Widescreen Gaming Forum

Got Triple head to go but not have the time to hook it up. My favorite sim is BOB WOV (Battle of Britan Wings of Victory ) an excellent flight sim. Apperantly I have to run it wide screen mode, not the best for Triple head. I guess it crops some of the top and bottom. So that being the case, would i be better off getting a 42" or 46" high quality TV? Sitting two feet away from a big TV would be nice, but would it be pixel city and slow to respond to the fast action vs my 3 x 24" Samsung monitors? Right now I have no pixel or refresh rate problems with the 24" Samsung thus three of them would equal 60" viewable area, react fast, and no sign of pixels vs a 46" HDTV. The big TV would be nice in that it is...big. Reading some negative things about triple head, and not wanting to open the 2 boxes my 24" Samsung monitors came in, in case the big 46" TV would be a better route. What do you guys like using the most? The nice thing about Triple head, I would be able to position the monitors in more of a wrap around fastion, use one when not simming, and easier to move 3 lite monitors vs a big hdtv. From what i see on YTube, triple head is the cat's paw. Then again, if a big 46" does the trick, I'll will get that. I noticed any big HDTV looks a bit pixelated at 2 feet and under, thus triple head appears to be a quality solution at less cost. I am running 2 x 8800GT cards SLI. All responses appreciated.

Hello ...
If you haven't already ... take a look at this ...
Battle of Britain II: Wings of Victory in TripleHead

I no longer have it installed but it worked fine for me ... apart from the couple of issues mentioned there.

I also have a 43" Pioneer Plasma and I would say I would much prefer the TH2G for games over a single big screen because of the added peripheral vision.
That said ... 3 x 24" monitors has some resolution limitations ... read this ...
Info ... TH2G ... Widescreens & Available Resolutions

So ... with the widescreens resolution limitations and that FOV limitation of 110 in that game (mentioned in the first link) it may not look so good ... :(

I live in hope that Matrox will give us an update to allow higher resolutions in widescreen soon.

Hi Paddy the Wak. I think you hit the nail on the head, "added peripheral vision" I have the Digital version with 24" Samsung monitors that will do 16:10. Time has not permitted me to hook them up yet. My take on this is, Matrox is the leader in wide screen triple monitor solutions. Some sims may not work perfect, but there are a lot that do. Thus in my way of thinking, I'll get the sims that work. BOB looks great in triple head from the pics you posted. This technology and can only get better and I think the price of the three to go is very reasonable. I read some negative comments but the nay sayers forget, companies must sell, make profit, re invest and make newer better products. Matrox has been excellent in promoting surround simming, and I'll buy the latest greatest gizmo they make any time, any day. I've been waiting for years for this technology, and appreciate the support from this forum and quality persons like your self. With the support of loyal customers, surround simming (I do not game but sim), the future looks very bright. Thanks for the detailed reply. Your responses are excellent and very interesting and detailed. After your response i cannot see why anyone would not want Triple head. I appreciate you owning a big plasma and compairing it to triple head. You know what you are talking about. Matrox is a quality company who's agenda is to give what the customers want, and I am fully confident they are working on solutions to make what they got even better. I remember Matrox from the 80's back in my Mac F-18 simming days. they have always pushed ahead of the rest.

Hello ...
Yeah most games/sims were never designed with TripleHead in mind so many that do work in TH have small issues ...

All we can do is hope that developers see the light ... once I tried TH there was no going back to a single screen.

I'm sure that Matrox is doing all they can with developers etc. to get the best TH solution for future games and sims.

