Widescreen Gaming Forum

All in all, its good that Paddy pointed this out! Otherwise, chances are that it would have been much harder to find these issues and get a solution for them. Now we have a discussion going and can look for what went wrong. :)

I don’t understand why this forum allows this. Is this because that ATI sponsors this forum?

We allow everyone to make their own bed (say what they want), and then lie in it (take any heat needed for their statements). The WSGF is not into censorship.

You will see that Dave has almost 250 posts on the forum, and SunSp*t has almost 50. Out of all their posts, SunSp*t has made one post (probably out of a great deal of frustration) that is "out of character" when compared to all their other posts on the forum (which have been helpful and engaging). I would ask you to take that one post in light of all their contributions.

The same goes for the other members and moderators that posted. People were pissed, tempers were flared, and I'm hoping everyone can look back and at least see that some things didn't need to be said, or at least didn't need to be said in a particular way or tone. Out of the hundreds (if not thousands) of posts for each of those people, these posts were out of character as well.

You on the other hand registered solely to jump into the firefight, and as a part of that questioned my integrity on the WSGF by allowing the posts because of a perceived sponsorship. In this instance, people will pass their own judgement as well.

Now, back on topic...

We all know the issue. We all know what everyone's point of view is. We all know the optimal solution. Let's let the issue simmer until we get more information. Please ensure any further posts are constructive and have a civil tone. I'm already tired of this issue (it consumed too much of my weekend), and I don't want to wade back in to moderate.

Regarding Splinter Cell, that ball is certainly in Ubisoft's court. Their game=their responsibility. As much as the issues brought up here are frustrating, it is nice to see ATI get involved on behalf of users' concerns. ATI could have said "Hey, it supports Eyefinity and that's all we care about, so too bad," but they didn't. For that I'll say thanks.

For me the kicker is that the multi-monitor landscape has changed, I daresay permanently. Tamlin summed it up:

when its advertised Eyefinity support and this doesn't mean there is general multi-mon support. Normally, when a game has support for multi-mon, it works for all hardware that supports multi-mon.

Even if Splinter Cell gets fixed for Triplehead and NVIDIA Surround, from here on out no Tripleheader can look at an EF Validation stamp and assume the game will work for his rig. Same goes for games that end up carrying an NVIDIA stamp--EF and TH gamers will have to do some detective work prior to purchasing the games they want or just make a blind purchase and hope for the best. For multi-mon gamers this is a HUGE deal. I frequently pull the trigger or holster my wallet based exclusively on whether or not a game will run correctly on my TH setup. I can't speak for anyone else, but I almost never make a blind purchase.

Going forward, my frustration is that the issue of correct multi-monitor support has now become more complicated for dev/pubs. Even today it is still difficult to get proper support implemented in new games. Some devs make the effort, some don't, and I'm sure some publishers "make or break" the issue with timeline/funding decisions. Heck, some places even vocally refuse to support multi-monitor gaming as an "anti-cheat" measure. In my experience fixing games to work better in widescreen or multi-monitor, I've run across more than one case where modifying the game to work well with these setups would have required a bare minimum of additional effort by the developer. For whatever reason, that effort didn't happen. If studios and publishers now have to contend with hardware/feature separation in multiple directions--even if implementing one platform might make it much easier to support the others--I fear multi-monitor support might actually get less attention than before or perhaps just enough effort to earn a sticker on a retail box.

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VirtualDub Game Recording Guide | BFME2 & RotWK Widescreen/Triplehead Mods

Assassin's Creed II added triple wide support the correct way, EF, TH2Go and SoftTH all are working. To add only one of the three is simply being a punk, and alienates 2/3 of the users.

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Assassin's Creed II added triple wide support the correct way, EF, TH2Go and SoftTH all are working. To add only one of the three is simply being a punk, and alienates 2/3 of the users.

And this is what we want, not vendor specific solutions :)

But, ATI says that this is not a behavior expected by their SDK and they don't know what happened. They are investigating this and will get back to us. Sunspot is checking if the SDK could have influenced/interfered with the support for other surround users. Problem might be at Ubisoft and how they chose to implement this.

