Is there a projector compliance list for nvidia 2D surround?

[Chance DeLaShy]

I have three HP VP6320 projectors driven by two GTX 560 TI's. They all function well outside of surround mode but when I enable, they all display an error message: 'CAN NOT DISPLAY'
Where can I go to find a list of compliant/non-compliant projectors applied to surround mode?

Has anyone ever encountered this? Techs at nvidia are baffled!!!!!

[BHawthorne]

You'll find that NVIDIA Surround likes to default to 5760x1080 default for the intial NVIDIA Surround resolution. Just looking up the specs on your projectors it looks like 1920x1080 is not a valid resolution as your projectors maximum resolution is 1440x1050 scaled and 1024x768 native.

http://www.projectorcentral.com/HP-vp6320.htm

Force the proper display.inf on the projectors so that the drivers know what the maximum display resolution is so it doesn't set one outside what will work for you. There are several EDID override threads in the forums for specifics on how-to.

[Chance DeLaShy]

Awesome, Hawthorne, I'll try this asap and let you know how it goes.

Also, I had a suspicion about this resolution alteration so I just bought a fourth projector to add pixels. If you are certain that the resolution can be forced upon initialization, I guess a fourth wouldn't be entirely necessary... We'll see
Thanks for the tip.

[BHawthorne]

NVIDIA Surround is only capable of 3x1 ocnfiguration. AMD Eyefinity can do 2x1, 3x1, 4x1, 5x1, and 3x2. By getting a fourth projector you're only using it for a back up right? You can't span four in NVIDIA Surround (but can in AMD Eyefinity).

[Chance DeLaShy]

I was unaware that there was a projector limit. I bought two video cards to eventually support three and four projectors. Can you post a reference? I haven't seen this in my earlier research.
If this is true, do you know why there is a limit?

[BHawthorne]

I was unaware that there was a projector limit. I bought two video cards to eventually support three and four projectors. Can you post a reference? I haven't seen this in my earlier research.
If this is true, do you know why there is a limit?

NVIDIA Surround mode has always only been triple-display. AMD Eyefinity however is 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 displays. The devil is in the details when it comes to surround screen gaming.

Do you want the political or the technical answer?

The political answer: NVIDIA never intended to take triple-display gaming seriously until AMD produced Eyefinity. NVIDIA develops under a closed door system that finds product input from customers to be a legal liability. They don't want to be seen developing something that a customer has given them the idea for. It's a very different culture than AMD has. AMD saw what Matrox did with the TH2G boxes and made it plausible on the driver level. AMD seeks customer input to evolve Eyefinity and exand it to the needs of the userbase. That meant accomodating a rather wide range of dispaly options. That ended up being 2x1, 3x1, 4x1, 5x1 and 3x2. NVIDIA never saw the merit in the multi-display gaming niche market. The only reason why NVIDIA Surround exists in any form to day is to bare bones feature match the most common AMD Eyefinity configuration, 3x1. They made their feature set to target AMD, not the consumer.

The technical answer: NVIDIA's archetecture is setup where a single card can only push out two ports. Back in the time of WIndows XP there was something called Horizontal Span Mode that enabled the two ports on the card to span in games. This feature was dropped from further development with the release of Vista and DirectX 10. For years NVIDIA dominated the triple-head gaming market thanks to the power and capability of the Geforce GPUs and the Matrox TH2G boxes. NVIDIA's tunnel vision never saw the market opportunity they had to maintain and grow that market with their hardware. The meant that for almost a decade now we've had that two port maximum from standard NVIDIA consumer line. When AMD Eyefinity was released NVIDIA was caught with their pants down and lost their market share for triple-head gaming hardware. NVIDIA still didn't see or understand the market, but they needed to come up with something to combat it within their current video card archetecture. For awhile they had been tinkering with S3D capability with the 3D Vision kit. This niche market also was about the same fit as triple-head gaming is as far as market size and future growth. NVIDIA handed over to the 3D Vision portion of NVIDIA to develop a solution to combat Eyefinity. The only way they could do it is to leverage the port configuration given by SLI. This meant that they had to figure out how to make port spanning work through the SLI engine at a driver level. NVIDIA needed something out to combat Eyefinity and quick to market means features were going to suffer. What suffered with NVIDIA Surround 1.0 was no variation in display count.

