Nthusim vs warpalizer

[BorisTheSpider]

Just as the title says - I doubt there can be many people out there who have used both, but perhaps someone has researched both? I am looking to do 3 projectors on a curved screen and need something for warping. I could live without edge blending probably (and actually understand it can be an issue due to differential bulb ageing???).

What are the pros and cons of each? How about compatibility with various games and applications, and can I use them to watch films on my curved screen?

[BHawthorne]

I can give you this first hand information on NTHUSIM.

[list][*]The app is freely available to download and use in time limited demo mode. What that means is you can get all your setup worked out using NTHUSIM before even buying it.
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[*]NTHUSIM is a dedicated consumer product, unlike Warpalizer. NTHUSIM is coded from the ground up to be a non-commercial product and be updated on a regular basis with consumer requests. NTHUSIM does not seek to be a catch-all product like Warpalizer. Instead it's specificly targeted at the home consumer market.
[/*:m]
[*]NTHUSIM has a dedicated forums and wiki website that is maintained by a community of NTHUSIM users. Looking at the Warpalizer site...no such luck there. :wink:
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[*]Warpalizer requires the use of a hardware dongle, while NTHUSIM only requires a one-time network activation.
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[*]NTHUSIM is in direct communication with NVIDIA and AMD. AMD has collaborated with NTHUSIM on several occasions with event co-marketing. NTHUSIM directly assisted AMD with the 6800-series launch and CES 2011.
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[*]NTHUSIM is compatible with Matrox DH2G/TH2G, NVIDIA (3D) Surround and AMD EyeFinity.
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[*]NTHUSIM has community forum moderators (like me) that will talk with you at length and help you with custom designing your setup to best suit what you want to do.
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[*]NTHUSIM compatibility with DX7, 8, 9, 10, 10.1, 11 and OpenGL fullscreen applications. I've personally tested it with over 400 game titles. You'll not have that detailed a list of compatibility with Warpalizer.
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[*]You can watch fullscreen movies and video with your regular video player using a DirectX or OpenGL renderer and NTHUSIM. I personally prefer using Media Player Classic and DirectX renderer.[/*:m][/list:u]

While both can do similar things, NTHUSIM is going out of it's way to differentiate itself from Warpalizer and directly cater only to home user. Please keep in mind that NTHUSIM was first on the scene to recognize the home user as a viable market and have the vision to implement it.

[BorisTheSpider]

Brad,

Thankyou for your detailed reply.

Do you know if edge blending is planned for Nthusim? As far as I can see that is the main differentiator between the two products, although perhaps there is more that I don't know about yet. My own research has led me to the conclusion that, as you said, Nthusim has a better community and support network so if feature set was the same I'd be inclined to go with Nthusim.

One more question actually - does nthusim do only simply curved screens or can any shape, for example spherical or a leaning curve be accomodated (I believe in warpalizer you just drag points around to define the screen so anything goes).

Thankyou

Paul

[BHawthorne]

Brad,

Thankyou for your detailed reply.

Do you know if edge blending is planned for Nthusim? As far as I can see that is the main differentiator between the two products, although perhaps there is more that I don't know about yet. My own research has led me to the conclusion that, as you said, Nthusim has a better community and support network so if feature set was the same I'd be inclined to go with Nthusim.

One more question actually - does nthusim do only simply curved screens or can any shape, for example spherical or a leaning curve be accomodated (I believe in warpalizer you just drag points around to define the screen so anything goes).

Thankyou

Paul

Edge blending is on the NTHUSIM wish list. The only thing Warpalizer currently has going for it over NTHUSIM at this moment in time is that edge blending. I've had lengthy talks with Alex and Andy about this. I'm sure something more definitive on this will be addressed soon.

As long as the projections are configured side-by-side you can do any type of exotic surface projection you want to. Circular screens, domes, partial domes, irregular surfaces, etc. Each projector has it's own user configurable grid that can be as simple or as complex as needed to properly map it to the projected surface.

My suggestion would be to make a user account over on the NTHUSIM site and merely download NTHUSIM Plus and play with it on your regular LCD in unregistered demo mode. It'll give you a good idea how it'll work once used with a projector and take a lot of the mystery out of all of this. :)

[BorisTheSpider]

Thanks. I think I'll take your suggestion and download the evaluation copy to get to grips with it a bit.

One more thing - I am reading a thread on another site where a guy who is using nthusim for a dome was dealing with trying to warp one screen (or indeed I'd imagine, by the same token, a set of screens appearing as one big surface via surround/th2go/eyefinity) whilst leaving the others untouched and seemed to be having trouble doing so - I can imagine a lot of people want to do that, and I definitely do as my other LCD monitors would be kept for flight instruments, charts etc. in fsx. Has this been implemented now (or perhaps it was all along and that guy just wasn't aware how to do it???)


