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My experiance with a PLP SoftTH config
http://www.wsgf.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=68&t=22782		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  Thebutcher [ 26 Sep 2011, 18:12 ]
Post subject:  My experiance with a PLP SoftTH config
Hi all,

I'm relatively new to these forums (posting) I have been reading them for a long time.
so First, my system specs:

Chassis: Custom HP Blackbird002
MB: EVGA x58 SLI
CPU: Corei7 965 extreem (liquid cooled)
RAM: 12G Corsair Dominator 1600
GPU: ATI 6970 (liquid cooled)
HDD: 3x 32G SSD in Raid-0
Monitors: 2x HP LP1965 in portrait, 1x HP LP3065 in the center in Landscape
Resolutions: 19"=1024x1280, 30"=2560x1600 (SoftTH res=4808x1600)
Peripherals: Merc Stealth keyboard, Logitech G500 mouse, logitech G930 wireless 7.1 headset

I just recently got 3 19" HP LP1965 monitors for free, and set them up to test out eyefinity. While that run great, and was very easy to use, I found that I was unhappy with looking at a 19" center screen as it was too small compared to what I was used to. The side screens are great for the immersion factor, but didn't offset my dislike of the 19" in the center. I am too used to using my HP LP3065 30" monitor.

So I decided to go with a PLP setup (Portrait, Landscape, Portrait) with two of the 19" in portrait on each side of my 30".

Setting them up in Windows for general computing is of course easy to do, and I have ultraMon for the additional taskbars, and one background for all, but the Gaming portion was a bit more tricky.

I started with L4D2:
I grabbed the latest version of SoftTH, and found a couple of how-to's in these forums and on some external links that led me to put the SoftTH file in the Bin folder instead of the folder with the .exe
However, even when the game was launched, and the pop-up told me it could not find the config file, it never generated the default config, I hit the ok button, and the game never launched, and the process kept running. I hat to go to task manager to kill it.
I then found the SoftTH 2.x configuration tool: http://www.kegetys.net/forum/index.php?topic=2631.0
Holy crap, what a life saver this tool is!! it detected my screens, and with some messign around with it, I figured out how to set the resolutions correctly, and even create bezel compensation. So i copied the code it generates, and created my own config.SoftTHconfig file, and placed it in the same folder as the SoftTH dll file.

I found out the hard way that you cannot have your center monitor as the default monitor, as SoftTH likes that to be the Left most monitor. Before I figured out that's what was causing an issue, i would get my side screen launching the game, and my center screen would stay in windows. After setting the left screen to the primary, the game would launch, but it launched on the left screen until I set the video settings to 16:9, and chose my custom resolution 4808x1600 and there it was in all its glory! L4D2 running in PLP. I was psyched!
After some tweeking in the configuration tool, I got the bezel compensation and screens to line up nicely and ran a full vs game without issue.

I do however have one remaining issue, and that is the HUD. Since it is PLP and on an odd resolution the hud is on the far right and left sides and out of view on the bottom. I found the HUD fixer, but it seems to be coded based on 3 screens of the same size and resolution. So enter question #1
Question: Is there a way for me to use the HUD fixer for source games to center the hud on a 4808x1600 resolution in this PLP setup? If not, i think I need to extract the hudlayout.res and find the specific settings themselves and move the hud on the x and y axis manually. Does anyone know of a tutorial to show exactly which lines to edit?

Now on to COD:BO
So even with the HUD issue outstanding on L4D2, I decided to move on to COD:BO. i copied the SoftTH .dll and hte config file from L4D2 to the COD:BO .exe directory, and it launched right away! Very excited again that this worked. This game however requires the FOV fixer. i had used Dopefish's widescreen fixer when i ran the 3x19" in eyefinity and it worked perfect. However i have an issue running it with SoftTH. When i run black ops, and i get to the menu, I hit the hotkey to fix the FOV and it works fine in the menu, but when i launch the game, it constantly toggles off and on between the default FOV, and the FOV from the fixer. I tried multiple settings in the fixer, and all have the same result, so enter question #2
Question: Has anyone seen this behavior, and do you know of a fix, or what setting I should use for this setup?

Then to BFBC2
i left Black ops alone, and moved onto BFBC2, moving the files, launching, and choosing resolution all the same got the game to launch and i joined a server to test. everything was fine except some of the ground texture was missing! so Question #3
Question: Why in this setup with SoftTH would some of the ground texture not show up?

So, after all of this, I still have some work to do to get the hud in L4D2, FOV in Black ops, and textures in BFBC2 all fixed, but for 1 night of about 3 hours of tweeking, I am pretty close. if anyone knows the answers to any of the 3 questions, any help is appreciated.
Author:  Delphium [ 27 Sep 2011, 14:00 ]
Post subject:  With the HUD editor tool, try
With the HUD editor tool, try entering your portrait resolution into the "Resolution of single monitor:" field.
Set to 3 monitors and just ignore the center screen resolution.

I think this SHOULD work for you, although bezel correction is not fully supported using PLP, if you have bezel correction enabled, then I would suggest that you add a single bezels worth of pixel count to the width of your portrait resolution.

Example
1920x1080 in portrait would be 1080x1920.
If your bezel pix count is say 120pixels then add 120 to 1080 to get 1200x1920.

Note this has not been tested but it may give you the result you are looking for. Good luck.
Author:  Thebutcher [ 27 Sep 2011, 22:18 ]
Post subject:  Thanks Delphium! i will
Thanks Delphium!

i will test it out and report back if it worked, and if not, what i did to get it to work
Author:  Thebutcher [ 30 Sep 2011, 23:04 ]
Post subject:  Delphium, I used the editor
Delphium,

I used the editor and put the hudlayout.res file in the scripts folder, but i dont think it got used, as tehre was no change at all to the hud.

Do I need to re pack it into the .vpk file?
Author:  Delphium [ 02 Oct 2011, 00:38 ]
Post subject:  Hi, The .res file should have
Hi, The .res file should have had a number of xpos values incremented in the download.
You do need to build it into the .vpk pack files.
There are instructions here..
http://widescreengamingforum.com/article/wsgf-source-engine-multi-monitor-hud-editor-how-part-1
Author:  Thebutcher [ 03 Oct 2011, 17:58 ]
Post subject:  Hey Delphium, Thanks for
Hey Delphium,

Thanks for the link to the tutorial!

I got it to work perfectly!!

FYI, for PLP setups you idea worked with one small correction. Depending on the resolution of your center monitor, you need to use that as the verticle resolution in the HUD editor.

For example, mine = 1024x1280 (left) 2560x1600 (center) 1024x1280 (right)
With 175 pixels of bezel correction

I used 1199x1600 for the screen resolution in the hud editor. If I used the 1280, the hud was too high up on the center, with 1600 it was right where is should be.

thanks for all the help!!
Author:  Delphium [ 03 Oct 2011, 18:18 ]
Post subject:  Awesome, thanks for reporting
Awesome, thanks for reporting back :)
Sadly I do not have the other two titles so I cannot help much with them.
Author:  Thebutcher [ 03 Oct 2011, 20:06 ]
Post subject:  no worries on COD:BO and
no worries on COD:BO and BFBC2, I am not going to be playing them much once BF3 releases.

I tried to get softTH to work on the BF3 beta, but it did not. i had no option to change the aspect ratio to 16:9 and select my custom resolution, so It did not work.

Im hoping that there will be an update to SoftTH in the near future not only for BF3, but to enable it to work with DX11, as I would love to get the PLP going, and get the eyecandy of DX11 to boot.
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