ISI games dont like the border setting for some reason, I'm not sure what causes it but hopefully I'll find the reason someday. In LFS it also causes the game not to detect it as a triplehead mode anymore so the GUI gets stretched on all monitors, which is something I hope Scawen could fix someday...
Only a guess since I dont know much about SLI, but the SLI profile for the game might be such that doesn't play well with SoftTH.
Anyway, I'm running the latest Omega drivers now, and no change from Catalysts. I'm eyeing up the next version up from my board, exactly the same put sports SLI (not of much use with two ATI cards) and the second full size PCIe slot is 8x rather than 1x. Anyone think that would get this working for me though? I potentially have an MSI K9N Platinum (Socket AM2, nvidia 570 chipset, DDR2) going spare. Hmm.
I will be trying it on a DFI Lanparty UT RDX200CF-DR SKT939 CROSSFIRE Dual PCI-E
According to the specs:
2 PCI Express x16 slots
CrossFire mode - Each x16 slot operates at x8 bandwidth. Single VGA mode - PCIE1 slot operates at x16 bandwidth. PCIE3
slot operates at x1 bandwidth.
1 PCI Express x1 slot
3 PCI slots
So I hope it can be put into 2 x8 without actually doing crossfire otherwise I may be have the same problem as you. I guess I will need to check through the bios. Not sure at this stage what happens to PCIE2 slot (if I even have one)
Well good luck. Noticed last night I noticed I can't even run my 3D screensaver with the third monitor enabled, the monitors all just go blank. Back to starfield for now.
Not really, the X700 I just picked up for £35 is twin output, so if you're motherboard is willing you can have 4 monitors connected up for just £70. And that's assuming you didn't have a graphics card to start with.
But Bob, haven't you been saying that it doesn't work on your box? I've been waiting for you all to get it happening so I can buy a three-monitor setup safe in the knowledge that it will work.
Doesn't work for me - yet - but I will keep at it. Not much I can do about an apparent hardware incompatability until I fork out some more cash. My point being though, if someone had a high spec board to begin with, the cards needn't be expensive... nor the monitors. Some great bargains to be had buying computer parts that are only a few years old. No longer bleeding edge but some very fast 32-bit systems can be picked up at prices most could afford.
Despite other methods discussed here you can use one Graphic Card with the TripleHead2Go Adapter, it costs € 250, than you want three 19" LCD Monitor like for €200 each or three 22inch Monitors for €300 each. I use one Grafic Card (GeForce 7600 GS), 2GB Memory and one single core AMD 3200+@2,45 Ghz.
George, what resolution do you run (isn't the max. vertical resolution 1024 on the TH2G?)? And what sort of frame rates do you get at race starts? That's not exactly a high-spec machine you're using - is it enough?
No, I would recommend a faster Grafic card than I have at the moment. I run all Sims at 3840x1024, in LFS I run 2xAA and 4XAF when I'm riding alone, getting 40 FPS.
But in Multiplayer Races I switch AA and AF to 0. Because the Frame Rate at the Start with 10 cars infront of me drop to 22-26, after some corners I'm back above 35.
So the 7600GS is quite okay but not great for running three 22" screens in LFS, I dont know how the 7600GS performs on three 19inch screens but everything as fast as the 7600GT or faster should be fine, I'm waiting for the 8800GTS prices to come down.
Can't keep it on the road with the change to the FOV and all the extra detail
Frame rates a re down to 40's by myself (Radion X1800XT) so can 16bit modes be set? Only 32 bit modes appear in the list in LFS. Does it take it from the desktop settings?
three 17 inch CRT = around € 150
three 19inch TFT = around € 600
three 22inch TFT = around € 900
three 24inch TFT = around € 2100
three 42inch TV = around € 3000
Thanks Kegetys for the awesome work on SoftTH! You rock, man.
I picked up a third monitor, and PCI video card the other day. I now have an nVidia 6600GT AGP (with two VGA outs), and an nVidia 5500 PCI (one VGA out) attached to three Dell P1130 21" CRTs.