Paul

[BHawthorne]

Thanks. I think I'll take your suggestion and download the evaluation copy to get to grips with it a bit.

One more thing - I am reading a thread on another site where a guy who is using nthusim for a dome was dealing with trying to warp one screen (or indeed I'd imagine, by the same token, a set of screens appearing as one big surface via surround/th2go/eyefinity) whilst leaving the others untouched and seemed to be having trouble doing so - I can imagine a lot of people want to do that, and I definitely do as my other LCD monitors would be kept for flight instruments, charts etc. in fsx. Has this been implemented now (or perhaps it was all along and that guy just wasn't aware how to do it???)


Paul

NTHUSIM can do dome just as long as the projection is side-to-side projection around the interior of the dome. The problem with dome is not NTHUSIM, but rather the game camera code. You'll need a game that is capable of rendering 360 degree unwrapped fisheye camera view. This is highly specialized and I know of no regular retail game that does it. there are a few open source hacked version of old FPS shooter games that can do this sort of camera view though. That really doesn't address something like MSFS though.

[BorisTheSpider]

Hi Brad,

Thanks, but I'm not sure you understood my question quite right. Getting a dome system right seems complex and I am fairly sure I will just end up with a curved screen, however my question was whether I could have 3 projectors in an nvidia surround group (appearing to the PC as one large surface) which I then warped with nthusim for projection onto a big curved screen. I would then have an additional 3 or 4 flat panel LCD monitors connected to a separate video card which I'd not want any warping on - do you have any experience of this?

EDIT I found the guys thread here and it was about not being able to leave a cloned view unwarped on the secondary display whilst warping it on the main one. This would not be a problem for me, but I would want the second display (which would not be cloned, but instead would be an entirely separate display) unwarped whilst the primary display was warped. Does this work currently?

[BHawthorne]

Hi Brad,

Thanks, but I'm not sure you understood my question quite right. Getting a dome system right seems complex and I am fairly sure I will just end up with a curved screen, however my question was whether I could have 3 projectors in an nvidia surround group (appearing to the PC as one large surface) which I then warped with nthusim for projection onto a big curved screen. I would then have an additional 3 or 4 flat panel LCD monitors connected to a separate video card which I'd not want any warping on - do you have any experience of this?

EDIT I found the guys thread here and it was about not being able to leave a cloned view unwarped on the secondary display whilst warping it on the main one. This would not be a problem for me, but I would want the second display (which would not be cloned, but instead would be an entirely separate display) unwarped whilst the primary display was warped. Does this work currently?

Should work fine if your motherboard supports 3 or more PCIe 16x mechanical slots to put the video cards in. Two slots would be used for the NVIDIA Surround setup. Then on the third and/or fourth card you could run as many displays as you have enabled ports to do so.

For example, I could be using an EVGA E762 4-way motherboard that is all 16x PCIe mechanic slots. I could fully populate that motherboard with as many video cards as needed, just as long as two of them are dedicated to the NVIDIA surround using Windows 7. I would use the best two cards I could afford for the NVIDIA Surround, and the cards for the other displays could be anything NVIDIA as long as it used the unified video card driver and installed enough ports to run the displays.

[BorisTheSpider]

Hi Brad,

You have actually touched on something there that I had been meaning to check out, and you seem like you might know the answer. The card I was thinking of using for additional displays is an Nvidia Quadro NVS 440 (because it's Nvidia, cheap and provides 4 ports from a single slot (I will be very tight for space), it's also passively cooled and since the whole PC will be watercooled and practically silent that is important to me).

It is listed on the NVidia site as using the Quadro driver so would be a different driver than the cards which will be running the projectors (I'll be using 580GTXs). I hadn't realised up till now that there were different drivers for the quadro cards. Does the fact that this uses a separate driver mean it won't work? If that's the case I might have to consider keeping my th2go to put on a geforce type card, as I am not aware of any that are cheap and provide 4 ports, unless you can suggest something.

By the way, if you don't mind me taking the thread off-topic slightly and asking you another question I'd like to ask how I should deal with projector placement. I am considering viewsonic pjd7382 (4:3) projectors which have a throw of 0.61 to 1. Doing the numbers I see that I am just able to place them such that each is exactly the right distance to throw equal size images around a 180 degree screen. The numbers I'm working with generate throws between 39 and 48 inches in a radius somewhere in the 57 to 72 inch range. I see from the spreadsheet that I can't increase the FOV much beyond 180 degrees without the placement starting to become very tight - I had considered going to 225 degrees (FSX can do this by using multiple view windows) of physical screen, then when playing other stuff with a maximum FOV of 180 degrees I could warp the image in to the middle thus sacrificing about 25 percent of my horizontal resolution to maintain the 1 to 1 relationship between game FOV and screen arc and stop things looking stretched. Could I even leave the warping set up as it was for 225 degrees then create a custom resolution to get the game to use 180/225ths of the actual resolution horizontally, or if I did that would the projector just scale that back up and project it across the whole screen? - it looks like 225 degrees actually won't even be possible due to projector placement problems, but I see I might get 210 or something, have you ever tried anything like this?

