Wide Screen Gaming General Discussion (56K/mobile warning)

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I thought I start a general discussion on this share any info I come across or discover on my own. Hopefully this can be useful for anyone thinking of doing this. I know it may seem that I have been crapping on about this for a few days now and that's because I'm super excited about it. I've spent ages collecting all the parts needed and have been stuffing around trying to get it to work. Initially I had heaps of problems but now it's all sorted and I'm slowly going through my games to what works and what doesn't.

L4D2 in Surround Mode

I have 3 x 24" monitors that have a native resolution of 1920 x 1080, combined in surround mode with no bezel adjustment the resolution comes to 5760 x 1080. As nice as this is it does make my graphics cards work overtime. Some games I used to max out now need to be dialed back a little(usually a little dialing back of the AA setting does the trick). I decided not to go with bezel adjustment because it's not very nice to use for other non gaming tasks because you lose anything displayed behind the bezel. One website I have found to be quite helpful is www.widescreengamingforum.com/...

The following is a list of games that I have tried at 5760 x 1080. I still have a lot to get through and I'll keep this thread updated for those that are interested.
edit:
Matching screens and monitor bracket

17/10/2011

Melbourne The land of moist beginnings

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Guyver

• Left 4 Dead 2 - Runs smooth after a dropping the AA slightly, it run nice maxed out but I kept getting memory error messages. Down side is that the HUD is spread to the edges of the two side monitors. I have found a mod that centers the HUD but 9 out of 10 servers will not allow you to use it.
• GRID - Runs flawlessly by far the best gaming experience I've had with this setup, even at max settings it runs smooth as silk. HUD is auto centered.
• Need for Speed Shift - Same as GRID with a auto centered HUD but I do think this game will run better with a dedicated Physx card (coming soon).
• Battlefield Bad company2 - Looks amazing but AA had to be dialed back a bit. The single player experience is very nice. Multiplayer is AWESOME! So far it's the only game I've tried that puts the HUD in the middle of the screen.
• Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare -Runs beautifully when this patch is applied www.widescreenfixer.org/...
• Borderlands - The 5760x1080 resolution is available but the menu and pop up boxes and chopped off so it's basically unplayable. I'm still looking into a fix for this.
• Just Cause 2 - Looks good and play good (haven't really given this one much of a play yet.
• Team Fortress 2 - Runs very nice but suffers from the spread out HUD problems as well. there is a mod available to center the HUD but I haven't tried it yet. I'm assuming I'll run into the same problem as I have with L4D2.
• Alien vs Predator 2 - Runs well even in DX11 mode but some graphics options had to be slightly tweaked.
• Torch Light - Runs perfectly and gives you such a huge viewing angle.

20/09/2010

Melbourne The land of moist beginnings

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Guyver

• Left 4 Dead 1 + Counter Strike Source - Runs smooth at max setting but suffers from the spread out HUD issue.
• Audio Surf - Plays well but looks slightly stretched wrong, menus looks weird as hell though.
• Alien Swarm - Your field of view is just insane but like most games this has the HUD issue.
• Fear 2 - Has the available resolution but doesn't span the screens, the side screens are just black.
• Zombie Driver Huge field of view, runs smooth but the low memory warning comes up but it can be ignored. I think that will be solved once the dedicated Physx card goes in. Can't seem to find a HUD mod for this game.
• FEAR I was surprised at how ell this runs, there's a HUD scaling option but it doesn't do much to help. At least the some of the info you need is slightly more centered.
• GTA4 - Works but needs some adjustments to run at a good frame rate.
• Half Life 2 Runs beautifully at max settings, pretty much the same story with all games using the Source engine.

18/09/2010

Melbourne The land of moist beginnings

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abuu91

You'll need to set your FOV to a very high and custom value for those setup to work properly. Some games like Modern Warfare 2 cannot have the FOV changed whereas Modern Warfare has a limit of 80 degrees.

To put it simply, you'll love any natively HOR+ game (such as DIRT and GRID) on those screens.

17/09/2010

Kiama, NSW

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Ren-dog

Ordered a second 22" monitor today! should have some dual screen eyefinity soon, only for racing tho diffidently not for fps X_X

17/09/2010

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Desi

Hey Guyver, sorry to deviate from topic, but what is that silver doohickey underneath your right-hand monitor?