AMD is phasing in Eyefinity 2.0 after two generations of success with Eyefinity. I'm most interested to see what NVIDIA Surround 2.0 might plausibly bring to the table. Noone knows though because NVIDIA develops features behind closed doors with no input from customers on future designs. We have no idea if Surround 2.0 is in the works or if it will show up anytime soon to properly address the lack of port options on the NVIDIA side of the fence.

[Chance DeLaShy]

Boy, that makes so much sense now. It's always the more independent manufacturer that is capable of doing things more liberally and pleasing a broader range of customer. I wonder if I should bail on the fourth projector or the video cards? I am always inclined to support transparent companies for their interest is in the greater good of the users and the net as a whole.
At this very moment, I am interested in using the Immersaview warping software to see if I like it. In order to utilize it, all three projectors need to be combined into one display (which is why this conversation began)

What is the best way to force surround to lower its resolution prior to initialization?

BTW, thanks for taking time, I am learning loads from this forum!

[BHawthorne]

Boy, that makes so much sense now. It's always the more independent manufacturer that is capable of doing things more liberally and pleasing a broader range of customer. I wonder if I should bail on the fourth projector or the video cards? I am always inclined to support transparent companies for their interest is in the greater good of the users and the net as a whole.
At this very moment, I am interested in using the Immersaview warping software to see if I like it. In order to utilize it, all three projectors need to be combined into one display (which is why this conversation began)

What is the best way to force surround to lower its resolution prior to initialization?

BTW, thanks for taking time, I am learning loads from this forum!

It really depends on how much you want to venture outside your comfort zone if you're used to NVIDIA drivers. As is, you already have the two Geforce cards that will do the job for triple-projector. If you truly want to do quad-projector going AMD Eyefinity is the route to go. Otherwise you'll be stuck with triple-projector. I use both NVIDIA and AMD setups and find both will do the job. It's just more a matter of what your end goals are for the setup and how it'll be used.

Going four projector means you're shooting for over 180 degree? That limits you to Microsoft FS9/FSX or Lockheed Martin P3D or Luminar Research X-Plane 9/10. Traditional game engines refuse to work over 180 degrees FOV.

The resolution issue with the projectors confuses me a bit. Traditionally, NVIDIA is the better of the two about EDID information.

Download Monitor Asset Manager and save display inf for the projectors. Install that driver on the projectors in the device manager. Reboot and see if that helps with the resolution issue.

http://www.entechtaiwan.com/util/moninfo.shtm

[Chance DeLaShy]

I downloaded the Asset Manager and created an INF and it asked for a file name and it was saved in display.drivers.
I restarted the comp and then configured the displays (locations and such) but to no avail. The surround mode seemed to ignore the new data and the same 'cannot display' screen appears. Now I remember why I hate computers. I figure I am doing one angstrom of a thing wrong so things won't work but the system won't tell me why.

My case has been sent to a level 2 tech at nvidia!!!! Woo hoo!!

[BHawthorne]

You don't manually put the inf into display.drivers. You Update the driver to the monitor via the device manager control panel.



"Browse my computer for driver update"
"let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer"
"Have Disk"
"Browse..." to the location of your .inf
"Open" the inf
"OK"
Highlight the "Model" in the window.
"Next"
Override the unsigned driver if needed.
"Close" out the install and you should be done with the inf update.
It might ask you to reboot. Reboot if requested.

[Chance DeLaShy]

Sweet, gonna try that tonight. Thanks.


OK, so I was able to change the drivers to the .INF that the EDID created. Device Manager then labeled them correctly. Onto surround mode... didn't work.

Is the driver that the Monitor Asset utility creates unique to each projector? If it is, I may have swapped during install. I tried to pay close attention to which monitor got which driver.
Am I wrong about the driver uniqueness? The driver title was not unique but the EDID is, so I assumed each driver belongs to its projector.
Secondly, after reboot, one of the projectors was not immediately recognized and was issued the generic driver. After changing the driver back to the new one, surround still didn't work.

I do appreciate all your efforts but if this is consuming too much of your time, feel free to dismiss yourself. I am in the cue at nvidia...

