What I See Is Currently Wrong With Multi-Monitor Gaming

[X-ray Doc]

I have been an avid widescreen gamer for a very long time. I have used all the hacks to avoid “vert –“ behavior when gaming at 16:10 or 16:9 aspect ratios. However, I am currently on the fence about switching to multi-monitor gaming. After much research and “visualization” of what the final experience might be like, I have concluded that the best (and most expensive) gaming experience would come from a 5 x 1 portrait mode setup using Eyefinity. I have also decided that the best 5 monitors would all have 16:10 aspect ratios to make your center screen a little wider before noticing the bezels. But even this setup, and multi-monitor gaming in general, has persistent problems. The following is a list, with commentary, of the major problems that I see still exist with multi-monitor gaming. I’d love to see the entire industry, game developers and hardware manufacturers, address these shortcomings.

1. There are very few 16:10 aspect ratio monitors, and most of them are more expensive.
2. Running five monitors at 1920 x 1200 resolutions requires incredibly expensive video cards.
3. Most cheaper monitors are not designed so that the bezels are small and EQUAL on all four sides. They might work ok in landscape mode, but they won’t align evenly when put in portrait mode.
4. Most cheaper monitors won’t rotate into portrait mode. That means you have to buy aftermarket stands. I’m not even sure if a single stand exists that can hold up five 24” 16:10 aspect ratio monitors. For that matter, can you buy one that will hold up five 24” 16:9 aspect ratio monitors?
5. Bezels in general. It would sure be nice to eliminate these entirely.
6. For Eyefinity setups, the lack of monitors with native display port inputs. I know there are fairly inexpensive passive adapters available now, but yuck! If display port is the intended future for the PC, every new monitor released should have this connection.
7. The lack of completely independent horizontal AND vertical FOV settings in games. I consider this a major game developer mistake. I’ll try to explain. Currently, when you set an FOV in a game, you are only choosing the horizontal FOV. The vertical FOV is “fixed”. This is demonstrated by games that display nice, proper “hor +” behavior when you keep the monitor heights the same and simply widen the screen. As long as you don’t try to increase monitor height, this system works fine. But for immersive, multi-monitor gaming, you really want to increase the visible game world in all directions, not just width. As a simple (non realistic) example, you start with one monitor in landscape mode. The game world is properly proportioned. Then you add two side monitors in landscape mode. The hor + behavior gives you a new larger horizontal FOV and allows you to see more game world side to side, but the exact same amount vertically. The game world is properly proportioned. Now you decide to increase your vertical immersion by adding three more monitors on top. What you really want to do is keep the same increased horizontal FOV and now increase the vertical FOV to match. But current game design does not allow this. Instead, with this setup if you keep the same larger horizontal FOV, the game will just stretch the “fixed” vertical FOV to fill your new double monitor height. All in game objects will look extremely skinny and out of proportion. The only way to make the whole game world look proportioned correctly again is to decrease your horizontal FOV. That completely defeats the purpose of placing side monitors for your peripheral vision in the first place. I hope I’ve explained this current game design limitation clearly enough. I am not a computer programmer, and I don’t know if games could actually be coded with separate, variable horizontal and vertical FOV settings. But from my experience and understanding of current games, multi-monitor gaming could really be improved with the ability to control these FOV settings separately. I wonder if game developers have even thought about this.

Instead of simply trying to attain an immersive widescreen experience when gaming, it may be that the very best experience comes from a very large square screen with equally wide horizontal and vertical FOV settings. My peripheral vision extends in all directions, not just to the sides. But then of course, the WSGF founder may have to change the name of his website. :)

[tet5uo]

Why do you conclude that only a 5x1 portrait mode would be best?

I think 3:1 provides an awesome experience.

[BHawthorne]

5x1 is a lot of pixels to push and a lot of bezels to ignore, but I like it too for LCD use. Then again I use projectors more than LCDs anymore. As far as separate FOV variables for hor and vert, we're 99% of the time lucky to have hor FOV editing capability, vert FOV would be luxury. I look at it all as dealing with the issues as well as can be expected when the game developers don't even understand to the most fundamental of basics when it comes to multi-display issues.

[X-ray Doc]

In my analysis of the current multi-monitor options, I don't like 16:9 aspect ratio monitors. In landscape mode, I truly hate losing those 120 pixels of vertical height. Going 3 x 1 in landscape mode gives a crazy wide aspect ratio of 5.33. That seems like you're overdoing the horizontal FOV without any gain in the vertical height. So to add vertical pixels to your peripheral vision there is the 3 x 1 option in portrait mode. I don't like that either because the overall aspect ratio of that setup is 1.69. That is in-between a 16:9 and 16:10 shaped monitor. I'd rather just play with a single 30" 16:10 monitor and have no vertical bezels of distraction. That is why I've sort of concluded that with the current technology and design of games, 5 x1 in portrait mode is probably the sweet spot, and preferably with 16:10 aspect ratio monitors.

