"should" in that sentence tells it all

I tried it, but the custom view does not allow me to turn the screen to make the driving experience better than working with only 1 monitor; the only way to get things working is with 3 monitors where the center view is in the middle; but no ATI/NVIDIA card supports more than 2 monitors in 3D Games. Too bad really as I have the perfect setup here (3x TFT 17"-18"-17")

I'm going to look around to see if there is a work-around, but I'm afraid my search will not turn up anything solid.

if the LFS coders could somehow add support for a 2nd monitor so the game *knows* you are using a dual-screen setup, than there is much more hope of getting a special view on the 2nd screen (track layout, Left/Right view, lap times, tyres, damage.. etc)

I've seen it done in Serious Sam (Direct3D) where the game displays your "stats and console" on the 2nd screen, keeping the 1st screen for the 1st person view

Well, I tried yesterday to spread lfs on two monitors. So far it only worked windowed, and as soon as the snd monitor comes into play, the framerate drops to like 2 fps...probably cause it is not hardware accelerated. I read that on nVidia Cards, you have to change the monitor settimngs to horizontal span, but I happen to have an Ati 9600 XT and there isn't such an option.

Tried Hydravision, but that doesn't change a thing...

So, does ATI support 2 D3d accelerated monitors? what do i have to do to archive this?

most likely you need an X8xx X1xxx series ATI card for that

Quote from ellis_dee :

Well, I tried yesterday to spread lfs on two monitors. So far it only worked windowed, and as soon as the snd monitor comes into play, the framerate drops to like 2 fps...probably cause it is not hardware accelerated. I read that on nVidia Cards, you have to change the monitor settimngs to horizontal span, but I happen to have an Ati 9600 XT and there isn't such an option.

Tried Hydravision, but that doesn't change a thing...

So, does ATI support 2 D3d accelerated monitors? what do i have to do to archive this?

There is an option. But I only know where it is in the CCC:

Link.

Check that. Then you can use LFS in dual screen, without 2fps. But the bar down the wheel sucks, and I spent ages trying to fiddle with the views, but if I get it so I could see forwards, and see to my right, I couldn't see out of the left window.

Can it be setup so you can force the wheel to be on the right(left) screen, and the dash and such on the other, so you get a bigger view range?

Quote from P5YcHoM4N :

Can it be setup so you can force the wheel to be on the right(left) screen, and the dash and such on the other, so you get a bigger view range?

been asked before.. unfortunately.. no

Quote from P5YcHoM4N :

There is an option. But I only know where it is in the CCC:

Link.

Check that. Then you can use LFS in dual screen, without 2fps. But the bar down the wheel sucks, and I spent ages trying to fiddle with the views, but if I get it so I could see forwards, and see to my right, I couldn't see out of the left window.

Can it be setup so you can force the wheel to be on the right(left) screen, and the dash and such on the other, so you get a bigger view range?

Yeah, you can actually. You just use the custom view and actually set it to be looking to the left by 20 degrees or something (assuming RHD). That way, whatever you point the view at will be where the bar is on your view. If you set it up right, it feels like you are looking forwards out of one monitor and sideways out of the other.

I tried this but it does not feel natural

Quote from colcob :

Yeah, you can actually. You just use the custom view and actually set it to be looking to the left by 20 degrees or something (assuming RHD). That way, whatever you point the view at will be where the bar is on your view. If you set it up right, it feels like you are looking forwards out of one monitor and sideways out of the other.

I tried that before (and did again today). It feels like your alwasy looking to one side, which is offputting. It also removes most of my left view (even in 120 view angle), if I try and get more left view I get the centre down the wheel again, and I can't see where I'm going.

Meh well, will have to stick to one screen for now.

Quote from Kegetys :

There doesn't even seem to be any way to transfer surfaces from one device to another even if the devices are on the same card, so you cannot render everything on one device and just move the finished frame to the other device to be displayed

Being bored, I tried this again today using a method I thought would be extremely slow. And it is slow, but I still managed to get 30fps on my 3GHz P4 + AGP GF6600GT in 3456x864 resolution, quite low details though. The way it works is that it creates one big surface on the primary video card to which the game renders things normally, and this big surface is then clipped to three parts to be displayed on the other monitors. It's slow since it needs to copy quite a lot of stuff from the video card to the system memory and then back again, it might be much faster with PCI Express card(s).

The thing I need now is a PCI video card so I could actually try it out myself :doh: It works now on two monitors, with both side views drawn onto the seconday monitor (So only one of them is visible but the performance should be quite the same as with a real third monitor). Looks like this.

Quote from Kegetys :

Looks like this.

looks pretty good!

Quote from jmkz :

yes
http://www.tomshardware.com/mo ... html#ten_display_overkill

I just checked this out, looks expensive.

Do yoou reckon I could just add more graphics cards to my exisiting mobo and use 3 monitors in LFS or does it have to be a special board?

I think 3 monitors support would be great and ATI or Nvidea should make a card to support this market. It would make racing games and first person shooters soooooo much better. You could have 180 deg view it would be awesome.

Could someone mod a Parhelia wack some more mem on it + a faster GPU and we're in buisiness . N E1 know PCBS & electronics around here?

