I'm sorry to create a new thread, but I think in this case its deserving, I have just found out that this game already has proper multi view multi monitor support BUILT-IN for as many monitors as you would like to connect... here's the kicker. I don't even think the guys who made the game know about it...

Now, as with anything new and untested here's the problem. Because I don't even think they know they put this feature in the game it's a little hard to access and a little tricky to configure. I am hoping... no, praying... that one of the dev's reads this thread and can add this into the menu system so it can be properly utilized.

In some other threads i've discussed what is in my opinion the best possible sollution for sense of speed, FOV, and immersion into the sim, Here it is:

We need to be able to run as many displays as we want to run or as many as we can afford. Each screen needs to have its own camera angle that can be adjusted.. your Main screen would stay the exact same as it is right now, its just you would have a second camera and angle it a little to the left.. that then would be your left monitor display. You can match the angle of the camera to the exact angle of the display...

This way if I had the room and the money I could go get three over head projectors and three 133 inch screens and build a large box as follows:

|---------------|
|....................|
|.......SIM........|
|.......PIT.........|
|....................|

Forgive the bad drawing, imagine you have 133 inch screen in front of you, and 133 inch screen on each side. Your simpit is in the middle of it all... Yes i know your sitting about 4 feet away from a 11 foot screen... Yes i'm a little crazy, ask my wife. Now, right now this setup wont work because if you use SoftTH or TripleHead2Go your making one long monitor... you can adjust FOV but you will distort things on the edges.. so this would not work at all

But..

But..

what if...

Let me ask you this...

If I just did that EXACT same setup but only did the single 133 inch screen in the middle I can go on my merry way and race online... but guess what.. here's where things get interesting.

You Can Spectate Me!!!

ok, so what, you can spectate me... you can get in my car while im racing.. and go into your menu... you can then change the view as you see fit. You can turn off the drawing of the car, the dri
ver, the wheel and wait.. omfg, you can turn left...

Now what if I piped that image onto my left screen.

Did I just say that?

I can run 3 PC's networked with 3 copies of the game and spectate myself... I can then change the angles so I have full left and right view, I just tried it online...

OR

if your PC can support it.. since from what I understand LFS only uses one core...

I can run LFS in three instances on my PC, one on each screen, one running on each core (if you have quad core) and spectate myself. I have not checked what the frame rate would be like if you did this, or if it would even run or crash on one PC. But in theory it is possible. I know I can run LFS twice at once on my PC.

The only view that would not work yet is rear view, because they limit the amount that the drivers head can turn left or right. Thats a very easy fix.

All we need is this put into one menu... and if possible so that the spectators can be local so I can go online and show as only one person, instead of 3 or 4.


All this time the answer was right in front of me and I didnt even see it....

Please please please talk about this guys, it's so close to coming true... you could run 1, 2, 3, 4 whatever.. projectors, LCD monitors, CRT's... you could run 8 screen surround gaming if you wanted to... it would be nuts and if any game deserves it, its this one.

-wtf im nameless

and don't forget if you do it with multiple PC's using one screen per PC you could do:

Main View
Left View
Right View
Rear View
Sky cam on ceiling
Road cam on white painted floor
You in your cockpit in the middle of the room
3 x Real rear view mirrors since, you know.. there's a 133 inch screen behind you.

running 1920x1080 each all locked at 60FPS for silky smooth graphics even if your online racing 20 people.

The game already supports all but the rear view since the drivers head can't turn like an owl...

It would just be such a pain in the ass to have to boot each pc, load each copy of the game with 6 different keyboards and mice.. and join each lobby each time. The only thing that needs to be done is the main PC is the server and all other PC's or instances of the game are set as slaves with pre-defined camera angles that just follow you around from game to game.. that part of it can be done locally without going online so when you do go online you just show up as one person and no one even knows the difference on their end...

I don't know how the game could get better if that was done like that. omfg it would be nuts nuts nuts.

This doesn't work online (without lots of licenses) and you'd have to run windowed.

Quote from Jakg :

This doesn't work online (without lots of licenses) and you'd have to run windowed.

I understand you'd need one licence per game online with the way it is right now.... and as for it running windowed that may be only if you run it on one PC, if you had 3 x PC, 3 x monitors and 3 x games.... would there be an issues then?