17/09/2010

And I love starting sentences with conjunctions! >=D

Kudos: 28,110

Ren-dog

Looks like the volume for a logitech surround system.

17/09/2010

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Guyver

desi said: Hey Guyver, sorry to deviate from topic, but what is that silver doohickey underneath your right-hand monitor?

Yeah what Ren-Dog said, pretty hand for plugging in my head phones as well.

18/09/2010

Melbourne The land of moist beginnings

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Skarteh

Would like so see grid photos :D of actual racing... Not sure how the 3rd person car would look.

18/09/2010

Melbourne, Victoria | Walk with me in hell

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Guyver

Some screen shots..well photos at least. I can't seem to take any screen grabs of games anymore.

GRID

BC2

18/09/2010

Melbourne The land of moist beginnings

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Nothing07

Looks pretty sweet.

18/09/2010

Melbourne, Victoria | ‎" These young guys are playing checkers. I'm out there playing chess." - Kobe Bryant

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Ren-dog

EPIC! cant wait to get my next monitor ^_^

PEOPLE!!! mini-dp to dvi active adaptors for $59!
www.pccasegear.com/...

Might be worth my while getting a 3rd monitor...

18/09/2010

Kudos: 354,136

Guyver

Found this interesting www.hardocp.com/... it's an article comparing eyefinity and Nvidia surround, looks like 2 480s in SLI out performs 2 5870s in crossfire even though both cards have similar performance on their own.

19/09/2010

Melbourne The land of moist beginnings

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Kenni

GRID looks orgasmic. Feels like you're driving an actual car in your own house. [Derp]

19/09/2010

ᶘ ᵒᴥᵒᶅ - The golden tsundere ratio is 8:2

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NoChe

This technology really helps with First Person Shooters and Racing games. Good stuff [Derp]

20/09/2010

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Skarteh

Wow the in car view of GRID basically fixes the problem you have with a single screen!! I'd be using that on tri screens for sure *_*

20/09/2010

Melbourne, Victoria | Walk with me in hell

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Kiah

What kind of a graphics card would I need to run 3 screens? ;D

20/09/2010

Perth

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SACRED

Kiah said: What kind of a graphics card would I need to run 3 screens? ;D

A good one :p

20/09/2010

Gold Coast AKA GCC

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Kiah

I need a baseline. Bare minimum, then I can scale up according to how much money I can acquire :P

20/09/2010

Perth

Kudos: 354,136

Guyver

Kiah said: I need a baseline. Bare minimum, then I can scale up according to how much money I can acquire

At 5760 x 1080 two GTX 480's work their arses off to get the job done. Bare minimum would be 2 x 470's in SLI IMO....I wish I could get a 3rd 480 in there :P

Edit:

NoChe said: This technology really helps with First Person Shooters and Racing games. Good stuff

Thanks for showing me this www.widescreenfixer.org/... it makes COD4 look perfect :)

20/09/2010

Melbourne The land of moist beginnings

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NoChe

No problem Guyver. I play MW2 like crazy so that widescreen fixer is a must have. It also supports other games like battlefield and stuff.

20/09/2010

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SACRED

BC2 looks sweet like that

20/09/2010

Gold Coast AKA GCC

Kudos: 40,744

Desi

Your GRID setup makes me cry.

21/09/2010

And I love starting sentences with conjunctions! >=D

Kudos: 354,136

Guyver

NoChe said: No problem Guyver. I play MW2 like crazy so that widescreen fixer is a must have. It also supports other games like battlefield and stuff.

Yeah I noticed that, I have Battlefield2 so I'm going to give that a try when I get a chance. A program like this should get some support from developers.

I had a quick go at Bioshock and that seems to run well on it's own apart from the stretched menu boxes..

21/09/2010

Melbourne The land of moist beginnings

Kudos: 26,655

OllyEbbz

I personally couldn't play games like that, the borders where the monitors meet just looks damn ugly and would put me off. Is this really where technology is heading? 3 to 6 monitor's? I remember first viewing eyefinity and it's impressive i suppose but surely a bigger curved screen should be the future? Not something i'm interested in.

21/09/2010

Lives in the United Kingdom.

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