Now I've never actually gamed on a multi-monitor setup. I've made assumptions and calculations that may not be that important. I just wanted to point out some of the many flaws that multi-monitor gaming still has and why I haven't just jumped on the band wagon yet. I would love to hear more opinions from actual users of Eyefinity or Surround gaming systems.

I do have one question about using a 5 x 1 setup in portrait mode with 16:9 aspect ratio monitors. I'm basically concerned about how "narrow" your main monitor may feel. Has anyone run into the problem where important HUD information gets rendered directly over the first pairs of side bezels? If you're using bezel correction technology, do you ever find that you're missing important HUD information because of the bezel locations?

Oh, and tet5uo, is your setup landscape or portrait, and with 16:9 or 16:10 monitors?

Thanks.

[skipclarke]

still better than 1

[X-ray Doc]

BHawthorne, do you use three projectors for gaming? Do you angle the side screens? Your room must be enormous!

[BHawthorne]

BHawthorne, do you use three projectors for gaming? Do you angle the side screens? Your room must be enormous!

Yep, it's a bit out there. 13x20 foot room. The screen is 13 foot wide and 6.5 foot deep uniform half-circle. No flat surface screens, all uniform circular seamless single 180 degree arc.

[X-ray Doc]

Wow! That sounds incredible! How does that work with Eyefinity or Surround? Do you use three projectors? Does it take a special lens or lenses to project on a curved screen? I didn't know you could buy a curved screen. Have you ever posted pictures of your setup? I'm jealous.

[BHawthorne]

Wow! That sounds incredible! How does that work with Eyefinity or Surround? Do you use three projectors? Does it take a special lens or lenses to project on a curved screen? I didn't know you could buy a curved screen. Have you ever posted pictures of your setup? I'm jealous.

It works pretty well, As with all exotic things it has it's downsides though. It'll work in Matrox TH2G, AMD Eyefintiy and NVIDIA Surround. Used all three over the course of my builds. It would take too long to explain it all, so the easiest thign to do is just check out a few of the threads in the projector sub-forum.

http://widescreengamingforum.com/forums/multi-monitor-gaming/projector-discussions

[fatlazyhomer]

Until you actually try it. You can't really judge. 3x1 landscape is fine 90% of the time. 16:10 monitors are still out there, and I hope they continue to be.

[Downtown1]

No, what's really wrong with multi-monitor gaming is that games don't support multi monitors natively. I want to have separate cameras, one for each monitor. In an FPS this can be as simple as removing the fishbowl effect (ala R Factor), in an RTS this can be having multiple viewpoints simultaneously (ala Supreme Commander), in an RPG it can mean having map/inventory/skills windows open etc on a side window always (I guess you can do this with draggable windows and non-modal UI, but few games have this).

Until that happens the only reason to buy multiple monitors in games is the Hor+

[suiken_2mieu]

These are all valid points, that being said, we STILL are in the infancy of multimonitor gaming. Hor+ is the base line. But I completely agree, especially with Variable FOV in both directions, which can be easily done in most engines BTW if the developers enabled it.

Another problem is adoption rate and audiance, we as multimon gamers are a very small minority. First of all, we're PC gamers. Second, we game with a lot of monitors. that puts us in a sub bracket of a failing audiance. We have a small voice, and developers are going to listen to who has the biggest voice.

So, for us, were lucky that we're getting the support we have. With AMD pushing eyefinity, and nVidia reacting to ATI pushing eyefinity, we're getting our voice. But still adoption has to ramp up, for developers to feel they need to take the time and money to support features that will be used by less than 1% of gamers that will play the game.
We need consoles to push multimon too if we are going to get our cookie. The day that happens, I will buy some milk.

[Gilly]

In an ideal world we would have either bezel less screens, or giant super high resolution screens the same as say for example 3x 30" size and res.

And the game would automatically change FOV based on the orientation and number of screens.

But then again, that won't happen! Too hard to make a console port do that ;)

[Anprionsa]

Well I still think PLP is the way to go, just wish it was supported natively on eyefinity! :rockout

However, now that I have seen 4k and the 36" goodness that Eizo has (see here) I think I am anxiously looking forward to it, we'll see how it all pans out though.