No, but I dont really think that having a semi-high spec PC for each monitor is a "sennsible" solution.

Quote from Jakg :

No, but I dont really think that having a semi-high spec PC for each monitor is a "sennsible" solution.

Neither is spending thousands on motion.. but, there are certain things in life that cannot be done both properly and inexpensively.

Some people do it one way, some the other. There is no right or wrong in this situation.. some people would think its crazy, others would do it in a heart beat.

I know it would not be cheap, but for the level of immersion it would give you, the sense of speed.. fov? yeah, its now obsolete.

My PC peaks at 333.3 FPS on some parts of this game with everything max'd and probably averages 200FPS when racing with lots of AI.. with the price to power ratio of PC's now I don't think you'd need much to run this game at 60FPS locked.

ok... so no jokes.. it works.

Yes, its running in windowed mode right now because its being driven off one computer but, the frame rate is bad.

But I am currently playing single player triple screen with seperate camera angles all alligned up and oh my god let me tell you... it is sick sick sick sick

wow... i'll see what I can do about some pics or video.



Triple screen triple PC setup here we come.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHl_6tuuFc4

Here it is in action.

Please keep in mind I just got this idea this morning so it will be tweaked to run in full screen mode with proper frame rate.

But this gives you an idea of what can be done.

Check out the rear view mirrors... it is hard to capture with a camera, but when your playing with ai,... and you see them in the rear view then they pull up beside and pass.. it looks unreal.. You just can't capture it with a camera because from where I sit you can only capture one monitor at a time with the camera, but my eyes capture all 3... anyways, i hope this at least starts a good conversation and can get this idea pushed in the right direction.

Enjoy all

-nameless

I've done something very similar to this before (before I got my second graphics card), so had the third monitor attached to the second PC. I had tried making the images stitch onto the side though, which just doesn't work as you get two FOV centers, neither of which are in the center of the main monitor. Using the side monitors for left and right view seems much more feasible though, I like it.

Still, requiring multiple licences to get round a software limation doesn't seem ideal, and potentially 2 or 3 PCs isn't great either. But yes, it's certainly workable.

All im thinking is that the game can already run proper 3 screens or more... its just a messy way of having to do it.

I don't know how big of a job it would be to add a feature like this, but if the devs could add a menu in the game where you could either run multiple camera angles on one screen thats divided in three, so this feature would work with SoftTH or TripleHead2Go then you could run it triple screen with one pc and one licence.

or, if you could make it so if you own a licence, there was a way to launch LFS as some sort of a slave and all it would do is spectate a local PC. Even if your racing online, you still show up as only one person..
the slave is just connected localy and is totally seperate from the online portion... You could either load a couple copies of the slave on your single PC with 3 monitors and run it windowed like in my video... or you can run it on another PC that is connected on your lan...

One of those two things would be so sweet... because right now the one thing you could not do with my current setup is hot laps.

i have had an idea that would knock it down to two screens. Have a curved screen at the front and a curved screen at the back, then have projectors pointing at them. Adjust the field of view so you don't get out of proportion view. Because they are gonna be curved, the left and right side of light would hit the screen quicker and it would be closer than the light coming from the centre so changing the field of view would work. you may need to adjust the angle of the curvature of the screens. just a suggestion, i will draw a diagram some how if you like

OR

get a set of video goggles and a TrackIR set much cheaper than buying two £1000 projectors

Quote from wtf im nameless :

or, if you could make it so if you own a licence, there was a way to launch LFS as some sort of a slave and all it would do is spectate a local PC. Even if your racing online, you still show up as only one person..
the slave is just connected localy and is totally seperate from the online portion... You could either load a couple copies of the slave on your single PC with 3 monitors and run it windowed like in my video... or you can run it on another PC that is connected on your lan...

One of those two things would be so sweet... because right now the one thing you could not do with my current setup is hot laps.

That wouldn't be a bad idea. I'm probably completely wrong, but I wouldn't think it would dramatically reduce framerate if you ran it that way. Like you stated, it would just be LFS running three views, which wouldn't really add that much more strain to the CPU. I would really like to see this developed farther by the devs, maybe as a second-program-running-in-the-background sort of add-on.

