Slashdot Mirror
A Fresh Look At Multi-Screen PC Gaming
crookedvulture writes "It has been quite a while since Slashdot last covered multi-monitor gaming. A lot has changed in the interim. Monitors prices continue to fall, and improved AMD Eyefinity and Nvidia Surround implementations make creating multi-display arrays incredibly easy. Graphics cards have gotten faster, allowing high-end models to handle the latest games at the ultra-high resolutions that multi-screen setups enable. Developers are doing a better job of supporting those resolutions, too, although HUD placement and single-screen cinematics are still problematic in some titles. Even in the games that do have niggling flaws, the wider perspective of a triple-screen config can offer a more engaging and immersive experience. As stereoscopic 3D implementations fail to catch on, multi-screen setups look like the best upgrade for PC gamers."
There were versions of some of the popular First Person Shooters back in the day that would handle multi screens.
They were great, for about 15 minutes, then vertigo set in, and even walking up the stairs out of the basement became a challenge.
I suspect it was something to do with Visual Simulation of Motion with no motor or balance system feedback that did me in, but it could have
been the pizza and jolt cola.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I really don't see multi-screen gaming really catching on because of the simple fact that a lot of people don't have a whole heck of a lot of space, especially in the "core" gamer demographic who tend to either be living with their parents or living in a cramped apartment. Desktops aren't exactly space savers and decent sized monitors aren't easy to fit 3 or more on a normal sized desk.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Back in the day old NuBus video cards and 15" displays were easy to come by so I hooked up a Mac IIvx with three displays and used it for A10 Attack. Left screen was left window, front screen was front window, right screen was right window.
It really improved gameplay for that sort of simulation, because if you were in a cockpit, that's something like you'd have available to you. I looked a few years ago into setting up something like this with X-Plane but it needed a networked set of computers, which seemed like overkill. Maybe that's improved.
I'd imagine an FPS would be better off with goggles of some sort, though, if the resolution could be sorted out. Use the right tech for the right kind of simulation.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
nigglingpresent participle of nigÂgle (Verb)
Verb:
Cause slight but persistent annoyance, discomfort, or anxiety: "a nasty leg wound which still niggled at him".
Find fault with (someone) in a petty way: "he loved to niggle and criticize people".
I really don't get the appeal. Instead of spending less money on a single, larger monitor, get three smaller monitors so you can have your screen have black bars down the middle for the few games that actually support it...?
I'd rather those secondary screens were used for tactical info, night vision view, something, anything else than just "peripheral vision". For that, I'll wait until bendable screens come out and they can sell me one long, curved monitor.
remember the world bank guy who used the word "niggardly" in congressional testimony, and got fired for it? it means "stingy" but you can see how it would raise people's eyebrows. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niggardly
Flight sim allowed you to run views on other machines. It gave you a panoramic, out the window(s) display and a separate instrument panel display . They decided to kill it in FS2K or earlier and screwed the hardcore.
More and more people are getting multiple monitor setups. The only problem seems to be games that lock the cursor or rescale the resolutions so that the other monitor becomes useless. This is very, very common.
For just about anything else, it's a silly little frippery-- sure, it might be cute to have a clan battle's K/D ratios on a separate screen, or an automap and inventory, but those are hardly quality of life breakthroughs. Like stereoscopic glasses and VR goggles, it's a solution in search of a problem.
If Guild Wars 2 really delivers what the hype has been about recently, I may consider a 3x setup. If I can't customize my UI, have addons and such then I'll stay on one monitor. Look at League of Legends, no addon ability or UI modifications is the only reason (user experience, not game engine) multi-monitor LoL isn't possible. I would rather a 27" with 20" on either side turned vertical. Three 24" widescreens are too much on the eyes in either direction.
Wow you must be pretty old when a term that is 500 years old is considered "new" to you.
I've been running a 3 monitor display (3 x 22" 1920x1080) for several years playing WOW, LOTRO, EVE, and BF3. The games look awesome covering all 3 screens, but it doesn't improve gameplay enough to make it worth my time. I typically play with the games windowed and maximized to a single screen. This lets me multi-box easily or play a game while watching a movie on another monitor.
One benefit of multi-screen games is that they can provide, when angled inward, is peripheral vision.
Even an infinitely wide flat display can only provide 180 degrees of view. However, depending on the widths, position of the viewer and amount the panels are angled, a multi-screen system can do much better.
Anyway, are there any tweaks in the softawe to account for this? If you DO angle the displays, then you no longer have a flat "window" into the virtual 3D world. So the software should account for this (and ideally also the size of the bevels) and ask you the angles that you've set up your monitors. (I'm not a gamer so I don't know, maybe this is commonplace).