I just wanted to say to anyone (like me) who doesn't have the money to upgrade to a PCI-e motherboard (because it also means buying a new CPU, RAM and video card), that AGP+PCI works great. You just can't go any higher than 2400x600 (800x600 x 3) or the framerate gets choppy.
I assume this is due to the lower bandwidth of PCI not being able to take that much uncompressed image stream fast enough(?), as cranking antialiasing and anisotropic filtering to max has absolutely no effect on the framerate. I don't mind the lower resolution personally, because it still looks great with 8xAA.
The only negative I've noticed is that LFS doesn't work properly with the BorderSize setting changed. I get around it by leaving BorderSize at 0, and moving the screen geometry of the left and right displays in, until the gap is effectively masked, but it would be nice to do that in software and keep the displays whole. Hopefully Kegetys can work with the LFS Team to get that hammered out.
Anyway, once again, thanks for the great work! Three monitors really make a ton of difference in LFS. Now I just need to figure out how to drive without understeering off every other curve.
What kind of FPS do you get with the AGP+PCI setup? When I tried it I got about 15-20fps, but I have made some optimizations to SoftTH later on which might have helped.
I have an 'internal' version with some multihead optimizations which should improve FPS noticeably if one of the monitors is on the same physical card as the primary one. Unfortunately it doesn't help in LFS though as the D3D feature it uses only exists in Direct3D 9...
Another thing I'm just now working on is a "cylindrical" correction feature that tries to remove some of the distortions caused by high FOV. The results look like this (120 degree FOV): http://www.kegetys.net/SoftTH/ ... softth_cylcorrection1.jpg http://www.kegetys.net/SoftTH/ ... softth_cylcorrection2.jpg
There's some different kind of distortion caused by it where straight lines can become curve shaped, but I think it still looks better than without it. Unfortunately, this feature also doesn't play well with LFS as it requires widening the rendered frame, after which LFS again begins stretching the whole GUI to all three monitors like with the border setting. Another problem is the 4096 pixel limit when using a high resolution (except for GF8800 owners).
All readings taken on single player, Blackwood GP Track, clear day, no AI cars, internal (drivers) view in the LX6, AA and AF both set to 0.
All displays set to 1280x1024 = 14fps
All displays set to 1024x768 = 22fps
All displays set to 800x600 = 31fps
All displays set to 640x480 = 37fps
Center display at 1024x768, side displays at 640x480 = 30fps
Center display at 800x600, side displays at 640x480 = 36fps
System specs in case you are curious:
Windows XP Media Center Edition Version 2002 Service Pack 2
AMD Athlon 2500+ Barton 1.833GHz CPU
ASUS A7N8X Deluxe nForce 2 Motherboard
1GB DDR 333MHz (PC 2700) RAM
nVidia GeForce 6600GT 128MB AGP video card (dual VGA out)
nVidia GeForce FX5500 128MB PCI video card (single VGA out)
Nice frame rates considering the AGP+PCI combo. I'm really gonna have to order a new motherboard seeing as I've got a second graphics card plugged in I'm not actually using.
If you want a prod to help you along, I can confirm that the effect is great and really adds to the sense of speed.
I have a 1024x768 projector that I used to use. That does give a great feeling of scale but I still prefer the 3 monitor setup for the extra surrounding detail it offers. I have a very similar setup to you in that I am using a 1800XT. running it at 1280x1024 32 bit with 4xAA and 6xAF T1 is a bit jerky at 22-25fps but other than that I get about 36fps which is what GPL uses and is no problem to race online with.
Does anyone know if these frame rates would be limited totally by the pci transfer rate, or would there be improvement on an overall faster system?
But I guess the difference between a PCI card and a cheap PCI-E card isnt really enough to bother with finding out.
Kegetys,
Are you planning on making SoftTH compatible with monitors of varying aspect ratio? If you're considering it, heres another user that would be happy if you did!
I think its cool when I see someone posting about SoftTH on other forums, like widescreengaming, because I say to myself "hey he did it for LFS and I play LFS, so i kinda know him..."
There are no overlapping regions in the image produced by the game, the edges you have with a triple monitor setup are the monitor edges, there's no way to 'chop' them off (at least with software, an axe might work :P). With properly placed projectors there would be no edges.