Quote from vane :

i have had an idea that would knock it down to two screens. Have a curved screen at the front and a curved screen at the back, then have projectors pointing at them. Adjust the field of view so you don't get out of proportion view. Because they are gonna be curved, the left and right side of light would hit the screen quicker and it would be closer than the light coming from the centre so changing the field of view would work. you may need to adjust the angle of the curvature of the screens. just a suggestion, i will draw a diagram some how if you like

OR

get a set of video goggles and a TrackIR set much cheaper than buying two £1000 projectors

IMO two screens would not work, and why I personally would not like it.

I want to do this for my side vision. curved projection won't give me an image on my sides that gives me a good sense of speed.

I can also use the main 120-133 inch screen for movies and xbox and regular PC...

in adition to that calibrating a curved screen so it looks right would be a lot more challanging than 3-4 flat screens.

My issue with TrackIR is that if im racing a car, sure i'll turn my head to look around, but normally I just use my eyes to look around, not my whole head. Just like real life the moving background should be stationary and my head and eyes should move to see the things around me... I'm sure you'd get used to a TrackIR, but its too different from real life for me to want one... I dunno, I might still order one to try it out and see.. but we'll see.

I did a similar video using just SoftTH normally, i'll upload it as well so you guys can compare the two, what a huge difference.

ok, here's normal SoftTH:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RLdaGkUNsw

Here's my multi view:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHl_6tuuFc4

Notice how much more side angle you get and how the lines on the road line up much more. I will get the FOV even better on the multi view setup and get some better videos... its hard to drive a manual while trying to tape 3 screens at once. The red tool box is really noticable on the left when you compare the two...

I suggested this some time ago in a thread.

Nice to see you have tried it and confirmed that it works.
Do the side screens lag behind or is the movement smooth? I guess spectating would add some lag..

I think the best way to do this would be some kind of "view only" -version of LFS that would connect to main LFS. This slave version would not need a licence because it does not do anything on its own.

offtopic: i just figured out how to cheat in _any_ FPS-game

Quote from wtf im nameless :

I have just found out that this game already has proper multi view multi monitor support BUILT-IN for as many monitors as you would like to connect...

The main problem I'd see with that solution is possible lag differences between instances of LFS running when in online player mode, which is why I suggested the following some time ago.

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=24768

Don't think too many got what I was on about though

I will have to test if the lag is a lot worse online... single player it is amazing... the delay is so small you don't notice it at all unless you look for it.

Quote from wtf im nameless :

I will have to test if the lag is a lot worse online... single player it is amazing... the delay is so small you don't notice it at all unless you look for it.

Oh forgot to mention some online servers kick spectstors if they don't actively race after a certain amount of time and also for me being in Australia having multiple instances of LFS with multiple streams of data will always cause lag, even though I'm on the fastest net you can get here

I did ask Scawen a long time ago about the possibility of FS style of multimonitor support and he said at that time it wasn't practical due to it requiring a complete rewrite LFS, I've never had the chance to ask about a local relay client though other than to post an improvement suggestion

I agree 100% that that type of multimonitor support would kick ass though.

See thats the thing, i'm no programmer so I might be missing something huge but.. I think something along these lines might work if someone can make it happen.

There's a lot of input/output features when it comes to this game. Tachs, speedos, secondary LCD's that give you information on your game.

Obviously this game is piping out a lot of information.

From what I understand the demo of this game is the same as the full version, you just need to put in account information to unlock it.

If you included a menu in the demo version of the game that could take whatever extracted information it needed to do nothing more than create an exact non playing duplicate, a specate mode if you will of the main game it would solve all licencing issues (unless the devs wanted to charge for each monitor, which im sure some people myself included would pay.. look at it like a fee for putting this feature in the game).

I would assume it would be easiest to do this on a single PC running windowed mode, which would be ok.

The next level would then be to be able to pipe this information via lan, not the internet to a second PC for a second, third or fourth full screen display.

The other option is this.. We already know that the game runs on SoftTH and TripleHead2Go. I myself run SoftTH at 5040x1050 resolution and it looks great.. so we know that it is possible to force LFS to run at super wide resolutions..

That brings me to my next point, when your playing LFS what is a rear view mirror? Its a box thats showing you another camera angle in game. It is no different than my proper triple screen demo... the box is just too small and showing the wrong angle.