[Think Again]

Hi BHawthorne,

I`m a long time reader/follower on your builds in various forums, but registered here just this very moment.

This year I will install a system of 3 projectors for gaming. Thus I will have to choose between Nthusim and Warpalizer, too.

I very much like to use Nthusim, since it offers the better support ..... But Edge Blending really IS important to me.

What I want to tell you is:
Please use your connection to ImmersaView to convince them how important Edge Blending might become even in the consumer market. Though Sorround Gaming is a niche still, it is growing rapidly. I know at least 3 people who also want to jump the bandwagon. True 120 Hz projectors are perfect for gaming with smooth motion and very little input lag. They really get affordable.

But I really want to use edge blending. Plese integrade it in Nthusim. It absolutetly ok, if this comes as an option and costs extra (not to much though:)

THX for enriching the community so far and my best luck (honestly) to make Nthusim a true mass market solution.

Regards

PS: Please keep us updated if and when Edge Blending might get integrated

[BHawthorne]

I agree about the 120hz projectors. Right now there are some really good options out there at the $600 level that are 3D Ready DLP and 1280x800. I've actually used GT720 with NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround and it's quite impressive. I'm also working with AMD to work through getting the DDD and iz3D 3D drivers working triple-projector on the AMD side. Personally I want to sell my own Optoma EX525ST and swap them out for Optoma GT700 or GT720. I've used GT720 with the AMD events and just wish I had more readily access to them instead of my EX525ST. The EX525ST are decent brightness, lens throw and bulb life, but they are way too bulky a projector compared to the GT700/GT720. I only wish a company like BenQ or Optoma would listen to my input on projector specs. In an ideal world I'd like to see a 1080p, 0.49:1 lens throw, 120hz dual-dvi & displayport capable, 2500 lumens LED light source entry level projector. I guess dreaming is nice. It got me this far. :wink:

If I would of had my way edge blending would have been implemented in NTHUSIM a year ago. This is a very active debate internally. 100% of the concern is how opening edge blending to NTHUSIM might effect Immersaview's Sol7 customer-base. Sol7 is much better income for Immersaview than NTHUSIM is. Sol7 is the commercial line which has a much different license policy. The issue becomes, what happens if edge blending is implemented in both Sol7 and NTHUSIM? NTHUSIM users are only licensed for home/non-commercial use. What keeps an unethical commercial user from simply just buying NTHUSIM and paying 1/10th the cost to do what they need? The reason why there is no movement yet on edge blending is because there is no straight cut answer yet to that issue that has been worked out yet. The code for edge blending has always existed in Immersaview products. It's just commented out for NTHUSIM builds until a proper answer can be found for this issue.

I pose the question knowing full well most every NTHUSIM user wants edge blending -- me included. How does Immersaview keep the commercial user from using NTHUSIM and cutting out Sol7 use? We already know how to combat Warpalizer -- simply just add in edge blending. Problem is, the issue is the commercial side of things and not Warpalizer itself. Although Warpalizer sort of invalidates the whole argument, because they target Warpalizer at both hobbyist and commercial. Edge blending is something I definitely want, but the issue is not so easy as just adding it in.

[BHawthorne]

Hi Brad,

You have actually touched on something there that I had been meaning to check out, and you seem like you might know the answer. The card I was thinking of using for additional displays is an Nvidia Quadro NVS 440 (because it's Nvidia, cheap and provides 4 ports from a single slot (I will be very tight for space), it's also passively cooled and since the whole PC will be watercooled and practically silent that is important to me).

It is listed on the NVidia site as using the Quadro driver so would be a different driver than the cards which will be running the projectors (I'll be using 580GTXs). I hadn't realised up till now that there were different drivers for the quadro cards. Does the fact that this uses a separate driver mean it won't work? If that's the case I might have to consider keeping my th2go to put on a geforce type card, as I am not aware of any that are cheap and provide 4 ports, unless you can suggest something.

