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Multi-Head Gaming
Anonymous Coward writes "A new hosted site at PlanetQuake called Multi-Head Gaming has got pictures of Unreal Tournament running on 5(!) monitors and Quake and Quake III Arena running on 2. It has also got a small howto with details how to set it up yourself on Linux and Windows 2000."
I can verify that this did indeed work with earlier versions of DOOM; the other machines were basically slave clients. Precluded multiplayer action, though.
For some reason, this feature was removed from later versions of the DOOM software (1.666?, 1.8? I can't remember).
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Is it really, though? Why should game developers spend any decent amount of time on a feature that only a tiny fraction of a percentage of the users would benefit from? Seems like it would drive the prices of the games up and stretch out the release date...
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
If you could somehow squish the N monitors together, then it would be cool, but those damned borders on each monitor make it difficult on my eyes. I could not imagine playing with more than one monitor unless you could seemlessly connect the various monitors...
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
but i worked with one and he set up something similar for me with a flight sim game. a quadra 800 with a 21" monitor for the the front view, two single page view screens for the side and another single page view screen on the floor for bombing.
in all the whole thing was pretty cool.
the year? why it was 1993...
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Who runs Quake 3 in X? Windows 2000 for the games, baby!
I like to play games, but I also value my soul...
Your Working Boy,
Actually, this has already become a reality in some ways. If any of you have ever been to a Virtual World site (BattleTech (Mech Combat)/Red Planet (Hovercraft racing)) you'll have seen this in action. A relatively weak computer (PPro200) and a massive video system to control almost a dozen monitors.
Quite interesting actually.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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THANK GOD!!!
Technically possible, yes. But since AGP is a port and not a bus, you'd have to find a chipset that has more than one AGP port. I've never heard of any such beast existing. Easiest way would be to have those built under contract by VIA, Intel or someone... if you have a few millions to spare.
yeah, it's technically possible. agp is very similar to pci, but it is faster, and you don't have to share the bus with other devices.
quick example here:
$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 440BX/ZX - 82443BX/ZX Host bridge (rev 03)
(stuff deleted)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Matrox Graphics, Inc. MGA G200 AGP (rev 03)
the number in the leftmost column is the pci bus. as you can see, `00' is the `real' pci bus, while the agp bus is `01'. i don't know if this is because agp is just a souped-up pci bus, or if it just looks like one for compatibility. either way, pci is cool.
so a mobo manufacturer could slap another agp connector on a single agp bus, but since both cards would have to share that bus, you would run the risk of maxxing it out, resulting in crappy framerates.
what you really want is a mobo with dual agp busses, one slot on each. a quick search on google turns up... a bunch of false positives, like dual-cpu mobos with a single agp port. but i'm sure it won't be long before dual-agp boards are all over.
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At one point after the DOOM source code was released, somenoe made patches to run DOOM multheaded. One monitor was your regular view, one was 90% left and one was 90% right. Setup like this:
| O |
_
It used three computers and a network game to do this. If you played it cooperative it was like the normal game with the extra views. If you played it deathmatch, you could only have two people in the game (one person on a single screen and one person on 3) - the maximum 4 players.
I cant seem to find the info or the patches, but they are out there somewhere. My friends and I ran it once. Does anyone know if and where these might still be lurking around?
~GoRK
I'm lucky enough to have a projection screen at home. While I haven't played Quake, or other computer FPS shooters on it in ages, I have played various console games with 3d perspective on it. I.e., Golden Eye on N64, various racing games on Dreamcast, etc. I've never had the slightest problem with it, nor have my friends ever complained. However, I only play such games once in a blue moon and for limited periods of time.
It is best for a flight simulator, as mentioned above. You can see the "sides" of the airplane by glancing left or right, and the bars between the monitors are kind of like the bars between windows in a car or airplane
:)
Remember DOOM and the -left and -right options for network play? Did multiple monitors with a network card, not 3 video cards, just 3 computers
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Gosh you know there are a couple of things here that struck me. First off, I was doing this on my Macintosh Quadra 840AV back in 1995? with a game called Hornet. Hornet by Graphic Simulations was originally a Macintosh game and they supported multiple monitors right out of the box. I could set up three monitors with forward and side views and be quite competitive I thought. When it came time to develop the next version of the game, the Mac version was ported from Windows and I lost the ability to use multiple monitors!! Those Bastards.