The ball has been set in motion and as Ibrin said, we should let the issue simmer until we get more information. :)

Sunspot is checking if the SDK could have influenced/interfered with the support for other surround users.

I have been told by the EF Feature Manager (no, I don't manage EF anymore) and the ISV Engineer who worked with Ubisoft that the SDK does not interfere with support for other surround users. Without examining the code base personally I have no further recourse.

And to be fair, my days of reading and comprehending code are in the past.

For me the kicker is that the multi-monitor landscape has changed, I daresay permanently.

If studios and publishers now have to contend with hardware/feature separation in multiple directions--even if implementing one platform might make it much easier to support the others--I fear multi-monitor support might actually get less attention than before or perhaps just enough effort to earn a sticker on a retail box.

Well I hope not. The EF SDK offers capabilities that are not available otherwise, things that make adding widescreen capability easier. Isn't lowering the barrier desirable? Everything is published so that anyone can duplicate everything that was done - there are no secrets. If coding for more than standard resolutions and aspect ratios is easier, who is to say that more games won't acquire this capability?

Other than that, it is a fact that broad compatibility has not yet been reached. It is too early in the game for that expectation. AMD will encourage developers to support extended resolutions and aspect ratios (not just wide-screen) generically, but in the end they will make their own decisions.

One other observation - it is my personal opinion that the members of WSGF should welcome every game that has extended resolution and aspect ratio capability even if it doesn't initially do everything you'd like, because that will increase the critical mass of gamers demanding this capability. Critical mass is important. Along the way there should be positive *cough* *cough* encouragement for developers to improve or add support.

Sunspot is checking if the SDK could have influenced/interfered with the support for other surround users.

I have been told by the EF Feature Manager (no, I don't manage EF anymore) and the ISV Engineer who worked with Ubisoft that the SDK does not interfere with support for other surround users. Without examining the code base personally I have no further recourse.

And to be fair, my days of reading and comprehending code are in the past.

Thanks. :) At least we know that the SDK is not the cause of surround issues on the game or can cause issues in future games with the SDK.

One other observation - it is my personal opinion that the members of WSGF should welcome every game that has extended resolution and aspect ratio capability even if it doesn't initially do everything you'd like, because that will increase the critical mass of gamers demanding this capability. Critical mass is important. Along the way there should be positive *cough* *cough* encouragement for developers to improve or add support.

We might sound ungrateful with this thread, but we are really not. It seems that when ATI launched Eyefinity, people have really gotten their eyes up for surround gaming and ATI have gone to developers asking for support for this as well. For this, I think we all are grateful.

But, as ATI's primary concern are their users, our users have a big mix of hardware and so we need to keep focus on whats best for all users. I would hate to see that games gets a need for vendor specific solutions (as oposted to increased vendor support for their solution). It would be much appreciated if ATI could recommend in their SDK documentation that a hor+ baseline is preferred for maximum compatibility. :)

We are not interested in "getting" any vendor, but to have support for all our members. Getting our games working is all that matters and if ATI's SDK could contribute to do this with recommending solutions that benefits surround gamers as a whole (as shown above), you'll receive much more kudos for this!

Thanks. :) At least we know that the SDK is not the cause of surround issues on the game or can cause issues in future games with the SDK.

That being said, I'm still not happy that there was an unexpected result. We need to figure out how to minimize these things. Not easy when we don't control the entire ecosystem.

Getting our games working is all that matters and if ATI's SDK could contribute to do this with recommending solutions that benefits surround gamers as a whole (as shown above), you'll receive much more kudos for this!

Yeah we grok that part. We need to look at how to do that. It isn't as easy as putting a few sentences in our materials somewhere, and there are other things we have to take into consideration. Not business things, but "vision" things (as in where and how do we want to influence the future of visual immersion). I have something in mind for Christmas 2015, and I need to figure out how to get an entire industry there. The future is bigger than you think.

Any news about this ? :)