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Re: 5760x1080?

#31
Ixos wrote:That's correct. Due to the bezel ending up in the middle of the screen almost no graphics card I know of supports full screen gaming on 2 monitors. Most games have their menues in the middle and with bezel correction parts of it will be hidden and it's going to be split up.

And your out of luck with a GTX 560 when it comes to 3 monitor fullscreen too :(

Nvidia do support 3 monitors but you need either a SLI setup (buy another 560) or a GTX card of the 600 series. If you upgrade make sure it supports "Nvidia Surround" which is what this is called.

Somewhat more detail on what you need to run 2D surround or 3D surround:

http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/3d-visio ... ts-uk.html


ATI radeon is a bit better when it comes to backwards compatability, they should support full screen "eyefinity" as they call 3 monitors from most 5000 series cards and later. They support more configurations and up to 6 screens.

http://www.amd.com/us/products/technolo ... inity.aspx
Galaxy Tech was able to do some voodoo magic and provided the 500 series multi-monitor setup with only a one-GPU card with their MDT series. However, this still depends on whether Josh has a Galaxy MDT card to begin with.
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Re: 5760x1080?

#32
JoshParnell wrote:Right, it would be a flat image. What you're describing would require a whole new level of technology in the game, and would also absolutely kill performance. Sorry, I agree that it would be cool, but it's just not really feasible at the moment!

Rendering three screens with the correct angle would mean three render passes, because internally we always assume that the display surface has no curvature, and mathematically, the rendering pipeline cannot support display surface with curvature unless you actually split the rendering up into pieces, i.e., approximate the curved surface with multiple flat surfaces (which is what you're doing with three monitors anyway). So that would really hurt performance.
What about multiple viewports/cameras? Kind of like the way racing games show the rearview mirror? Just a cut-out of the screen that's showing a viewport from the rear? If that was possible, then you're just tweaking the angle on the side cameras, add in a change of FOV, and you can simulate peripheral vision (at least on a flat surface).

For a three monitor setup, you'd have one viewport/camera facing front in your main borderless window, then the borderless windows to the sides are offset based on the middle's FOV as well as the angle their facing. Like if you set them at 90 degrees to the front, you basically have your right and left windows. Since this would be three separate views, and none of the views would be overlap (windows on top of windows where both are drawing), then shouldn't the performance be the same?

I'm guessing the game is going to have a 'rear view camera' to see behind your ship if you're going from a first-person view, and I'm just trying to describe showing both simultaneously in two different windows. Since you mentioned, Josh, that you were able to get the view to display with multiple borderless windows, I'm just trying to think of the next logical step.

I'm not asking for this to be done. I am only playing devil's advocate when it comes to the technical capabilities of the code/engine. Trust me, the fact you got multiple monitors working is awesome by itself. :D
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Early Spring - 1055: Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words: What. The. F*ck.
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Re: 5760x1080?

#33
Sure, I mean, you're completely right - that's exactly how you would do it, and it would certainly be feasible. It's just that it would cut framerate roughly in 1/3! But I may try it, since you're prodding me :)
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” ~ Henry Ford
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Re: 5760x1080?

#34
JoshParnell wrote:Sure, I mean, you're completely right - that's exactly how you would do it, and it would certainly be feasible. It's just that it would cut framerate roughly in 1/3! But I may try it, since you're prodding me :)
Sorry, didn't mean to prod. :oops:

I was only really asking because when I got into graphics programming, actually handling the multiple viewports/cameras/displays was what held me up and it's still really the only hangup I have when it comes to OpenGL. If you were doing something different than that, I was more curious, because I was hoping that perhaps that was why I had the problem with different views and you had solved it.

Although, knowing you were able to handle that yourself... Wow man, you got skillz. :)
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Early Spring - 1055: Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words: What. The. F*ck.
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Re: 5760x1080?

