Matrox Surround gaming sdk

[muted]

http://developer.matrox.com/details.cfm?CFID=224878&CFTOKEN=93413141&s=wnew&i=101

well even if you don't have 3 displays you can run it in windowed mode ;p

you can press numbers from 1 to 0 on the numpad to add viewpoints

0 = 10

 

[KimB]

With most 3D games that support running in a windowed mode, using wide-screen gaming in a simple window is trivial (I can even span any game across two monitors with my GeForce4, but there's no way I'm going to, for obvious reasons...). The only question you should have is what the optimal FOV should be. Here's a little shot I took on my computer from UT:

http://169.237.254.233/widescreen.jpg

As you can see, it is a little bit distorted, so I would probably have benefitted from a adjusting the FOV (it was set to 150).

The reality is that this just isn't very playable with just one monitor, though it is kinda neat to use to see how it would look on three.

 

[Hyp-X]

That's not how it should look...

If you do a single viewport rendering with high fov the image gets to much distorsion towards the edge of the screen.

What you should do is render into multiple viewports with a relatively small fov and with the camera rotated for the different viewports so the image "fits".

For example you can use 60 degs per viewports = very small distortion, 180 degs global. This is not just better looking, actually it is impossible to do with just one viewport.

You should check out that SDK!

 

[KimB]

Interesting. It is also interesting to note that the main problem with just one viewport stems from two things:

1. The transforms are all designed to map to a flat surface. For wide-angle view, it makes much more sense to attempt to map to a curved surface.

2. Since only vertexes are transformed, and all lines remain straight, you can only possibly accurately map to a flat surface.

Anyway, I posted the shot because I had read that UT2k3 was using that FOV for its widescreen view.

With three monitors, you could still do it with a single-window transform, but you would want to align the monitors parallel to each other. Quite obviously, a separate viewport for each monitor would provide better results, as it would allow you to curve the outer monitors inward.