I don't think the 110 FOV will be an issue. Rumor has it the BOB team is working to increase the FOV for Triplehead. An observation when driving my car made is, I cannot look at my gauges and see the road at the same time. I do not know if that is the same when flying, as I am only an armchair pilot. When driving, it's very hard to do both. Thus my cars windshield (triple head so to speak), and looking down at my gauges (track ir), is what i do hundred's of time per day while driving. Thus, looking down at gauges, as i do when driving, is natural and realistic. I think some of the negative issues with Triple head are more of a negitave perspective. It boils down to how much one wants the surround experience, vs looking at gauges at the same time while flying. For a dogfighter, not too big a deal in props. In a jet, essential as the MFD's etc. are part of the combat experience, very essential. But then again, how much effort does it take to glance down with Track IR and look up? Myself, this is a personal choice, I choose the sim that will work with Triple head vs trying to shoehorn the sim to work. That's just my personal thoughts. My favorites work with Triple head anyways (BOB, IL-2, Strike fighters(all), FSX, X Plane). I seen some excellent screen shots of how good IL-2 works in Triplehead. Take this with a grain of salt, (not talking about productive intelligent perspectives), sometimes simmers want perfection out of the box, rightfully so, but with computers what can one expect? When making an omlet, one gets a little eggs spilled, but in the end it works. I appreciate your productive posts along with the others in this forum that aid in the enhancement for the users of Triple head.

IMHO, neither of those suggestions seem appealing to me. Using a TH2G on those 24" severly cripples thier maximum resolution and a 46" 1080p tv would be just big pixel 1920x1080. I'd make sure the games I use are compatable with SoftTH and use SoftTH and 2 top of the line cards to push 3600x1920 or 5760x1200. Personally, 3600x1920 seems to be a very attractive 3x24" setup resolution, as I've used 1200x1920 before and that is pretty impressive in and of itself.

Think about it...3600x1920 is essentially pushing twice the resolution of the TH2G with that monitor setup. A 3 x 245BW setup is more impressive to me than one of the 30" XHD displays because of the resolution that 3X setup would be capable of pushing at a competative price. 2540x1600 vs 3600x1920...no question which I'd prefer and at a bit cheaper a price. :wink: Some nVidia driver versions are a bit picky about rotation of display, but once you get that working it would be very cool to see it in triple-head.

On another note, Samsung should be shot for not better documenting the set screw that needs to be removed in the 245BW for "MagicRotation". It took magic to figure out it was there. :P

Edit: After batting around this idea in the post I'm pondering actually doing this myself now. :lol:

_________________
Brad Hawthorne
Product Manager
Nthusim Pty. Ltd. | www.nthusim.com

Ghimpi, I am not very savvy with computer stuff, thus when you said 3600x1920, is that three monitors at that resolution each? Went to the Soft T cite and see no clear how to's for dummies with getting it to work. Be interesting as to what you find. The thing I like about Triple head, plug and play. Thanks for your response.

3600x1920 = 3 24in 1920x1200 in portrait, aka 1200x1920 so 3 1200 wide for 1 1920 high

Ghimpi, I am not very savvy with computer stuff, thus when you said 3600x1920, is that three monitors at that resolution each? Went to the Soft T cite and see no clear how to's for dummies with getting it to work. Be interesting as to what you find. The thing I like about Triple head, plug and play. Thanks for your response.

SoftTH has a bit to go before it's a transparent plug-and-play type of utility. It's the only current way to use 3 displays and overcome the 3D resolution restrictions of the TH2G though. I really wish I knew some DirectX coders, so I could work with them on a better utility to fill the need.

When I was mentioning 3600x1920 I was talking about 3 Samsung 245BW 24" monitors that are 1920x1200. They have the ability to rotate 90 degrees. Adding SoftTH to run 3 of them rotated at 90 degrees would give you 3600x1920. That would be higher resolution than the 2540x1600 30" XHD monitors but at the cost of limited support and ability atm. It's something I look to make more plausible in the future with help of others. There is a nitch market that could be filled by a more complete utility than SoftTH currently offers atm.

NOTE: If you are a lurking DirectX coder, shoot me a PM here. I'd like to bat some ideas around with you. Over the last few months I've gone so far as to even nail down concept mockups of how the utility interface might be for this new utility. I also have a features whitepaper written for it.

_________________
Brad Hawthorne
Product Manager
Nthusim Pty. Ltd. | www.nthusim.com

Maybe some good news about the future of Three to go and BOB. The FOW has been increased and I am waiting to get a report back as to it's success. will re post as soon as I find something out.