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State of Multi-Monitor Gaming?
xtal asks: "What's the current state of multi-monitor gaming? LCD panels are really dropping in price - I've seen a 17" panels for under $400cdn, bringing it into the ballpark where purchasing three of them for a much wider field of view becomes possible. The hardware to drive these displays in a LAN configuration (3 machines, 3 monitors) is also inexpensive, or at least attainable - so when I look around for the state of multi monitor simulation, I don't see much. The best candidates are flight sims, but my interest lies in racing. Are there any suggestions or sites I'm missing?" What games have you played that could have really benefited from a second (or even a third) monitor? Do you think that the games you normally play will be significantly enhanced by the use of multiple monitors, or is one enough?
I think games need to be designed with large monitors in mind for this to improve the gaming experience drastically.
I don't think that driving the displays in a LAN configuration would be good for the refresh rate, but I may be wrong.
Something I really want is a G5 with dual 30 inch Cinema displays. That's probably the best configuration as each of those two monitors supports the resolution of about 3 of your cheap 17" LCDs. We may have to wait for Intel Duo powermacs to get your windows games to work, however.
By the way, Wolfenstein Enemy Territory is fun on Dual displays and it is free for Linux, Windows, AND Mac, so that'd be a good option.
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Do you think that the games you normally play will be significantly enhanced by the use of multiple monitors, or is one enough?
Just ask any Nintendo DS fanboy ;-)
matrox has a list of games that support mutliple monitor modes:
http://www.matrox.com/mga/3d_gaming/surrgame.cfm
Te audire no possum. Musa sapientum fixa est in aure.
I wouldn't mind having a EBMB feature where a secondary monitor will who/what's behind me.
I think any game will benefit from such setup, like RPG/Simulation/RTS/FPS won't hurt with dedicated displays for "stats" and "field".
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
I would imagine 3 monitor Quake4 or other FPS games would be good. I remember reading an article where an older version of Doom or Quake would support this.
Those with SLI/Crossfire/(Matrox tri monitor) support should be able to handle it on a single PC.
270 degrees of view would be a great advantage in those sort of games.
I believe FlightSim works quite well in multi-monitor with controls/gauges on one and
the 3d environment/world on the other.
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What if PC's were able to make the use of multiple monitors, like Nintendo DS does? I'd love for an extra screen to keep mini-map, server rank, ammo counts, etc on an always displayed screen. No more bringing it up on your main screen
So have this vague memory of a study done a few years ago. (Far too vague to be able to cite, sorry.) It was examining the "spacial" navigation skills of people in a rendered 3D environment, ala FPS games.
One of the surprising results was that women tested had much more difficulty learning the layout of complex spaces, and avoiding getting lost--when using a 4:3 display. But when a wider aspect ratio display was used (giving more gestalt context, one assumes), not only did testees of both genders do better, but this disparity disappeared.
Previous studies have shown that men and women tend to handle navigation differently, so this is not totally implausible. (And no, I'm not referring to men-asking-for-directions jokes. It seems that men tend to rely more on distance and direction, and women tend to rely more on landmarks.)
So this seems to suggest that not only is a three-across setup a great win for all gamers, but that it might be an interesting tool for narrowing the gender gap.
Hell, I'd settle for a game that lets me keep a desktop live on the other monitor so I can use IM and other apps at the same time without needing a second PC.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
If I recall correctly, Forza Motorsport on the original XBOX can be set up in a three-system, three-monitor mode. And I think a trio of XBOXEN and decent TVs will set you back a lot less than high-powered gaming rigs and monitors.
Supposed to be a good racing game, too.
I've recently upgraded from two mismatched CRTs (a 12" and a 19") to two widescreen 20" flatpanels. Most single-screen games can be spanned across two monitors with the nvidia drivers, but the one game I use often which natively supports multi-monitor is Flight Simulator. Main views and instrument panels can be placed on one screen, with GPS, radio stacks etc on the secondary screens. FPS games would really need an odd number of screens, otherwise the centre of the view (where the crosshairs will be) is split down the middle by the monitor frame. With two monitors and an FPS on one monitor, I prefer just to have system information (Temperatures, music playlist etc) on the other screen.
Nice weather for penguins...
I remeber reading many years ago about this man who did something similar with Descent. At the time, Descent was a game so 3D that it was nausiating to play for some. This man rigged up a headband with mercury switches and mounted a moniter behind him. So when he turned his head, the screens would switch to the rear view. Talk about sensery intergration!
270 degrees would be more immersive. What's more intuitive for looking to the side: mouse right, or head right? It would be about as unfair as the advantage keyboard+mouse players have over joypad players. The cost of that makes it seem unfair now, but sooner or later it will be cheap enough that everybody has seventeen monitors and a telepathic controller, and they'll give you sideways looks when you say you've only got one screen on your gaming rig.
The definitive source: http://www.realtimesoft.com/multimon/ There is tons of info there along with a database of proven configurations.
Personally, I recommend a Matrox Parhelia with three flat screens. UT2004 looks great and runs smoothly across all three screens.
We did this at work in like 1993 with all three PCs - left, front and right. It was like Doom 1.something. Darn cool for that time period. The game started running slower and slower. Then the computer support line (which we were responsible for answering) rang with people unable to work due to the network being bogged down.
Dang them IPX broadcast packets on 10baseT!
