Blogs

Exclusively for the WSGF community a look at the gaming room for Florida Metrocon.
I have a mission to one day get a WSGF booth in this room to help spread the word about multi-monitor pc gaming and show the masses how awesome it is.

This year it didn't happen but I would still like to cover the event and give you a tour of the gaming room.
Lots of hardcore gamers come to the event just to go to this room and play games through the weekend, they host tournaments and imported games and its a good way to meet fellow gamers.

More from ViciousXUSMC @YouTube

Diablo III is a dungeon crawler game that has been in development for over a decade, so its a shame it doesn't have proper multi-monitor support. That said the support that is in there is good enough, you have to use fullscreen windows mode but after that everything is correctly scaled, HUD is appropriately positioned and the game is horizontal plus. But being forced to use windows mode does mean that both Crossfire and SLI don't work, there is a hack available to force the game into fullscreen mode, they can be found here along with details of work arounds: http://www.wsgf.org/dr/diablo-iii/en

I'm sticking with the commentary for this game, still work in progress, but feel free to like or dislike my video and comment.

While this video can be watched on any screen it has been encoded to look best on a multi-monitor system, so if your running such a system, then select original quality from the drop down box and watch in fullscreen.

Some screenshots and part 2 can be found here.

("My FOV" is the name of a new series of reviews aimed at giving you my opinion of new releases in a familiar review format, but with a unique look at widescreen and multi-monitor related goodness you won't find anywhere else. If you would like a "My FOV" of your game, email dom[at]wsgf.org)

The newest issue of Game Informer includes a lengthy look at the new Unreal Engine 4, with Epic disclosing their expectations for its lifespan being a decade long. Is this a good thing? Or is it an indication of the sorry state of recycled AAA titles and the diminishing ambition to innovate left in our biggest publishers?

DiRT Showdown is an arcade style destruction derby racing game. The multi-monitor support is good, resolution options are listed in game however the FoV appears to be an odd mix of horizontal plus and vertical minus, this appear to differer from system to system, for example mine is almost right however I've seen screenshots that are nearly completely vertical minus. The UI is centred but the HUD, at least on my system, is not. As for the video itself, I've tried to do another commentary while playing the game, I'm still not very good at it so please bare with me.

While this video can be watched on any screen it has been encoded to look best on a multi-monitor system, so if your running such a system, then select original quality from the drop down box and watch in fullscreen.

Some screenshots can be found here.

So Diablo III launched yesterday with much fanfare and many "Error 37's". What it didn't launch with was proper Eyefinity or Surround support. Based on folks who played the beta, and feedback from the devs in the official D3 forums, we knew this was going to be the case at launch.

What I don't get is why. Blizzard knows how to make a multi-monitor game (they updated WOW with the Lich King expansion), and indie devs stumble into proper support without knowing it. Think I'm joking? Check this out...

Runic was nice enough to give me a couple of beta keys for Torchlight II. I spent some time going through the game in widescreen and Eyefinity. Kayden was able to put some time into the game with an NVIDIA Surround rig. Overall, multi-monitor support is great, with several improvements over the original Torchlight. We did uncover one issue, which we are reporting to Runic. If you set the UI scaling to 100%, the health orbs are on the far left and right corners of the screen. This is a global bug, and it impacts single screen, AMD Eyefinity and NVIDIA Surround.

On a positive note, you can now place the automap to fill the left or right monitor. This is a great use of the extra screen real estate in Eyefinity or Surround.

Time for a new product review, this one is for everybody as I think we all use a microphone pretty much every day. Tired of having people tell you that your mic sucks? Want to one up your setup to something better? For me the ultimate transformation from "ok" to "great" recordings and voice chat was when I got the Blue Yeti. Since I was a big fan of that microphone I was really excited to see them offer a newer and better version called the Yeti Pro.

So this review is all about the new model but has plenty of information on the original Yeti as well. Check it out I am sure you can learn something.

On the back of winning our Game of the Year for 2011, Codemasters is releasing a new title called DiRT Showdown. They've sent us some preview code to check out, so here is my video review of how things are looking so far. I look at how the game works in multi-monitor, and how it compares to the previous DiRT title, DiRT3.

Remember to watch in fullscreen, regardless of if you are on a widescreen or multi-monitor setup!

Amidst my super busy weekend I took Guild Wars 2 for a spin in surround mode. Gave it a good initial testing for support compatibility and performance.

The game is working, but with severe blemishes that hinder gameplay experience. I will cover most of these in the video and hope that by the time Guild Wars 2 hits full release that these problems have been rectified and that we get a gold certified game.