DDO 3 monitors is nifty

[firemedium_jt]

https://imageshack.com/i/np7nh7j





It runs great. Just one video card now with the Geforce GTX 600 series. No SLI required.
AOC 27 inch monitors.

This is a refurbished $210 HP business machine 2.66 Core Duo, 8 gb ddr2 with some upgrades including a $180 GTX 660 Synergy by Zotac. Zotac GTX 660 Synergy is the only 660-760 with a heat sink that would fit is this wacky Business case design. It is a full desktop, but you get to the mobo from the opposite side. The video heatsink faces up instead of down with the CPU heatsink screws sticking up into the path of dual slot cards. I also used metal cutters to cut away a hole for the dual slot in the back cause there is no open slot above it. They also tried to form factor a PSU upgrade with some sheet metal so you have to buy theirs. Just cut that out for the 600 watt generic PSU.

Now they are getting smart. On some business refurbs the mobo power connections are 6 pin instead of 20/24, so you have to really download the manuals of refurbs to make sure you can upgrade them with generic connections and hardware.

I also have it on another older $150 HP refurb running a PNY GTX650 Ti I got for $104 with three 19 inch monitors I through together for fun. Runs great on max settings. This case is older and regular form factors however the CPU is slightly slower. Technically this one only takes 4gb ddr2 ram, but I run 6 gb ddr2 in it just fine. lol

The slight distort on the extreme right and left is due to the bezel correction resolution. What that does is skip the image area on the monitor frame so that everything lines up naturally.

Also on startup initial character world entry you may have a distorted wide fat toon. You have to refresh the resolution by selecting another resolution from you main res and then go back to the higher bezel corrected resolution. Switching toons DDO keeps a good resolution and there is no distortion.


Mainly used for flight sim games (helps with TrackIR) and first person shooters:
Falcon BMS
DCS
FSX (PMDG)
Call of Duty old and new.

Some games require a free fix or patch.
Flawless Screen and Widescreen Fixer cover most games.

I solved my space issue with a $10 piece of 5'x9" wood and some matching Walmart paint. Drilled two holes on either end of desk to screw with some big washers and bolt the wood down.

FPS and Flightsims is where 3 screens is just phenomenal, but I need to get into some questing in DDO still

[Sisma]

Niiiice!
I must assume this sets the line from casual player to real professional! Lolz...

[FlaviusMaximus]

Very nice. Now clean those shelves.

[firemedium_jt]

Very nice. Now clean those shelves.

Half the reason was to cover up the mess. You should see behind them.
Actually I organized some of the stuff behind them.

[Vellrad]

Meh.
Playing on this is impossible without sticking head into screen, thanks to non scaling icons and tooltip texts.

[goodspeed]

Meh.
Playing on this is impossible without sticking head into screen, thanks to non scaling icons and tooltip texts.

true. I hate those **** icons. Play on a 43" and while one setting is better, those icons just get insignificantly small.


Wish we could drag and reside the things manually.

[IronClan]

IMPRESSIVE! ... now see sig

I have plans to do this with ultra widescreens when they get cheaper... I wish the Curved screen thing had taken off a few year back...



Just didn't get popular enough to become mass market and get the cost reductions needed for most people to consider buying one. The new trend in curved TV's might help things along though. Samsung has some stuff on the horizon that might revive the curved monitor concept. (BTW the one in the pic is like a foot thick in reality because it's old DLP (digital projection) technology.

Edit as others have noted DDO's biggest issue is the UI and inventory is so non-scaling/sized in stone that evewn at 1900ish res's it's getting hard to read or make out stuff.

IMO there are parts of the UI in this game that were unpolished alpha like quality when the game got rushed out and have never been brought up to comercial game standards since.

[Nayus]

Pff, look at that 2-button mouse.

[firemedium_jt]

Well I did some Waterworks testing I zoomed in like first person shooter. It was very nice. Combat was a little wacky not seeing a weapon swing in front of me. I zoomed out slightly to over the shoulder and leveled my view with the horizon and I must say I love the perspective. I can't wait to try it out in raids.