Over the past year or so, I've had a few minor problems playing games on my dual-head setup. My main objective was to have my main monitor be for games, while the second would be for IRC (or occasionally, the Web).
The problems I can clearly recall encountering are:
Generally, I just try to only pick games which will run in windowed mode, and put up with the odd quirks that come up from task switching. I have yet to find a 3D game that runs in windowed mode, properly maximizes, and allows me to task-switch out and back into it without any annoying quirks; or a game which runs fullscreen and doesn't minimize when I task-switch out of it. I just hope as multi-monitor setups become more common, that they will be more thorougly QA-tested in this environment =)
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How about two nice projectors lined up seemlessly side-by-side on my wall... No pesky break in the screen. Say, you could make a regular double-wide monitor without a break but two inputs...
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When you have SLI of Crossfire modes enabled on those cards you can only have one display active. This is actually one of my big pet peeves about SLI. I have two Dell 2405 LCDs and I have to constantly switch SLI off/on to get the second one to work when not gaming.
Supporting wide 'oddball' resolutions is easy. Many games do it 'accidentally'. However, gameworld viewport is 99% of the time fixed as 'full screen' (or two or three) - so the 3D view is stretched across the screens, and with even number of screens, center is at the split point of two displays.
Only games that I know of where you can change the viewport to the gameworld without changing the actual size of the game window are Anarchy Online and World of Warcraft (via UI MOD). I also think some Flight Simulators allow you to do it, but I don't really play those.
With viewport resize/move options, you can have full 3D screen on your main display, yet drag most of the 'other UI' to the 2nd display (which has just black background, or maybe some 2d graphic). MMOs would really benefit with proper dual display support where you could stick the inventory, map and all the other random windows to secondary display. Currently I'm really annoyed due to the fact that EVE doesn't support this - it would really benefit from it as you could put overview, scanner and map view to secondary monitor, really helping with the 'information overload' in PvP situations.
What we'd need is a videocard/monitor manufacturer 'alliance' sponsoring game devs to support proper dual monitor setups via specific extra options in the games - it would sell a lot of secondary screens and beefier videocards. It isn't *that* hard to do when you just make 'game desktop' to use whatever oddball resolution multimonitor system gives you, but allow separate definition of the '3D viewport' inside this 'desktop' of a game, and then make UI customizable/movable, and make sure all UI bits can be moved outside the 3D viewport, to the 'game desktop'. Add support to 'side/rear views' in secondary 3D viewports for extra brownie points so you can have 'rearview mirros' or outright 'surround game setup' if you have too much money, displays and too uber videocards.
I find it interesting how the US Army (and their political wing, the GOP) refer to soldiers of the opposing forces as "terrorists" these days (specifically Iraq at the moment), even though they are quite clearly in their own country, defending it from an invading army intent on stealing their resources and setting up a permanent outpost presence in their back yard.
Let me play devil's advocate for a moment and paint a scenario for you:
Country X invades the US, ostensibly to "spread freedom and topple the rogue regime which created a police state, subjugated its own citizens under the dictator Bush and exported terror to the world". You and your friends, naturally pissed off that another country has unilaterally and quite obviously invaded you (regardless of the outside world's media spin on the reality of the situation on the ground), fight back against them. You don't officially belong to the US Army (routed early in the piece because they were a spent force after trying to invade too many countries at once), but you and your friends nonetheless form a citizens' militia and hit back however you can, improvising explosives and using all your skills and ingenuity to try to vanquish a militarily superior foe. You also begin killing those Americans who decided to cast their lot with the invaders and are assisting them to "restore law and order", since they are even lower on the scale of human refuse than the invaders - they are collaborators and traitors to their own people.
So, under that scenario, do you call yourself a "terrorist", a "freedom fighter", or are you part of an unofficial "citizens' army/militia/resistance"?
If you still consider the Iraqi resistance to be "terrorists" after thinking truthfully about the above scenario, but wouldn't call yourself that, then you are the worst type of hypocrite I know.
I sincerely hope though that after considering my scenario honestly, you will come to the conclusion that you need to redefine a terrorist a little more specifically, and then apply that evenly to players on all sides, not just those on the opposition.
I can dream, right?
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My genres of choice have been MMORPG's and RTS for the most part with a few flight sims. My current crack is WoW. My real goal would be as mentioned, to have all my inventory, minimaps, guild/area/whatever chat windows and some buttons and controls over on the right monitor, while I have the 3d redering "world view" on the left monitor. Of all things only ONE game has accomidated this so far:
Horizons
Yeah.. you heard me.. Horizons.. yes THAT Horizons. It's a sad thing in my world. For an MMORPG to support this they need a few key things:
a) The ability to make the game window the real full screen size instead of the full size of one screen. At one point in time WoW could do this, but now when you're in windowed mode it insists on only allowing you aspect ratio that follow the one screen hight:width ratio.
b) The ability to move all aspects of the game UI to the other monitor or wherever you want. WoW has this functionality through third party UI modifications.
c) MOST IMPORTANTLY It needs the ability to unhinge the 3d world redering window from the main window and resize it as the users need. Horizons had this, it was glorious. WoW does not yet. It has a functionality similar to this, but it still doesn't get there due to the aspect ratio limitations that the UI seems to enforce on you. Not to mention you have to do it all through a scripting language (lua/xml) which doesn't make for a smooth user interface for the non geek.
Just my $.02 USD on the matter.
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