Widescreen Gaming Forum

I have recently gotten my 3 screen rig up and running and its a blast. Always wanted to do this.

and this site has made it very approachable.

All the games i play i have had success getting to work at great frame rates (for the most part) on my rig following the intructions of this site.

Issue

Although the aspect ration of the center screen always seems perfect in my 3 x 1080p world, the 2 side screens always seem to "stretch" the iamges out of proportion. Fat and wide. and when theya re right in front of me, they look perfect (center screen)

Is this simply something i have to accept or am i missing something?

Regards,

Sleepdoc

the short answer is that this is absolutely normal, the longer version is that its game dependent. alot of games can handle this a little differently, most FPS games you will notice the side "stretching" can be more dramatic. some RTS games have no side stretching (dow2), and ive found some third person vary a bit, from being nearly as bad as most of my FPS to being not too bad at all (saints row 3), but always there.

basically you should be focusing on the center and letting the side just fill your fov, not really looking directly at them, i duno that i want to call this an "issue" but its definitely an known side effect of triple screen gaming.

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Asus P8P67 Pro, I7 2600k @ 4.6Ghz, 8gb, 250GB SSD/ 4TB Mechanical, Modded GTX 780TI, 3x AOC 27" IPS 5760x1080

Thanks Ugzz,

I just wasnt sure, being new to this. if this affect was the result of me setting something up wrong.

sleep

Unfortunately this is one of the side effects of having an increased field of view. Much like a fish eye lens on a camera, the wider the FOV the greater the distortions.

The only way around this really is to reduce your horizontal FOV which unfortunately reduces your vertical FOV at the same time in a lot of older games (HOR-), so for some games it just makes them feel too claustrophobic if you loose too much vertical FOV. The trade off is that it can reduce the pincushion effect but you arent then really getting the full benefit of the wider view and it often feels uncomfortable. Most games these days are HOR+ which means vertical FOV is preserved even if you increase your resolution by using triple screen resolution. The side effect of this is often more exaggerated pincushion. Some games though have distortion even on a standard 1920x1080 display because of the default FOV, this is by design to make them more comfortable to watch. (watch the video below for an explanation)

The other factor that effects this is camera perspective which also interacts with FOV. Most games are written with a fixed camera perspective. That is... if you change the FOV you cannot change the camera persective (position) in order to reduce or remove the distortion.


How focal length affects perspective: Varying focal lengths at identical field size achieved by different camera-subject distances. Notice that the shorter the focal length and the larger the angle of view, perspective distortion and size differences increase.

taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_view

Also check these out! :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_of_view_in_video_games

Cool video tutorial on Game FOV >>> http://artsygamer.com/fov-in-games/

http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/Components/class-Camera.html

Have fun: http://widescreengamingforum.com/forum/7185/bars-between-screens-and-side-screen-distortion-please-read

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System Core: | Intel Core i5-2500K + ASUS P8Z68-V + 16GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1333 MHz | Win7 x64 | MSI R7970 Lightning 3GB [1105/1400] |
Display: | 3 x Dell Ultrasharp 3007WFP-HC @ 7680x1600 | Dell u3011 |