| Author | Message | ||
     Ku Rating: N/A |
Wounder if anyone out here can shead some light for me on this question? Running a AGP "primary video card" and running 2 PCI video cards.. To get this surround gaming on 3 monitors, what is the game actually reading as it's video card? I have a Geforce3 Ti-500 64meg. games runs fine, don't matter what games!! Now if my 2 PCI cards are lesser of speed and so on say for instance a G4 pci 440mx 64meg or if I just went a got 1 Matrox G450 32meg card. Would this work WELL? Im not sure if the games see all this memory or what. I hope you don't mind me asking this kind of question on the forum, I know there are alot of SMART fellas on here.... Ku | ||
| Marvio Rating: N/A |
Ku, What you want to do is impossible!  The game engine can only utilize one card to render the screen, so, having 3 cards will do nothing for you...  What you need, if you want sorround gaming, is a Parhelia, which IMHO, is not worth it. It's a very expensive card and not very good.... | ||
| Maart Rating: N/A |
Hi Ku, I think it is possible, its just a question of adding extra graphic cards and ceating a desktop resolution of 3072x768 take a look at http://www.matrox.com/mga/3d_gaming/surrgame.cfm you can see how they do it, just select a game and look at the bottom of the screen. Maart | ||
| M.H. Rating: N/A |
What about to use 2 dual head nVidia (AGP/PCI) ? 4 monitors :-) | ||
| Marvio Rating: N/A |
What part of "It can't be done" you guys don't understand... ;) A game engine CANNOT utilize more then one rendering device, AKA video card ;). In order to have more then one display, A SINGLE VIDEO CARD has to support writing from the 3D frame buffer to 2 or more screens in hardware. Currently the only consumer video card that can do that is the Mtrox parhelia. And like I said, you'll be paying top of the line prices for a card that just doesn't perform | ||
| Marvio Rating: N/A |
Oh! And Maart, I don't mean to be rude.... But, are you a Moron? That page is talking about the Parhelia, which in my first post I mentioned as being the only card that could do this.... Jeez! | ||
| Anonymous Rating: N/A |
Your and his posts were only 13 minutes apart. He probably didn't even seen yours at the time he posted. "Jeez," give him a break! | ||
| Anonymous Rating: N/A |
A game engine CANNOT utilize more then one rendering device ... Total nonsence. The game does not need to know that it work on multiple graphic card. It just communicate witch drivers with can abstract from the nuber of graphic cards ... | ||
| Marvio Rating: N/A |
Anonymous, Would you care to explain exactly how a game engine, and let's be specific here, Quake 3, for example. Would utilize to separete video cards? Specially if they are not genlocked? Sorry Maart, I think I came out too strong, I meant it more as a friendly roast thing | ||
| Ku Rating: N/A |
Marvio, if you haven't seen this already, here is this site where he got 4 cards to work with 5 monitors running unreal!!!! and he was using win2000 with a crappy AMD K2-500 http://www.planetquake.com/mhg/ seeing he did that, I thought it would be alittle easier with 1 AGP dual card and 1 PCI card, if his setup is older,why wouldn't this work... Thats all, I am getting the Parhelia next week, well when they deliver it.. SO for your question up top, He also had quake3 with 2 monitors, not that I like it but it worked.... | ||
| Anonymous Rating: N/A |
Sorry to speak for Maart... but like he originally mentioned, and in looking at the Matrox website, the key is this: The Matrox display driver "tells" the game that it supports additional graphics modes that are three times the normal width. The website shows a game running in 800x600 on each of three monitors, and it tells you how to set up for each game to run at a 2400x600 resolution. So for Quake 3 ("seta r_customwidth 2400" and "seta r_customheight 600" and "seta cg_fov 143" etc. in "q3config.cfg"), the game doesn't even know it's rendering to different devices... it just thinks it's rendering to one really wide device... the graphics card takes care of frame buffer handling and all the rest. | ||
| Anonymous Rating: N/A |
P.S. - I believe that the Microsoft Windows support standard called "MultiMon" works the exact same way. Practically all modern display drivers support MultiMon. Thus Windows thinks it is operating at a larger resolution than one screen allows, and the low level Windows layers coordinated with the display drivers for the individual graphics cards take care of the rest. Maybe this is how that 4 card/5 monitor thing works. | ||
| Maart Rating: N/A |
Dear Marvio, just because you say that it isn't possible doesn't mean I beleave it. (I'm just stubborn, not a moron) It seems that a lot of games require to be in windowed mode. This way its just a question of scaling the game to the desktop resolution. I've done this a while ago with flight simulator and it works quite well, I think the principle works with many more games. now the realy interresting part: how are we going to add stereo support? Greetings Maart | ||
| M.H. Rating: N/A |
