use those monitors to show teamspeak and my desktop with lfsworld on it.
My next setup will - cash allowing - be triple-headed. The main benefit as far as I'm concerned is that the wider FoV will make a massive difference to the sensation of speed.
Did you see the short video Kegetys produced of RBR running on his SoftTH? It looked much, much faster than it does at 4:3 on my monitor, and that was just a tiny video playing on my desktop.
It's a nice setup but it would be super expensive and only be useful for a very small number of games and require insane power.
In my case, I have a 24" Dell LCD with 1920x1200 resolution. I wouldn't settle for anything less than 2 more of those, so that would be around another $1400 USD for 2 more And then there's coping with the resolution of 3x1920 x1200 with AA and AF. Ya rite.
Delivery turned up yesterday while I was out, have yet to pick up the new card to test it all out. Am going to ring them now to see when I can get my package.
A shame, would make for mindblowing screenies with full FSAA.