The other thing is that looking at these screen shots on this site, the multiple monitors appear to stretch the monitor image over the multiple monitors with difficult breaks right in the middle of the screen where you would want to target. Graphic Simulations did away with this by truly supporting multiple monitors and not having say one intrument overlap on two monitors, or in the first person shoot em up perspective, my rocket launcher would not be split onto two or three monitors making targeting difficult.
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In games that support it, do video in a window and drag the window across all the monitors. Should work, but be a bit slower than fullscreen mode.
Doom 1 did this in a way. You had three separate computers networked together with IPX, and start a left and right and center view with a special command line option.
It looks like the 5-monitor NT was in software mode, stretched across 5 monitors (the software renders into system memory, passes it to DirectX, which splits it up and copies into 5 video cards' display memory). It looks like the Linux dual-head system is using 3D/OpenGL acceleration which is supported by GLX. That is much cooler, IMHO.
Bumper stickers are probably already for sale someplace.
--
"I have a good idea why it's hard to verify programs. They're usually wrong." --Manuel Blum, FOCS 94
Anyone know of a motherboard that has more than one AGP slot? Is this technically possible?
I've run win98 with 2 monitors, on and off for over a year now. It's great.
I was first introduced to this on a Mac. We were doing video editing. Work area on one screen, video sample/output on the other. Worked great. And Photoshop multi-head is GREAT. Dump tools and layers, heck, all of you pallettes on the secondary, and use your primary full screen to do editing. Just scroll your mouse off the side of the screen, and it appears on the other.
Now the reason I asked about dual AGP is that multihead gaming sounds interesting, but my secondary card is a piece of crap PCI, card, and I refuse to buy a good PCI video card, with a spare 16 meg Banshee AGP sitting on my desk.
Well, this is probably trolling territory, but hey...
Win2000 is not too bad for games. Here's what I've found:
Halflife: Runs fine.
UnReal Tournament: Runs fine.
Caesar III: Runs fine.
Alpha Centauri: Runs fine.
Diablo II: Runs fine.
Powerchess (v1): Fails to run
Star Trek: Birth of the Federation: Won't even install.
Warlords III: One or two unexplained hangs.
(Runs fine usually means 5-10+ hours of play.) That's really not so bad. Really, I'd suspect that most of the latest games will run fine.
The cake is a pie
Problem for Windows is that the DirectX 3D component is currently designed to recognize only one card as accelerated. Wonderfully shortsighted. But i suppose it was just centered around "3D will come from an AGP card and there's only one AGP slot." OpenGL could probably handle it under Windows, but i doubt there's drivers for multi-head support of hardware acceleration out there now.
Best hope is some people doing work on getting MesaGL working with multi-head under XFree86. I've been running two TNT2's for my X setup for a while now and that works great. So i'd guess it's a matter of getting the GL libs up to speed for working with 2 or more cards at the same time. Probably tricky for dealing with which card does the triangle transforms for triangles that span across screen boundaries.
Love to have that peripheral vision, though..
--ether
This would be awesome with a couple of flat panel LCD monitors that don't have the border plastic - stick em all together and it would look like one huge screen
except that it would be too expensive for almost everyone - at least i can dream, i can't even afford a second monitor itself
Two wrongs don't make a right, three lefts do!
It seems such a waste to drop all that money on monitors and video cards, just to turn around and use software rendering and get 20fps? I'd be much more impressed if hardware rendering could be used.
(Of course, i suppose some of this could just be my lack-of-five-monitors jealousy talking =-> )
I've got two heads, but one does not play games.
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I can see multi-head setups actually being more useful in other gaming genres, some of which would like to push a tremendous amount of information at the player at once.
Okay, so a rear view would be nice in an FPS, but I don't think with current technology that we could really take the frame rate hit. On the other hand,
IMHO, things like flight sims, some driving games, and the occasional RPG, frame rates are of no issue, the game wants to push lots of data, and the viewer actually has time to look at more than one display.