Maart: No way for accptable price. Reason: For multiple HW page flipping stereosopy the RAMDAC on the grpahic card must be genlocked. It is not true even for dual head cards ... Only following card supports RAMDAC genlocking: Wildcat 4xxx,5xxx,6xxx Quadro FX2000 I had made a lot of practical testing (targeted to multiprojector panaoramatic stereo-movie projection and CAVE device construction) .... | ||
| Christoph Bungert (Admin) Rating: N/A |
###here is this site where he got 4 cards to work with 5 monitors running unreal!!!! Yep, in software mode only, no hardware 3D acceleration! ###He also had quake3 with 2 monitors, Yep, single card! All examples for multi-monitor gaming with hardware 3D acceleration I've seen so far used single cards with dual- or triple-head. Think about it. How would you distribute the raw data to several 3D accelerator cards? Wouldn't this require serious programming within the game, i.e. which card gets which textures, etc. Christoph | ||
| Ku Rating: N/A |
Nuff said, tnx everyone!!!! | ||
| Anonymous Rating: N/A |
Wouldn't all cards get the same texture data? (TnL etc. too?) Each card displays different points-of-view from the exact same position in the game. Now if they were displaying from different locations, that would be a another matter, requiring two independent, simultaneous rendering processes. Seems like a display driver issue to me, not necessarily something at the game engine level. ...but I could be wrong. | ||
| John Winningham Rating: N/A |
http://www.realtimesoft.com/multimon/ That is *the* resource for what you seek. From what I understand the games that support hardware accelerated 3d rendering on multiple monitors on multiple cards are very rare. I would hazard to guess that stereoscopic 3d is impossible on such a configuration. That site is the only real resource on the subject I could find. I use two nvidia cards, nview does not combine two cards, just dual outputs on the same card. All in all surround gaming is a big headache still. | ||
| ku Rating: N/A |
Back at this one more time, would the Quadro framily allow surround gaming as the poor Parhelia? If you could configure it! I know parheila had thier APP that had config's for games, Does a Quadro accept multi monitors? Like 3.... I had my taste of the parhelia and it was to slow for the game I wanted, the FPS were just to low... My next setup is 3 NEC VT440 projectors with rearscreens, but waiting for a new Parhelia.. CHEO ku | ||
| ericbrown Rating: N/A |
One other thing to consider... the video adapter alone doesn't determine the fps you'll receive while view graphics. Your CPU plays a major role in this as well. Imagine the damper you'd put on your system using 5 video adapters for multi-monitor game playing. It'd be harsh in DirectX and/or OpenGL mode (when possible), little 'lone "Software Rendering" mode! Respectfully, Eric D. Brown http://www.frozenx.com | ||
| kudawg Rating: N/A |
Yeah that I know, but when my P4 1.6 with 512 mb with matrox 128mb card gives me 20 to 30 tops fps compaired to my Athlon 1.4 256mb and geforce3 doing 55 to 80 fps, then I think the card isn't strong enough, my fps didn't drop with 3 monitors , pretty much I thought the FPS stayed the same... racing is like the best with 3 Monitors.. Thats all I want.. I had 3 15" lcd, but seeing the Nec projectors are cheap, that will be my next project, no bezel at all... Parhelia2 needs to come out kickIN, hey Eric on ur web site, you haven't validated me yet, it's been since may24th... I can't leave anything in the forum...... | ||
| ericbrown Rating: N/A |
Kudawg... when you sign up, you should've received a validation e-mail (to verify e-mail address). However, I'll go ahead an validate you now! Respectfully, Eric D. Brown http://www.frozenx.com | ||
| Jeffrey Zakaib Rating: N/A |
I'm rather new to Sorround Gaming, but with a powerful procceser (3.06 -> 3.4 OC'ed P4B) you can get decent frames with UT2003(50fps) and UT(95fps) @ 1600x600. I also ran a radeon 9100 PCI, along with a Quadro 980XGL card. Runs in openGL on UT fine in windowed mode, at 3072x1024 at 45 fps. | ||
| Ray Price Rating: N/A |
DirectX does support rendering to multiple devices, but these devices and viewports must be initialized and configured by the game engine itself. The only game I know that supports rendering on multiple cards is Microsoft FS2004. Unless you have a 3D card can output more than two signals it's gonna be real hard going over three monitors. Dual head is quite common now, but it's a pain having a split screen in the middle. Shame, because it's really cool when it does work. Anyways, I think an HMD and head tracker is cooler still so I am going to hang on for the X-Eye. | ||
| Anonymous Rating: N/A |
Yeah I agree, HMD & tracking will be better.. I've tried them both and with little support that the surround gaming is getting it will soon get worse "I think".. With games that have a fixed FOV, you cant do surround or everything will be so big like SOF2 wont work and a few others.. Maybe Matrox will come out with a newer Parhelia but over at the site they are not saying to much... I was thinking of getting 3 projectors and and making the screens 8x6 and have people stand in the middle and play.. That would be a huge area, without 3d though.. ku | ||
| Anonymous Rating: N/A |
Hello, Are the ATI dual head cards or the Matrox Parhelia dual head "genlocked" video cards? Thanks. |
