Side monitors skewing in games

[kryzdafer]

Does anyone have a problem when playing in 5040 with the side monitors skewing the image? I have a 3 monitor setup and its almost like the left and right monitors skew/magnify the image. It doesn't look right

[skipclarke]

The "skewing" happens even in 4:3 ratios, it just becomes more apparent the wider the FOV. It's not really noticeable through normal widescreen, but becomes more apparent in Surround or Eyefinity. Check out the screenshots and the videos I made in this forum thread - http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=8418

Angle your monitors in a bit more, so the "skewed" part is more in your periphery and it should help your perception.

[Butch_N]

Some games just do it worse than others. rFactor, it isn't very bad at all, but Fallout3, it is really noticable.
Hopefully now that more hardware is supporting it, game devs will look closer into the issue when making their games.
I have no idea how ISI did what they did with rFactor, but it is pretty nice looking all way from one end to the other, but it does have the effect some too, just more subtle. It is done quite well.

You coule angle the screens like Ibrin said, but then lines that should be straight will be angled the same amount as the montiors, giving a unnatural look to guard rails, street lines, buildings, wings, etc. Anything that continues onto the side panels will look bent where the panels meet. And that really looks odd and out of place.
I suppose it comes down to preception as well as the type of game you are playing, (maybe).
Like a race or flight sim, the monitors should be lined up straight so nothing goes off at unnatural angles.
For a shooter where you really are not looking at the side panels very much, then angled may be better.

For normal Windows use wher eyou have things open across your screen, angled is certainly ideal.
For games, lined up straight gives a nicer appearance.

Oh yeah, make sure you run a resolution that is in the proper aspect ratio for your panels. Running in a different aspect causes worse edge distortion then you get when in the correct aspect.

[dopefish]

This is because games only render with one viewing frustum. There are only a handful of games that actually support more than one. It takes a lot more processing power to render multiple viewing frustums, and 99% of the gamers in the world aren't using more than one screen, so I wouldn't expect regular games to just start supporting it.

There are a couple of modifications to the Quake 1 engine that render multiple frustums. One is called PanQuake and the other is Fisheye Quake. PanQuake renders a 360 degree view, but I believe there are settings to change that, so you can render only how much you want. I don't know if similar settings exist in Fisheye Quake, but it's fun to mess around with. Both are open-source and can be modified.