At Last - surround gaming with decent graphics

n3x · 8 May 2006 at 10:39

damn that looks so good!

i tried cod2 spanned across my 2 19" tft's a little while ago and it feels so emmersive, but sadly very unplayable. This looks so much better, another thing to go on my list for when i win the lottery...

does anyone have anymore links to pics of setups or vids of this in action?? i can only find the richard burn rally one :confused:

cavemanoc · 8 May 2006 at 13:14

That's the joy of this system - it doesn't actually cost the earth! With LCD costs dropping you can get 3x19" screens for less than a single 24" and as I said before:

Why limit yourself to 1920 x 1200 on a single 24" when you can have 3840 x 1024 across 3 with a FOV that means you really can have eyes in the back of your head!!

The real key here that's often overlooked it the fact that you get an improved Field of View (FOV) - That link that TBirk posted to FEAR is THE reason to go for this system - it gives you peripheral vision which not only lets you see people that you'd otherwise miss, but does make the game more immersive.

It's not about the resolution (though that makes it look prettier) its about the Aspect Ratio - This system gives you 12:3 as opposed to the 4:3 of standard monitors (even widescreen add little as it only increases to to 16:9 - bearing in mind that standard format (4:3) is actually 16:12 you can see that it adds little) Your FOV depends on the Aspect ratio, and that's what increases your 'real world' viewing area - NOT the size of the screen or the number of pixels!

As for the split, it actually works in our favour - by angling the monitors you get more of a feel of 'wrap around' which is what the FOV settings do - if you can't increase that angle -ala BF2 - what you get is a wierd 'stretched' world that looks unnatural - look at the Oblivion shot and you will get an idea for what I mean! Having played FS2002 over 3 screens I can tell you that it's awesome! Well worth the cash - and still a huge price drop compared to the Dell 30", which achieves little more than humbling your system

speeduk · 8 May 2006 at 13:22

But what card or combination of cards can run 3840x1024 res smoothly?

cavemanoc · 8 May 2006 at 13:31

Yesssss... that's the trick isn't it :eek:

Actually this works out quite well now - you can run it at 1920x480 if you've got a single mid-range card (921600 - pixels) which is exactly the same number as a standard res of 1280x720 - not outrageous. All the way up 3840x1024 (3932160 pixels) for your blinged-up SLi rig - which is still significantly less thn the Top setting of the Dell 30" at 2560x1600 (a heafty 4096000 pixels!)

Really is something for everyone!

King_Boru · 8 May 2006 at 13:52

Good idea for flight sims would prefer to use 2xgfx cards and 4 monitors though.

front - left - right - top

might consider this though.

cavemanoc · 8 May 2006 at 13:59

Ahhh... here's the beauty - as TBirdUK mentioned, you can still use this system - either run the front 3 screens on one card through the Matrox 3Head and the Top/Bottom through the other card - or even better - as he did ages ago - run the Front 3 at Awesome resolution through your Blinged-Sli and then use a cheapo PCI GFX to run a touch-screen 15" lcd for the interactive instrument screen in your lap....mmmmm....unnecessary bling....mmmmmmm

King_Boru · 8 May 2006 at 14:02

i can see your imagination is running away from you cavemnaoc. however, vrey good idea. you should build a whole flight sim rig with touch screen cockpit and heads up display.

that would be cool.

EDIt: AND you could even make and enclosable cockpit where you can have a monitor array. You will need the 4 x 16x pci-e slots of the gigabyte intel board though. that would be even cooler.

cavemanoc · 8 May 2006 at 14:10

King_Boru said:
i can see your imagination is running away from you cavemnaoc. however, vrey good idea. you should build a whole flight sim rig with touch screen cockpit and heads up display.

That's basically what he did - it worked extremely well as MSFlight allows you to run anything windowed, so he just picked the views he likes and created a multi-screen monster - was a little creaky in places, but worked extremely well - the the Matrox splitter added in - well... The opportunities really are endless...

Now, if you want imagination overrun...

Get a GA-8N-SLI Quad Royal (Yes - that's 4 16xPCI-e slots)

4x GV-3D1-79GT (when it arrives) - (that's 8 7900GT's :eek:

)

4xMatrox 3Heads (That's 12 screens)

:eek:

...

Don't get me started!

TBirdUK · 10 May 2006 at 19:36

Back on topic - still cant find anywhere to pre-order one. Come on OcUK these are definitely worth a look at!