A really sophisticated setup would allow you to place arbitrarily sized monitors at arbitrary locations and angles, like portals onto an imaginary world. Would be best for flight/ship/tank simulators. Actually, if you're going to go this far, maybe it's just easier to use a virtual reality headset.
I can see it for flight sims or racing sims, but for normal gaming why? so I can see my characters ass split between 2 screens with an inch of bezel in their crack?
Is it better to have a 30" hd tv (1080p) for about $400 or three 20" computer monitors about $120x3=$360. *prices subject to change. but they are pretty close.
"As stereoscopic 3D implementations fail to catch on" the post is pretty much trolling on the basis that stereoscopic gaming is failing. If anything, it's getting more support lately. Nvidia not only supports 3D monitors, but now also supports playing games in 3D via 3D HDTVs over HDMI ( www.nvidia.com/object/3dtv-play-overview.html ). ATI finally offers good stereoscopic support via HD3D ( www.amd.com/hd3D ). And 3rd parties like TriDef offer nice 3D support for a variety of video cards. I personally enjoy playing a game with added depth and would take a single monitor in stereoscopic 3D over 3 displays (though I'd love to do 3 displays all in stereoscopic 3D).
Widescreen Gaming Forum for all your multi-monitor needs. http://www.wsgf.org/
Multi monitor LoL isn't possible because multi-monitor LoL would be cheating. MOBA games must limit the total viewable zone for all players to exactly the same size, and for that reason, they also have a very limited maximum zoom-out.
Because getting a bigger tactical overview would give player an immense advantage in LoL. So if you ever did manage to get LoL to play on multiple monitors with wider view, you'd be banned in a very short order for obvious cheating.
RTS games almost universally get the shaft in these stories. Main combat screen on one monitor, status/minimap on the other. Supreme Commander is a great example of well-done multimonitor RTS games. Alas, RTS tends to suck when you only have like 5 buttons and a poor pointing interface on your controller. ;)
I just got back from a con where they had the old Battletech pods set up. For those not familiar, it's basically a glorified version of Mechwarrior, played in an immersive pod/cockpit with 5 screens. There's the main "world view" screen which is actually reflected up onto a "lense" type glass that creates a wide perspective view, a full-color radar/control screen below that, and three green monochrome status screens up top.
Only the main screen displays the world, the rest display status/controls. While the graphics are still top-end 1995, the immersive experience is still top-notch.
One big "drawback" to enabling multi-monitor displays in FPS games is it's essentially a cheat - the player with the wider field of view has an advantage. Multi-screen displays for HUD purposes are closer to a convenience advantage.
paintball
I have a room that comfortably fits a twin bed, a work desk, shelving and bookshelves, and a two-desk setup with 4 monitors; 2 30" 2560x1200 and 2 20" 1600x1200 (rotated to perspective view), 30-20-30-20 setup, with the first 30 90 degrees left of chair and the other 3 in an arc so monitor plane at center is perpendicular to perspective.
Tough to fit a girlfriend in there, but plenty of monitor space.
paintball
So what does Nvidia pay for you to post this? Or do you work for another company shilling 3d?
When I worked at a large video card manufacturer, I demoed multi screen multi player gaming to the marketing guys and got them hyped up on it. I had 4 player L4D working with xbox controllers and keyboard mice with 4 screens (each player had their own screen). It was "zero lag" multiplayer gaming and didn't require much more than controllers (if you already had a multimonitor setup, it was just a repurposing of the monitors). They thought it was awesome and went to talk to the game manufacturers. Hard stop - idea dead.
I wonder what really killed that initiative. It seemed like something they were told would not happen.
I know half of it was Windows piss poor multi-input support but it still would have been nice.
Why are everyone seemingly assuming or advocating landscape orientation of the monitors?
Best way to roll, in my opinion, is tripple portrait mode, giving an aspect ratio of 27/16 (1.68 compared to 1.88 for 16/9) for hd monitors and a resolution of 3240*1920
Now, if they only could make borderless monitors I would be completely happy.
Why would invest in such a setup when apparently PCs are dead, tablets are the future and so all this tech will be worthless in... (check's current technologist predictions)... about three months?
Now go away while I transfer all my personal data to the cloud. I hear we won't have a need for hard drives anymore soon either.
Most people on Slashdot are fucking idiots.
Multi monitor LoL isn't possible because multi-monitor LoL would be cheating. MOBA games must limit the total viewable zone for all players to exactly the same size, and for that reason, they also have a very limited maximum zoom-out.