#35
DWMagus wrote:
JoshParnell wrote:Sure, I mean, you're completely right - that's exactly how you would do it, and it would certainly be feasible. It's just that it would cut framerate roughly in 1/3! But I may try it, since you're prodding me :)
Sorry, didn't mean to prod. :oops:

I was only really asking because when I got into graphics programming, actually handling the multiple viewports/cameras/displays was what held me up and it's still really the only hangup I have when it comes to OpenGL. If you were doing something different than that, I was more curious, because I was hoping that perhaps that was why I had the problem with different views and you had solved it.

Although, knowing you were able to handle that yourself... Wow man, you got skillz. :)
Well :geek:

It's not too big of a problem I don't think, the crux is that you divide the window into three equal sections, render to each of these in turn (you use glViewport to restrict rendering to a specific section), and each time you set the view matrix appropriately to adjust the camera angle to fit the given section's angle.

I guess the only tricky part is making sure that you've done the math right so that the three pieces align and you don't get any seams. Still, doesn't seem hard - you calculate the horizontal FOV as aspectratio * verticalFOV (which is manually-defined), then adjust the camera's yaw by this amount for each new section.

I think that about does it :ugeek:
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” ~ Henry Ford
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Re: 5760x1080?

#36
JoshParnell wrote: Well :geek:

It's not too big of a problem I don't think, the crux is that you divide the window into three equal sections, render to each of these in turn (you use glViewport to restrict rendering to a specific section), and each time you set the view matrix appropriately to adjust the camera angle to fit the given section's angle.

I guess the only tricky part is making sure that you've done the math right so that the three pieces align and you don't get any seams. Still, doesn't seem hard - you calculate the horizontal FOV as aspectratio * verticalFOV (which is manually-defined), then adjust the camera's yaw by this amount for each new section.

I think that about does it :ugeek:
Damn, man. That blows what I was considering out of the water. I was originally figuring you render the entire scene to a single virtual display of your actual resolution with adjusted FOV for that resolution and then chop it up to send to the different cameras accordingly. My method took a huge performance hit because it relies all on one gfx card and then the bus to deliver the images to another gfx card and then to the monitors. This limited my scene to whatever I could chop up the virtual image to, and it played hell whenever I didn't have the image in a straight line, not to mention how much of a hit I took when I played with an X formation of outputs.

Your way though, utilizes whatever card the monitor is connected to and go from there. It also allows for independent FOV and better fine control over camera angle, INCLUDING being able to utilize non-standard display setups! NICE! 8-)
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Early Spring - 1055: Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words: What. The. F*ck.
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Retina?

#37
I have a MacBook Pro Retina, and the 2880x1800 resolution is amazing...but...many games allow you to play at this resolution, but then scale, so that text becomes too small to read (it's crisp and clear, but TINY).

Please can you make sure that UI elements remain usable at all resolutions (I've also seen games struggle when the resolution is set too "low" and the UI elements were so big that they didn't fit on the screen and important buttons were unpressable).

Thanks, and keep up the excellent work!

-- Pete.
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Re: Retina?

#38
The subject of customizable font selection and size has been brought up in this thread, though a firm statement on that portion of the discussion has not been made. UI elements as a whole have been confirmed to be scaleable, we just haven't received a clear 'this includes scaling fonts to be readable at any resolution'.


{what he said - Gazz}
I am 42.
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Re: Retina?

#39
Pete wrote:I have a MacBook Pro Retina, and the 2880x1800 resolution is amazing...but...many games allow you to play at this resolution, but then scale, so that text becomes too small to read (it's crisp and clear, but TINY).

Please can you make sure that UI elements remain usable at all resolutions (I've also seen games struggle when the resolution is set too "low" and the UI elements were so big that they didn't fit on the screen and important buttons were unpressable).

Thanks, and keep up the excellent work!

-- Pete.
I will certainly try to do so. Designing things around scalable fonts is a pain, but I definitely want people to be able to play on retina displays, so I will try my best!
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” ~ Henry Ford
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Re: Retina?

#40
JoshParnell wrote:I will certainly try to do so. Designing things around scalable fonts is a pain, but I definitely want people to be able to play on retina displays, so I will try my best!
Awesome, thanks!

-- Pete.

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