FrankJH · 10 May 2006 at 23:44

I can fully understand this working well in flight sims - which arent very action oriented and would show off matrox's skills of not necessarily 3d skills but more colour reproduction and accuracy (which they were known for a few years ago) but in 1st person shooters I would have to see it to believe it and you would also probably have to have an SLI / crossfire rig to withstand the frame rate drop of 3 times the res

Also extending the FOV also causes the developers headaches wouldnt it? More objects / people have to be accounted for and everythng , its relatively simple to have a sound off the side of a screen, but once you have to implement a "camera" there also, surely the cpu / gpu / ppu gets more and more burdened - even if it is just peripheral vision???

Just thoughts out aloud - Colleages at work are thinking of these gadgets at home for laptops to monitor bloomberg / reuters simultaneously with emails etc.So we may well be getting some in soon for me to play with

Sir Random · 11 May 2006 at 02:39

Some good screenshots in this review:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/337/4/

Oblivion:

Maybe they'll start making hinged 3-panel monitors with no gaps between the screens

FrankJH · 11 May 2006 at 07:34

I wonder if the doublehead to go is exactly the same tech but with two monitor support instead of three as that is a much more reasonable £100 rather than £150 for the triplehead

Another disapppointment is the non compatability of ATI cards in general - hopefully they (ATI / Matrox) can get this fixed easily

Thanks for the review Sir Random

cavemanoc · 11 May 2006 at 18:13

From that review:

However three 17" or 19" LCD screens will put you back what .. 700-800 USD ? The new 30" Dell screen at 2560x1600 will cost you 2000 bucks. I can tell you already that for gaming the T2G solution is a heck of a lot more fun.

Exactly my point - and as for the resolution issues and gfx problems - as I pointed out previously, the lower setting is well within the grasp of even the mid end cards - Considering 68GT's are available at the £100 level, this really is a 'do-able' option - as TBrid said - come on OcUK - I want one!

I'll be very short .. Do you own a NVIDIA GeForce Series 5, 6 or 7 generation product with a decent amount of horse power ? Then you are good to go, you will stumble into no issues whatsoever .. and that includes full SLi functionality which actually is highly recommended.

How big is my smile?

Matrox has been seeking dialog with ATI about resolution support. In short, ATI cards of course can easily support it yet at the moment of writing ATI refuses to cooperate to get this fixed for unnamed reasons.

Nice one ****-heads: good to see the boys at ATI aiming for their feet again :rolleyes:

Right now there are easily a hundred and fifty games supporting the T2G

TBirdUK · 12 Jul 2006 at 00:32

TH2Go arrived!!

Its here!!!!!!!!!

Got a Matrox Triplehead2Go today, also got 3 x 19 inch TFTs. Dont have the time to let you all know how it is and my SLI machine is in Bits.

Will update tomorrow, try to post pics tomorrow and give you a verdict

cavemanoc · 12 Jul 2006 at 00:42

About time - get your thumb out and get it set up - 2*7800GTX's at 3840*1024 with extended FOV will be awesome :eek:

Get fear up and running and show us some screenies!

Psycho Sonny · 12 Jul 2006 at 00:45

could you take sum pics please instead of screenies?

cavemanoc · 12 Jul 2006 at 15:08

And no whinging about 'work commitments' get it set up - been waiting long enough

lay-z-boy · 12 Jul 2006 at 16:00

whoa, this is what sli was made for!

quad sli should allow max aa and af too.

However i tried gaming with 3 screens, g'dam its hard let alone the poor fps.

Psycho Sonny · 12 Jul 2006 at 16:31

how bad would the fps be on an x1900xt im curious because i would love to have 3 screens, and with the current price crashes on sum lcd's it might be possible after christmas, but i suppose my cpu and ram would take a beating too?

cavemanoc · 12 Jul 2006 at 18:19

Yep - this is definitely the poster-child for SLI.

To get an idea - there are roughly the same number of pixels in the 3840*1024 mode as there are on the Dell 30" screen - so it does take some power to get it running! :eek:

In the lower resolutions it's not quite so demanding, so definitely a player even if you don't want to go SLi (In the 2400*640 mode there are the same number of pixels as in the standard 1280*1024 mode - so shouldn't be a problem even for the older 6800's!) - (Though considering the pricing on the 7950's and even the single 78 and 79s it seems silly not to!)

You'll be happy to know that TBird has got it working and it's apparently awesome - last thing I heard him say after loading up Fear was "fov is huge - s*** its scary!" - so don't expect to hear from him for a while!