You have to admit the top down zoomed out max angles kind a take away from the realism if you care about that sorta thing.

[Erdrique]

Nice, I wish I could get something set up like that, literally don't have the space in my office area, lol.

[phillymiket]

Pff, look at that 2-button mouse.

Looks like a 17 button Naga Razer to me.

Can you adjust the resolution for all three screens separately?

If so maybe make one of the flanking screens low rez for chat window n such to make them prominent?

IDK

Pretty cool set-up though. Gratz :-)

[firemedium_jt]

Looks like a 17 button Naga Razer to me.

Can you adjust the resolution for all three screens separately?

If so maybe make one of the flanking screens low rez for chat window n such to make them prominent?

IDK

Pretty cool set-up though. Gratz :-)

Yep Naga.

As far as I can tell the Nvidia needs them all the same rez to look right. Height matters more than length. Length is easier to adjust physically it seems. If you have some monitors laying around.

Ie. The 19 inch monitors at 1400x900 one of them is 20 inches at 1600x900 native. I set the 20" 1400x900. That lost me an inch of area but scaled every thing so it lines up. The 20" one is just on the side. The blank area is moved flush with the bezel of the center 19" monitor. Just some I threw together.

[Chi_Ryu]

As far as I can tell the Nvidia needs them all the same rez

Indeed it does.

For those of you with multiple monitors with differing resolution (I have a 30" landscape with 2 x 20" portraits - total of 4960x1600), SoftTH is excellent, but only does DirectX 9, not 10 or 11.

[Cordovan]

Very cool!

[hunterjwizard]

I have a similar setup using a Matrox Triple Head 2 Go. Its an external ad-on device that converts one video card into three. They are a bit more pricey, but more games tend to tolerate it better since, as far as the game(and windows) is concerned, you have a single 48x9 aspect-ratio monitor. My screen resolution, for example, is 4320x900.

Granted, I also have 6 monitors hooked up to my PC(3 in a row, 2 on top of the row, one up and off to the side) so that's another advantage as my computer only "sees" 4. But its fun.

I use it mostly for tri-boxing, though(playing 3 accounts at once). I tried quad-boxing but my poor machine starts to shimmy once I throw up that third account...

As a last note, I will say one of my absolute favorite things about DDO(outside of everything in-game) is the ability to dynamically re-size the client in windowed mode. I run at a wacky resolution and play windowed so I can multi-task, DDO let's me drag the client to exactly the right size for my purposes, and that is great.

[firemedium_jt]

My 19" setup I threw together. Sorry about the dim light.
The odd ball 20" is on the right. You can see ths bezel plus another 3/4" black screen going from 1600x900 to 1400x900. Not a big deal really. I dont miss the small amount of area off the end. Not worth buying a matching new monitor. Thanks for the program to multi rez them. I might try it out cause the 20" is a nicer picture for the front.

The general advice is to buy the same monitor so the colors match, but some in some games the picture tends to be lighter for the left and right screens. On those 27s more so. Why is that?

2 of my newer 27s have 1900x1080p and 1080i while the older one just has PC 1900x1080. The older one is in the center. What rez for the 27s you guys recommend??

[hunterjwizard]

I have noticed that some games increase the draw distance(sometimes dramatically) on the left and right monitors. Unreal was a pretty good example. I don't know if this is intentional or not, but it actually mimics the human eye, which sees further out of the edges than in the center.

[Avenging_Angel]

I can fit three hotbars on the bottom of my screen without entirely covering up my character model.

[firemedium_jt]

Is there any way to keep shortcut bars from expanding out with greater resolutions?

[firemedium_jt]

photo sharing


You can click on photo to enlarge for your screen.



Over the shoulder seems the best engrossing perspective.
Any closer in on the zoom and it looks like a FPS which is ok, but you can't see your weapon swing or anyone small in front of you. Not very good peripheral vision if you zoom in max.

This helps if you keep going from a laptop with 1366x768 to a desktop with 5920x1080
http://ddowiki.com/page/UI_layout