My $0.02
However, since you can adjust the field of view in all the games, you could increase it enough to compensate for the wider screen, angle the side monitors some, and have surround-video. ^_^
/set cg_FOV = <somedegrees>
I know in Q3A it's
Of course, it also would increase the vertical FOV, so things would be compressed. Hmm . . . someone needs to write a mod for Q3 so that the extra monitors can actually do something usefull. Like, attach one to a specator viewport that is attached to your player's position, then you could point it even behind you and hey, a rear-view mirror! Of course, that would be cheating, and we wouldn't do that.
--
Cherish. Live. Dream.
I may actually have to sell my car and current computer in order to spend the rest of my life playing surround-video Quake. Anyone looking to buy an Integra?
he needs some of the 32" mitsubishi monitors they have at the conference center i used to work at. not just TVs with scan converters, actual monitors..
we put quake 1 on a laptop and sneaked in the storage room one night.. hooked the laptop up to the monitor, and routed sound through some really nice headphones.. we could only play for about 5 minutes, though, because we got motion sickness..
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With any FPS, flight sim, driving game, etc., the more screen real estate you have, the more emmersive the game is.
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It's too bad about the edges of the monitors! That's sort of like how parrots see: they ordinarily would have a big black line down the center of their image (in their brains), but instead they close one eye and turn their heads.
The world would be a much better place if cathode rays were just allowed to swing freely without borders, irradiating the eyes of all and exciting the phosphors of the world. Ahh, to dream!
At the intel Game Demo lab we have a 52" plasma screen that we play quake - or any other game - on.
;)
it is great - except the fact that it is wider than your direct vision... and in a fast paced CTF game, it makes it really hard to track foes.
your conical vision is much better suited for 20 - 30"
But it is REALLY cool to play on a 52" plasma monitor! even if you do get whacked a few more than normal....
also, You can get dual monitor cards and run multiples in a 98... so for not way too much $$ it would be pretty easy to get 4 monitors on a box. (not too much $ for the cards that is... not the monitors
but the real problem with multi-screen gaming is the LARGE ASS PLASTIC BORDERS that the monitor manufacturers dont seem to realize are both useless and a pain in the ass. They should focus on full use monitors that allow you to put them next to eachother without big chunks. (the only time this would be semi cool - is if you desing a cockpit interface that thinks the monitor breaks are the window support arms.....)
Now, the best thing to do with this is, when someone else is playing, get them to leave for a minute. Then move all the monitors around and watch the fun unfold.
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2) Buy four video projectors and construct a 180-degree, curved, wraparound screen, ala "Toys." Preferably wear shutter glasses in addition.
3) ~20fps @ 320x240 on a Voodoo3? It's no GeForce DDR, but c'mon... somebody oughta optimize games/drivers for dual-head gaming.
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What you do is connect two separate Quake 2 Clients to the same server. You play normally with one of them, and act as a spectator with the second. I would spectate myself, 3rd-person perspective (on the CTF Servers that would support it), and zoom out and up, so that I'd be looking down at my own charater. It was a great way to see anyone that might be creeping up on me from behind, and watching myself get fragged was usually pretty cool too.
With a third client you could stick with 1st person perspective, and simply "zoom" in as much as possible -- creating a sort of permanent sniper view.
Note that this works far better on "local" games than it does for internet games. The way that I got around this was to use Microsoft Proxy (at the time I was running NT, nowadays I'd just use a linux IP/Masq box) on my main game station, and then hook up the client(s) through a second adapter. That way, your main machine will get all of the packets that it can handle, and the leftover bandwidth would get sent to the client machines. This probably works better with MS Proxy simply because Linux IP/Masq will split up the connection so much better than MS Proxy. Even if your "client" machines are getting 10 fps or less, you don't really need realtime updates to your "rearview mirror" -- it's not like you can look at it all the time anyway.
--Cycon
Your Brain + EEG + LEGO Robots = Brainstorms
Ya, not only that, Win2000 sucks for games too! If your going to sell you soul, go all the way and use Win98SE and get all the bonus cool graphics and sound stuff.
Playing any game on Win2000 is like playing it on Linux.
Linux O Muerte!
and don't forget that with Microsoft's new lisencing plans you may need two copies of Windows.
-Ted
Using two monitors is a bitch because you're going to make yourself ill trying to target something in the middle of the screen (where the monitors merge).
Now, if you had three - maybe a 19" in the center and two 17"s for left and right 45 degrees, that would rock pretty hard. Or, I suppose, getting a widescreen view (it would be more useful IMHO to have the 45 degree views).
