Three display setup performance

[335th_GRAthos]

Originally Posted by whatnot

So at the end of the day the configuration of three displays is such that windows just sees one big screen with 3x display resolution?

Yes

Originally Posted by whatnot

And then clod will automatically setup proper FOV etc to accomodate for the extra wide resolution?

No (only IL2 does this)
Think of it like if you are trying to see an extra wide film on your TV. Your TV will gives you a choice: 1. crop part of the left and the right in order to fill the whole screen (top, bottom, left, right), 2. show the full width from left to right but with two black stripes (at the top and the bottom of the screen) in order to keep the proportion right, 3. fill the screen top, bottom, right, left causing distortion to the proportions.
COD does #2 that is you see much less from top and bottom than if you would run the game on a 4:3 monitor.
IL2 on the other side will handle the three monitor view correctly, that is increase your field of view to tripple the original size without reducing your top/bottom view.


~S~

[whatnot]

Originally Posted by 335th_GRAthos

No (only IL2 does this)
Think of it like if you are trying to see an extra wide film on your TV. Your TV will gives you a choice: 1. crop part of the left and the right in order to fill the whole screen (top, bottom, left, right), 2. show the full width from left to right but with two black stripes (at the top and the bottom of the screen) in order to keep the proportion right, 3. fill the screen top, bottom, right, left causing distortion to the proportions.
COD does #2 that is you see much less from top and bottom than if you would run the game on a 4:3 monitor.
IL2 on the other side will handle the three monitor view correctly, that is increase your field of view to tripple the original size without reducing your top/bottom view.
~S~

I might be a bit of a simpleton on this, so please try to bear with me. But doesn't the portion of the screen which remains visible correlate directly to the aspect ratio of the resolution your monitor(s) have?

So for the sake of an example if you have 16:10 aspect ratio with with 12 1280x800 resolution and you multiply it with three horizontally it becomes 48:10 or 4.8:1. Isn't it then natural that I get proportinally less than a guy with 4:3 screen?

Like these two screenshots, 4:3 vs 16:9.

They're not identical and 100% comparable images, but close enough.

Maybe it's easier to explain this way around: if it would work correctly in Clod what should it do with a 3840x800 resolution?

[335th_GRAthos]

OK, I did the work using one of my old screenshots (with SLI GTX8800)
Needless to say, you want to see three monitors, well, it is gonna be big pictures


Optimal Resolution 1024x768 (in order to identify the dots ) and 4:3
note: I do not know whether CoD has been optimized for 16:9 or 4:3 monitors but at least for IL2 it was 4:3
This is a screenshot from the days we were trying to identify the Russian PE-2s which were becoming "invisible" over woods (you can recognise the dot under the number 3 in the centre screen)

Using the same IL2 3monitor 3072x768 (3x1024)x768 screenshot as base.

IL2 single monitor view 1024x768


IL2 three monitor view (3x1024)x768 = 3074x768


As you can see from the two above screenshots, my horizontal field of view trippled and I did not lose any of my vertical view thanks to IL2's 3monitor view option in the conf.ini

CoD single monitor view 1024x768


CoD three monitor (current) view (3x1024)x768 = 3072x768

As you can see there is a major loss of vertical view because CoD just expanded the original 1024 pixels horizontal view to 3072 pixels horizontal view. The detail is of course much better (than in my "streched image" example but the loss of vertical view is considerable.

CoD three monitor (not available today) view (3x1024)x768 = 3072x768
This is what a real three monitor view should look like in CoD



I hope this explains.

~S~

[whatnot]

Originally Posted by 335th_GRAthos

OK, I did the work using one of my old screenshots (with SLI GTX8800)
Needless to say, you want to see three monitors, well, it is gonna be big pictures

I hope this explains.

~S~

Thank you for a very detailed analysis on the situation. But how come I'm not seeing that zoomed in limited view for CoD in this video for example but a pretty decent fov:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=jO0MYcI344c

Is it because of Eyefinity vs triplehead2go?

[335th_GRAthos]

Neither, nor.

I can only assume, he adjusted the FOV using the following solution:

Originally Posted by Oersted

Zoom: In CoD, to get the smooth zooming in/zooming out, you have to go into:
Control options, Camera, And set "Hold to adjust view" to whichever button you prefer (keyboard or joystick)
- If you then hold down that button and move your mouse forward or backward it will change the field of view in a gradual way.

This solution unfortunately changes your front view and it is very difficult to dogfight and aim after that so, impractical.

~S~

[beazil]

Originally Posted by 335th_GRAthos

Yes

...
No (only IL2 does this)

...
~S~

Il2 will NOT automatically select the correct settings. A person can, via the config.ini set up for three monitors rendering left window, center view, right window via the use3renders command - but it will ONLY work if your monitor is set to a 4:3 resolution and not 16:9 or 16:10 monitors. It's a big source of frustration for many users, myself included. Thankfully there are other solutions out there such as San's FOV changer and two other "mods" I am aware of that will allow users of three monitor setups to gain a "wider perspective", but the original software will not automatically configure itself as such.

Not trying to be disagreable - just pointing out something I and many other users have had a good deal of experience in the past. S!