[BHawthorne]

I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to do next. Were you 100% sure the display.inf you saved was the one for the projectors? It has a few example ones. You don't want to use those. You want to use the ones detected of your projector.

A bit of a hack way to do it is to hot swap in a LCD that is capable of 1080p and change the resolution within the control panel on the LCD screen. That way you can res down to the new triple res by seeing the options on the hot swapped LCD.

[Chance DeLaShy]

So, here is the result. After all the bloodied head beating against a virtual wall, the problem has been found. It turns out that my suspicion of one of the projectors being sketchy was correct. Somehow, it was not identical to the other two. I am not entirely sure why but maybe it was the sync polarity or driver recognition. When the fourth projector arrived, I swapped out the suspicious one and magically it worked!!! Surround mode is cool!!!

Now I am fiddling with the warping software and I hope to be up and running soon. FYI, I am playing BF3 not a flight simulator.

Hawthorne, It is because of folks like you that make forums like these indispensable. Thank you for your efforts.

[BHawthorne]

Thanks, I just wish I could of better solved the issue. :)

[reuben.ahmed]

hawthorn is a lot of help, yes. but why are you using 3 projectors!??!?!

[BHawthorne]

hawthorn is a lot of help, yes. but why are you using 3 projectors!??!?!

NVIDIA Surround requires three projectors. There is no two display NVIDIA Surround. NVIDIA Surround works much differently as an archetecture and it's hardware requirements than AMD Eyefinity. Also, triple projection is the standard for years now. The dual projection I've been doing lately is rather new experiment by me and is limited to Matrox DH2G and AMD Eyefinity 2x1L setups.

Most people use three because it's the typical standard configuration. Most multi-display compatible games are designed for triple screen. It ensures maximum compatibility in a niche setup.

My pushing AMD Eyefinity 2x1L lately is an attempt to set a new baseline that significantly lowers the cost of entry into multi-projection gaming setups from two cards and three projectors to one card and two projectors. With how things get exponentially more expensive with these setups any way to make it more affordable is something I'm looking into. Unless it becomes somewhat cost effective to attempt, projection will remain a niche market of a niche market. My intent is to get it similar to the cost of upper end LCD multi-display setups. As is, it's cheaper than 30" triple setups to implement (if you have the room).

[Chance DeLaShy]

I totally agree. My resolution is now 3060x1280 or something to that effect. That is probably at max so I will go back in and lower it a bit for performance issues. The three projectors I bought were between $200/400. The other major advantage is the surface area. The screen is 12' daig. and looks pretty amazing. Photos do not tell you how grand it is. The amount of light the three projectors produce is quite high, it's like looking at an OLED that is 12' wide, pretty amazing.

I have now been trying to get the Immersive Display Lite2 image blending software to work but something isn't quite right.

Hawthorne, have you seen this warping software? I have a few questions if you have a moment.

[BHawthorne]

I totally agree. My resolution is now 3060x1280 or something to that effect. That is probably at max so I will go back in and lower it a bit for performance issues. The three projectors I bought were between $200/400. The other major advantage is the surface area. The screen is 12' daig. and looks pretty amazing. Photos do not tell you how grand it is. The amount of light the three projectors produce is quite high, it's like looking at an OLED that is 12' wide, pretty amazing.

I have now been trying to get the Immersive Display Lite2 image blending software to work but something isn't quite right.

Hawthorne, have you seen this warping software? I have a few questions if you have a moment.

I've had about an hour of seat time using it. It's a heck of a lot more confusing than NTHUSIM Plus. There is one app to configure and another to launch the game. IMHO, you get what you pay for with pre-warping utilities.

[Chance DeLaShy]

How much is the NTHUSIM Plus package? And, can you give me a brief review?

I have already paid for the Immersion Display and Immersion Desktop packages $70/80, and neither are working yet.

[BHawthorne]

How much is the NTHUSIM Plus package? And, can you give me a brief review?

I have already paid for the Immersion Display and Immersion Desktop packages $70/80, and neither are working yet.

http://www.nthusim.com

You can download it and try it out for free. Be mindful of the 10 minute timer on the demo though. You'll have to restart it every 10 minutes in order for games to pre-warp.