Bit of a long shot I know but we need monitor support. Well done to those who wrote to manufacturers I think we all should. (yes DO iT!) show them there is a market and they will make the product, as Scawen said.
Keep badgering them until they do.

Im gona write to them all see what they have to say.

I played with the dual head thing for a bit. I can just stretch the window across multiple screens, but as has been pointed out, that is amazingly slow. Once I told the hardware to treat both screens as a single surface ran fullscreen across both at full framerate. I played some with moving the view around, but unfortunately never ended up with a view that felt better than a single screen.

I've contacted Nvidia about a triple head card, so far no response. If someone finds a person over there that's responsive or willing to get emails to count the demand, i'll resend my request.

you could send emails to www.tomshardware.com www.hardocp.com www.anandtech.com and ask them if they could help by contacting/inquiring with ATI/NVIDIA/MATROX about triple-head cards

Quote from Cue-Ball :

The Parhelia isn't the fastest video card on the planet. I knew that when I bought it. But, when paired with a decent machine it IS fast enough for Live for Speed which is the ONLY game I play on this machine. In fact, this machine was purchased, built, and setup JUST to play LFS. I already had three monitors laying around and knew that the Parhelia was the ONLY way to get three screens working in LFS. So far, i'm quite pleased. I don't get 200fps, but the gameplay is smooth enough to be very playable and the extra monitors make a HUGE difference in the sense of speed and general "feel" of the game. It's a lot more immersive when you have so much of your view taken up by the gaa second machine with a Radeon 9600 and a bigger screen that gets a much higher frame rate but I'd never choose to play on that machine over the "slower" three monitor machine.

What sort of Frame rate do u get with your parhelia?
what detail/res do u use?

Quote from anttt69 :

What sort of Frame rate do u get with your parhelia?
what detail/res do u use?

I posted details about my frame rate either in this thread or in another thread on here. If you do a search on parhelia you should find it.

I've since replaced my Parhelia with a GeForce 6600GT because I will soon be replacing my three screen setup with a widescreen projector.

cool a widescreen projector.

how much are they? and where can I get one?

Quote from anttt69 :

cool a widescreen projector.

how much are they? and where can I get one?

Most projectors these days can display 4:3 or 16:9. Expect to pay $700 for a low end projector with 800x600 max res to over $3K for a higher end HD capable one.

Quote from Kegetys :

The thing I need now is a PCI video card so I could actually try it out myself :doh: It works now on two monitors, with both side views drawn onto the seconday monitor (So only one of them is visible but the performance should be quite the same as with a real third monitor). Looks like this.

But how did u get it 2 work like that?

Without using a Parhelia card you cannot achieve a 3 screen display. I had a 3 screen setup - the problem is the 3rd screen is run by another graphics card - which is where it all goes wrong. Dual screen is dead easy but the split in the centre of the monitor sucks.

Until nVidia or ATI get their fingers out, forget it...

ohh.....
thanks seahorse
test

here is Lfs with 4 Monitors

The trick is easy:
You need 2 Pc,
2 Grafikart with Dualview (Geforce6800Gt & 5900XT).
4 Monitors. (you can use 3 too but the fov is the half when i use Dualview)

a) 1. Pc is Host/ 2. Pc is Client ( for online you need 2 Accounts )

b) Only change to free look camera with secound Pc and addjust with the x,y,z & other coordinates the Pc´s to each other. (Use the same Resolution on the
both Pc)

optionaly c) I put a Joystick in the 2.Pc and use the Program "joytokey" to make some hotkeys over the Joy.

Alt+F5 - Freelook Cam on the client Pc
Shift+Tab - Switch to other cars backward
Tab - Swith to other cars forward

Now its very easy to switch to my own car & cam after Restart & Pitstop

I think it must be possible to make a program or mod like Wideview (www.wideview.it)
Only I idea from non programer. Sry if i disnerved

Hi, I think it's possible to use 3 monitors on a non Parhelia system. You "just" have to own an ati card and a motherboard with an ati chipset.

I think I read that having that combination you can use all the outputs from the graphic card plus the one from the mainboard, so you could have 3 different outputs.



Investigating a little bit would be a good Idea, but I don't even have time to play LFS right now so...

Bye

Oh yeah, don't know if you guys know about it. But there is a 7800GT with four(4) heads. Two DVI, two D-Sub. It costs around $800 on newegg.com. But meh =p

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... .asp?Item=N82E16814121213

Quote from P5YcHoM4N :

Oh yeah, don't know if you guys know about it. But there is a 7800GT with four(4) heads. Two DVI, two D-Sub. It costs around $800 on newegg.com. But meh =p

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... .asp?Item=N82E16814121213

I could be wrong but isn't that just two 7800's in SLI configuration on one card? If so I don't think it will do what we want it too...

what about this new gadget from matrox?
TripleHead2Go

since it is essentially treated as a single triple wide monitor by the computer, would this work?

the nice thing about this is, you can use it with any video card.

.:edit:.
http://www.matrox.com/graphics ... e/th2go/gaming/list.cfm#l
it has the LFS demo listed as a supported game