Because getting a bigger tactical overview would give player an immense advantage in LoL. So if you ever did manage to get LoL to play on multiple monitors with wider view, you'd be banned in a very short order for obvious cheating.
Yeah, this is why I'm thinking it's best to go for a 'one big, two small' setup, to best accommodate games like LoL.
Just about everyone that uses a multi screen setup uses 3 screens in order to avoid the bevel in the middle. Usually the left and right screens are angled inward as to for a viewing arc. That is actually not a bad idea. Especially if the angles are such that the optical axis of each screens intersect at the user viewing position.
BUT...
Eyefinity or Nvidia surround don't work that way. They simply fool the rendering engine in believing the aspect of the rendering context is much wider. The result is that the virtual camera in the game uses a wider angle lens (Not quite but it will do to make my point). This causes the edges of the left and right screen to look rather distorted. Adding more screens width wise is really not worthwhile.
What is needed is multiple 3D contexts like you can have in Microsoft Flight simulator where each camera looks at a slightly different heading. But, why bother to solve that at the game engine level. NVidia and ATI pay attention this tip is free!
It should be possible to build true multiscreen logic into graphics drivers. If NVidia can do stereo they ought to be able to render outputs at different angles. Not only that, each output should not even assume that the optical center is in the middle of the screen either. Enter head tracking logic.
I did lots of experiments with multiscreen and what it would take to have the ultimate multiscreen experience. I even wrote some demo software to prove the point in these old videos show that I made four years ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBdtPz2V_vY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ku76aHq3pps
(Sorry about the cheesy sound track)
And still we are stuck with dumb distorted multi monitor widescreens!
All I have is an old iz3d monitor with heavy ghosting, and rampant artifacts, and I find 3D gaming to be much more enjoyable than multi-screen. I'm certainly not shilling for their monitors, because I think they are now out of the hardware business.
ATI has pure shit for 3D support and so does Nvidia. With Nvidia, its like 40 bucks for a downloadable driver fix that you can install 3 times for your 40 bucks. ATIs native solution depends on developer implementation and so far the only game that *should* work natively with my new HD 7870 card (Deus Ex), doesn't even give me the option to turn stereoscopic ON.
With 40+ inch passive TV screens now in the 500 dollar range, they'd be wise to start pulling their heads out of their collective asses and start providing some real support before the latest generation of consoles hits.
Once we have 1080P@120Hz, 180 filed of view and some other details I can't be arsed to google right now, we will forget about screens.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Surprise someone has not mentioned MS Smartglass since it designed to give a second screen to games.
Granted it more show now than relality but it does point the way that multiple display can be used in games.
Racing games:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7bppAvHipM
Its perfect. You need a wide field of view to see upcoming corner apexes and cars on your sides. Brain attention is focused on one section of the screen at a time but the entire screen real estate definitely gets used. Plus its probably about the most immersive experience you can get.
The only reason to ever use multiple screens while gaming is to watch porn on one of the screens.
I found "two of the same sized" to be the best setup for LoL so far personally. One open with the game, other shows interfaces for all support software like voice communication for easy access and general accessibility. Game plays in windowed fullscreen allowing for fast switching while still allowing to use mouse to scroll camera.
Multiscreen gaming has certainly come a long way. I'm just now finishing up a 5x1P setup, which has 5 monitors, in portrait mode, laid out horizontally. It's a completely new experience when it comes to gaming and it somehow has yet to get old after 2 years. If anyone is seriously interested in this, come check out WSGF.org for the Widescreen Gaming Forum. We're a community dedicating to this and resolution hacks in games. It's pretty awesome. ;)
I've been considering an upgrade from 2x24" to 4x24", not necessarily for gaming, but just to have more visual real estate. There are many video cards that will handle this load effectively, but who is the default choice for this application?
Actually, tablet or smart-device integration would be awesome.
Have your tablet connect to your PC. Add all controls as a tablet-based GUI (which changes to befit the situation) rather than a bunch of weird "hotkeys"
Put "console" type feedback on the tablet too
Make the screen purely for gameplay or FP view.
How about a space shooter or strategy game where you click/highlight something on the computer screen, and info + actions shows on the tablet?
Click an enemy carrier, and its stats+health show on the tablet, plus options for locking on, launching missings, cycling subtargets, etc.
Monitor prices continue to fall, but their quality does as well. The setup in this article is using 3x 1920x1080 monitors. What happened to all the 1920x1200 displays? Where are our 120Hz refresh rates? Multi-screen gaming is in the same place it was 5-7 years ago. How does this fluff make it to slashdot?