If I remember right, you could do this via network controls on DOOM in c. 1994? (the center screen one 486, and the two 45 degree displays powered by 2 more 486s).
Very cool, though. :)
..don't panic
'nuff said.
..don't panic
I seem to recall the original Doom shareware release (v1.0*) had a feature whereby you could run it on a network, using three machines as your own. each processor would drive one screen, and one would be center, one left, one right, etc, which you set up on the command line.
;)
this would be a better solution than the multi-monitor one, as:
a) you have to have many video cards, using up lots of slots and hence making the machine useless for anything else.
b) it runs at very, very low res.
if you could play quake/unreal/strip-frag-poker 2000 on multiple machines that way, you could have each running at their max resolution, have your slower/lo-res machines doing your peripheral vision etc
fross
>Not like too many people in slashdot uses Windows Me and 98 but I want to note that they
>support multihead/multi-videocards. I tried it in 2D but I'm not too sure about using it in 3D.
Windows98SE and presumably ME only provide D3D or OGL acceleration on the primary video card. A Voodoo3 can provide Glide compatibility when used as a second video card. This limits the fun for gaming with 3D acceleration.
I hadn't considered trying to run in SW mode with UT before. I'll try that tonight when I get home. I have a Rage128 AGP as primary and Voodoo3 3000 PCI as secondary on my home machine.
Ideas in this comment are smarter than they appear.
Multi-Head Porn. All the porn, more head.
t
It doesn't increase the range of vision at all.. it just stretches the original pixels to something MUCH wider than it used to be. Notice how the gun the guy is wielding takes up most of two monitors? :P
Now see, if it actually gave you periphrial vision.. or even if you could turn around in your chair and see what was behind you, THAT would be cool.
Since I can only watch one monitor at a time, and the space between the monitors is just a touch distracting, I'll stick to one. It sounds like one of those things that is done, just to say it can be done, but long-term, the world asks.. "why?"
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One thing they should do is clip the edges of the images displayed on each monitor so that the relative edges of the images meet seamlessly between each monitor. When turning or moving, your environment shouldn't jump four inches in either direction as the view is changed!
If the displays were aligned in this fashion, the illusion of multiple window panes through which one can view a singular world would be experienced. More horizontal stretch would occur, but if a system were to be designed to take full advantage of multiple-monitor displays in providing peripheral vision and side views, the effect would be to allow you to view more of the displayed world, maintaining image aspect ratios and rates of angular movement when moving through the environment.
It's time for some games to start supporting multiple monitors for different displays. Mech games could take on new dimensions of realism. Flight and driving simulators and games would spring to life! How'd you like to be able to sneak quick glances at your wingman without shattering the reality of the evolving action?
Reality is simulated best when we move our heads to change the view of our environment - not when we move the view around in a window directly ahead, with us remaining perfectly still. Making sure we match view variations with what our brains expect from solid worlds will make our created worlds even more immersive and lifelike.
Time to have some fun!
From the: Why-the-hell-can't-I-find-my-toes? dept.
I suppose that this multi-head phenomenon is a step in the direction of a VR type of setup, monitors all around and the person in the center. Which sounds cool......really cool.
The question is, do the architectures that we currently have do multi-head readily? Or will we start having such things as video servers? I can see a future where you have one computer whose sole job is to house 25 video cards and keep them powered. Its mobo would have the chips on it to communicate to the main gaming server via a gigabyte fiber connection, which it would take the signal and demultiplex it so it would run on all video cards, thus giving you awesome multi-head capabilities.
Why hasn't anyone come up with this stuff?
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And now can put two of everything in my gaming computer- 2 OS's, 2 Hard Drive (RAID 0), 2 CD-Roms, 2 floppy drives, 2 GeForce 2 GTS's, 2 Athlons, 2 SCSI cards (one's for raid), 2 power supplys... This my really hurt my two platnum cards. I'll need two jobs. :)
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This doesn't look too great at the moment - the resolution UT was running at over the five monitors was 1600x200. Not 1200, 200. Each monitor is set to 320x200. And 20fps overall (it was only a AMD 500 though).
So, it's going to be plenty pixelated, though perhaps it would be nice with a wider FOV setting. Sniping would be hell, though.
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