Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hello everybody,

I currently game using an inFocus X3 projector, and I totally dig it. However, I'm considering my next step, and I was a little surprised that what I'm considering hasn't been a topic of discussion here (that I could find, anyway): multiple projectors.

Triplehead2go is great, but I'm not going to have the cash or wattage to run 3 projectors at once. But two...two, I could do.

It seems to me that using projectors rather than CRTs or LCDs would really go a long way in alleviating the "bezel in the middle" problem that you get when stretching across 2 monitors. Plus, the dualhead2go is cheaper, and two 5' screens is going to fill a lot of peripheral vision.

So before I go blowing a grand...has anyone tried this? Does anyone know anyone who's tried this? I'll also welcome opinions and pure conjecture. You guys are the pros!

Hey there ... welcome to the WSGF ... 8)

I have considered it off an on for a long time ... but I live in a very small cottage and there are no big rooms and so no big walls to project on to.

I would love to know how you get on.

Two projectors woujld certainly do much to alleviate the "line in the middle" effect. Still, you can never get things lined up pefectly, nor will you have two absolutely identical projectors, so there will still be something in the middle. How distracting it will be I do not know.

It's a very interesting idea, because you can do it on a single good GPU without any hardware in the middle.

sounds pretty damn awesome , and would look ace if all goes well and you can get them 'moulded together'.

you'd need a pretty big wall though id think.

I've done this before actually as I have 2 surplus projectors I picked up awhile back. The key to making this work is you're gonna have to do some math to marginalize the keystone effect in alligning the 2 projectors to find out just where perfect center is for each projector. I had a ton of fun with this awhile back though. I suppose I could set it up again to snap some photos of it.

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

Thanks for the feedback, everybody. I decided to go ahead and risk the $$ to see if this was a worthwhile solution. Now that I've had a few hours with it, I'll share what I've learned.

First, my initial projector was an Infocus X3. It appears to be discontinued...yet the prices refuse to drop. Rather than traipsing further down that dead-end road, I found one with nearly identical specs (InFocus IN26) and bought it, instead. As you probably expect, the image quality is different from the X3, but I chalk this up (mostly) to the fact that my first projector's lamp has around 1000 hours on it already.

I futzed for a while with the new one to try and make it look bleak and dreary like the old one. I couldn't quite get it right, but it really ceased to matter once I was in a game. (I always wondered how you TH2G guys could ignore the bezels...now I get it.)

For a quick screen, I hung two new bedsheets in a gentle arc from one corner of my little office to the middle of the next wall, which created enough of a curve to bring the picture into my peripheral vision, but not enough to distort it noticeably.

Next to getting the colors to match up, aligning the two projectors' images was my biggest obstacle. With some quality mounting hardware, this will be a lot easier, but even just propping them with cd cases and books and such, I was able to do a passable job. As it happens, the flexible nature of my "screen" complicated this, too...perhaps I'll have to rethink that someday.

Nevertheless, I was able to stretch the display across the two displays (courtesy of nView) and sit down to get my rear end royally kicked at Battlefield 2142 for a few hours.

In the end, I'm pretty satisfied. There's plenty of room for tweaking, naturally, but even so, I'd only really recommend this route for the "casual enthusiast," not the anal perfection-seeker.

Now THREE projectors, on the other hand.... :D

... I couldn't quite get it right, but it really ceased to matter once I was in a game. (I always wondered how you TH2G guys could ignore the bezels...now I get it.)

... :wink: ... :lol:

... and sit down to get my rear end royally kicked at Battlefield 2142 for a few hours.

... not the best game for multiple screens ... no FOV support ... :(
Have you tried a game that allows you to alter the FOV correctly ?

Now THREE projectors, on the other hand.... :D

Are you going to try it ?

Yeah, I kinda regret buying Battlefield 2142, honestly. For the the third iteration of basically the same game, you think it would be a bit more polished by now. In addition, I, like many others, find EA's unwillingness to support widescreen because would offer an "advantage" to be complete bunk. The reasons are many, but I shan't digress further.

I decided to take your advice and started going through my game collection. I popped in Half-life 2 (which I completed long ago) just to check it out, and to my surprise, I was completely unable to stop playing. It all just came together--the surround screen, surround sound, and a god-i-forgot-how-good-this-game-really-was game.

Freakin' AWESOME.

I also made one important discovery regarding alignment of the two images. Initially, since the screen curves around two adjoining walls, I had the projectors set opposite each wall (projecting as close to perpendicular to the screen as possible) to minimize horizontal keystoning. I had terrible times trying to minimize the seam between the two images, and even more trouble keeping the alignment once I found it. I decided to try putting the projectors side by side in the corner opposite the center of the screen, and that made a huge difference. Sure, the images get narrower as they approach the outside edges, but the ease and quality of the alignment is SO worth that price.

A third projector isn't in my budget (not that the second one was either :shock: ), so I think the next step is to pick up a DualHead2Go so that I can get my eDimensional 3d glasses working with both projectors. If that happens, you'll probably never hear from me again. :D

Cool stuff !!! ... 8)
I'm glad you are enjoying it ... :D

Do the eDimensional 3d glasses work with one projector ? ... let alone two ?

Yes, I'm running an nVidia 6800 GS, and I use their stereo drivers for stereo3d. The projectors are both DLP capable of 1024x768 at 60Hz (possibly higher? It's hard to say). There's flicker, but it doesn't seem to bother me as much as it does some people.

The problem is that the card will only do stereo out of one of the two heads at a time. Since I have the image horizontally spanned across the two projectors, it amounts to half of the entire image in stereo, and the other half in plain old 2d. Since the DualHead2Go acts as one single monitor, I should be able to send the entire signal out through one head, through the eDimensional dongle, then on to the DualHead2Go. I think that's the way the guy over at 3dflightsim.com did his.