By the way, if you don't mind me taking the thread off-topic slightly and asking you another question I'd like to ask how I should deal with projector placement. I am considering viewsonic pjd7382 (4:3) projectors which have a throw of 0.61 to 1. Doing the numbers I see that I am just able to place them such that each is exactly the right distance to throw equal size images around a 180 degree screen. The numbers I'm working with generate throws between 39 and 48 inches in a radius somewhere in the 57 to 72 inch range. I see from the spreadsheet that I can't increase the FOV much beyond 180 degrees without the placement starting to become very tight - I had considered going to 225 degrees (FSX can do this by using multiple view windows) of physical screen, then when playing other stuff with a maximum FOV of 180 degrees I could warp the image in to the middle thus sacrificing about 25 percent of my horizontal resolution to maintain the 1 to 1 relationship between game FOV and screen arc and stop things looking stretched. Could I even leave the warping set up as it was for 225 degrees then create a custom resolution to get the game to use 180/225ths of the actual resolution horizontally, or if I did that would the projector just scale that back up and project it across the whole screen? - it looks like 225 degrees actually won't even be possible due to projector placement problems, but I see I might get 210 or something, have you ever tried anything like this?

Although it's a Quadro card, I believe the standard NVIDIA driver installer can see that card too, or the inf can at least be modded to use the standard Geforce driver. Some of this is assumption on my part and from seeing Quadro reference in the driver inf previously.

Personally, I've done nothing over 180 degrees because I setup my system to be as generic as possible for gaming and movies. With how most game camera code is done, anything over 180 degrees leads to either issues or outright crashes of the game. The 225 FOV is something I've worked up the math for previously using 1280x800 projector specs for though. The primary issue is that every projector model is different when it comes to mounting location. Lens throw and aspect ratio are the major dictating factors for that. The only real target for something like 225 FOV would be MSFS as it's the special exception to the camera code issues I mentioned previously.

I guess my questions before attempting to answer are #1, what is your target use for the setup? #2, Will it always be dedicated to that target use? #3, What specific software/game are you going to use?

[keltie]

Hi,

There is an answer to a question I have not found yet.

For those that are really keen for edge blending on their projected commodity games with Windows 7; how do you intend to produce an image overlap such that you actually have something to blend with?

I have no knowledge of Warpalizer but its advertising alludes to a function for this (in the absence of an application or display driver extension handling it). I can only assume that is will do some framebuffer combining and chopping (perhaps as SoftTH might) then scaling or cropping so that a standard resolution is presented to the projector.

Sol7 does not advertise such a function for image overlap but it is preferred practice in the simulation industry to have control over your application's camera FOV's and channels sizes.

I also do not have (recent) experience of multiview flight sims, if you can control your camera fov for them I guess you could create an overlap. How would you anticipate a standard single camera game will look in surround 2d/3d when the projectors are overlapped?

Shame that the NVidia Surround bezel management utility does not handle negative values, we'd be getting close to such a utility.

Cheers

[BHawthorne]

I don't happen to have Sol7 installed at the moment, but SimVisuals is just like Sol7 as far as functionality and configuration. Hopefully the pics below help explain a bit.

[stickygreen]

BHawthorne can you please include a link to SimVisuals, i can't seem to find it via google.

[BHawthorne]

BHawthorne can you please include a link to SimVisuals, i can't seem to find it via google.

http://www.immersaview.com. It's Sol7, but with desktop prewarping and a screen kit that comes with it. SimVisuals is a package deal type of setup, while Sol7 is just a software option.

[Snipe3000]

Warpalizer definitely wins in image quality as you can see in all of the videos posted. Its biggest problem though is compatibility; currently not all games work with Warpalizer, it has no DX 10 or 11 support at the moment, and zero support with Steam overlay. I'm not sure if NTHUSIM suffers from the same problems, but the people over at warpalizer are working on these issues.

[BHawthorne]

Warpalizer definitely wins in image quality as you can see in all of the videos posted. Its biggest problem though is compatibility; currently not all games work with Warpalizer, it has no DX 10 or 11 support at the moment, and zero support with Steam overlay. I'm not sure if NTHUSIM suffers from the same problems, but the people over at warpalizer are working on these issues.

Not sure which videos show image quality that you refer to. The only difference is edge blending. NTHUSIM also is incompatible with Steam in-game overlay. This has been an incompatibility issue for about a year now. NTHUSIM blows Warpalizer away as far as compatibility. DX 7, 8, 9, 10, 10.1, 11 and OpenGL work great.

[Snipe3000]

I do like the compatibility of NTHuism, but the video quality is very different. I use both, Nthusim distorts the image and makes small text and details hard to make out. Warpalizer doesn't do that, and it controls the light of the 3 projectors much better.

[BHawthorne]

I do like the compatibility of NTHuism, but the video quality is very different. I use both, Nthusim distorts the image and makes small text and details hard to make out. Warpalizer doesn't do that, and it controls the light of the 3 projectors much better.

Hrrrm, wonder if that wouldn't be a side effect of what type of scaling type they use. I'm curious what both use. Nearest neighbor, bilinear or bicubic scaling? Thanks for pointing it out. I'll see if NTHUSIM can't use bicubic scaling.