We need a menu in game that works like this

# of monitors: 1,2,3,4

If you run two or more monitors for gaming your already running SoftTH or TripleHead2Go so that takes care of your wide resolution, so the game just has to do this:

If you select two monitors, it gives you two views, no different than your main view and your rear view mirror. It just divides the screen differently.. instead of your main view looking forward and your "virtual" rear view mirror which is just a small box with a second camera angle it does this:

You have two views, the screen is cut right down the middle and it auto configures the angle based on your resolution and FOV settings (or you can do it manually) SoftTH or TripleHead2Go figure out the resolutions on their own.

If you select 3 screens it does this same thing but divides the screen into 3, again softTH or triplehead2go spread that one image over 3 monitors and your done.

We already know that the game can have your main view, three in car rear view mirrors plus a virtual rear view mirror. Thats already 5 different camera angles in the game at once. Heheheh you can keep your in car rear view mirrors... i'll take triple screen and my virtual rear view mirror instead. Just change the size of the mirrors to the size of the side monitors and move the camera angle to correspond.

It just looks to me like everything needed for 100% proper multi view is already built into the game.. you just need to change the size and angle of the rear view mirrors and left SoftTH do the rest... or take it to the next level and extract it on a second PC on your Lan and be able to run unlimited monitors and views.. my god can you imagine? You could even combine the two idea's so you could run up to 8 screens on two PC's at a playable frame rate.

This maybe of interest to you also

http://www.lfsforum.net/showth ... p;highlight=corrected+fov

It does suggest that someone with programing skill maybe able to create such an app for tripple screens also or you could use it with two PC's for a three or four screen (full screen) setup with two accounts.

Here's some updated pics using my mad ms paint skills to explain what im talking about and to hopefully keep this thread alive. We need true triple screen support in a game this good... there's many ways to do it.







Before Video: (Normal SoftTH 5040x1050)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RLdaGkUNsw


After Video: (1680x1050 Windowed Mode X3 Games running - 2 specators plus main screen - so 3 camera angles)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHl_6tuuFc4

It can not work...your center view is real-time, refreshed 60 times per second for example, but your side views are interpolated using the last two or three positions given by server.

That is why for example when you spectate and there is connection lag, the car you spectate seems to crash, and then jumps back to the road...because LFS misses data and interpolates until the car crash, and then receives an update with new car position.

As soon as car movements are not smooth, side views will start to lag badly and turn by steps.

This would only happen if you have a poor connection with the server and only if the devs cannot impliment this into the game.

If the rendering of the side screens was being done locally there would never be any lag... Also if you look at the pics on my last post the rear view mirrors are no different than side views.. they are just smaller and looking the wrong way.

How do you think Forza 2 does it on Xbox360... or Gran Turismo 4 does it on PC2... even rFactor added this feature on their last patch, it's just too bad the game has major flaws in it other than the triple view.

I have tried this some time ago, and as Juls says, the other views do lag. I've been hoping for some development in this area.

It might be possible to write an app that takes existing connection data, and fake serving to the secondary machines via a pipe or com model to the local clients. Using LAN has a higher update rates it appears, so the lag is not as bad but still present. The local clients only see aggregated position data ie incoming/outgoing and connected in spectator mode only can be used for the other viewpoints. The clients do not send data to the main connection. My programming skills aren't up to the task, and besides, messing with LFS net code might not be legitimate use of the licence.

Having just replied to Juls' topic and another on multiplayer bandwidth throttling, it dawned on me that we might need a new API

-OutScreen-

A UDP connection, in the same vein as outsim/outgauge that would enable other LFS running PC's to connect locally as dumb clients. A higher rate of position updates could be used to solve the problem of position lag. This would also reduce internet connection bandwidth (all the data is present locally anyway), and save server slots.

Quote from Squelch :

Having just replied to Juls' topic and another on multiplayer bandwidth throttling, it dawned on me that we might need a new API

-OutScreen-

A UDP connection, in the same vein as outsim/outgauge that would enable other LFS running PC's to connect locally as dumb clients. A higher rate of position updates could be used to solve the problem of position lag. This would also reduce internet connection bandwidth (all the data is present locally anyway), and save server slots.

Now that, sounds good.