D00d! What exactly is this new toy? And secondly, I'm guessing playing Crysis across three monitors is like watching a tennis match with your head going back and forth all the time just to keep on eye on such a wide display, right?

Funny story first, to keep everyone in suspense.~

So I ran into a problem the other day.

I was messing around with the .cfg file in Doom3, trying to learn the ins and outs of setting up resolutions for games so they would work best with surround gaming. The best way to learn is by doing it yourself, correct? I eventually set it up to run at 5040x1050. I have other games running at that resolution (HL2, Guild Wars, Dead Space, CoD4) so I figure that D3 at that rez would be the pinnacle of it all, right?


WRONG!!!!!!


This is where it got funky. I started up the game after setting the desired resolution and instead of either a) 3 gray screens or b) the game centered on the center lcd, all 3 lcd's flashed as though they were changing resolutions and then..... they went blank. I couldn't alt-tab or ctrl+alt+delete to get back to the windows desktop, so I did a hard reset and when I got back to the windows desktop I no longer had an image on my center lcd. The other two were just fine, but the center one wasn't displaying anything. After switching lcd's around on the TH2G and switching dvi cables around on the lcd's, I tried connecting the malfunctioning lcd directly to the pc and got a signal. Oddly enough the screen was seen as a "generic *NON*plug and play monitor with only 2 resolutions available. I determined that the TH2G was working fine as it would display a picture on either of the other 2 lcd's when they were hooked to any of the 3 outputs.

Sensing trouble, I ran (drove) to Best Buy to get a new dvi cable to test the problem screen and see if it really was the hardware or the currently used cable (for some odd reason). After I got back and did more testing, I tried using a dvi->vga adapter on the TH2G and was able to get a signal to the problem lcd through that. It would pick up 1680x1050, but with black bars on either side of the image, so I had to turn it down to a total desktop resolution of 4320x900.

As it turns out, the resolution switch in Doom3 (call me misinformed) killed the dvi input on my center lcd! I can't get a signal through the dvi port, but can get one through the vga port.

I need to get a new lcd that's the same as one of the 2 models I have. I currently run 2 Westinghouse LCM-22W2's and 1 LCM-22W3. The W3's dvi input no longer works correctly. At least, it didn't a week ago. We carry them at Target, for a tune of $200+ :-(


AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAnnyway..... I run the Matrox Triplehead2Go Digital Edition. With the latest firmware I can run my desktop at 5040x1050. Like I said, I run 4320x900 because Doom3 killed the dvi input on the center lcd. The only downside is that a rez like that only works with dx9 mode in games. Dx10 doesn't support it for whatever reason. With all that visual screen AWESOMENESS though, it doesn't matter. I have Assassin's Creed, CoD4, Jericho, Crysis, Dead Space, Far Cry2, Gears of War, Guild Wars, UT3 and HL2 running at 4320x900 with either fully or mostly correct FOV's. On my 8800gtx, I have NO problems running any game I want at great and playable detail levels.

Honestly, to answer the biggest question, in FPS games you're mostly always focused on the center screen just because that's where all the action is. There's some visual junk that goes by on the side screens, like model and texture stretching, but that's because the games were never really programmed with that kind of visual stuff in mind. Sure, your peripheral vision sees it and you do turn your head from time to time (moreso when games have quest lists on the left screen and radar on the right) to catch details or from natural movement, but you stay focused on the center one mostly.

http://www.widescreengamingforums.com

You can thank me later. Oh, and I WILL be bringing this puppy to the lan. :-D

I'm bringing 2 monitors, will I have to buy two seats?  Just two 19" LCD's that only would take up one seat anyway (with the tower underneath of course).  Oh and I promise I won't bring my fan this time!

I think the power draw may be the issue.

3 22" LCDs will draw about 120 Watts of power.  I don't remember clearly how many people we piggy back onto a single circuit but it takes 1650 Watts to reach 15 Amps.  Even 2 people should easily be able to share a circuit.

Really, I was just kidding. If you're only taking up one seat's worth of space, then fine. We just can't have people taking up multiple seats worth of space for their multi-mon setups. LCD's don't draw too much power (not like CRT's did) so I think that'll be fine too.

Cool, I figured as much, but I wanted to test the waters just to make sure.