3x the fun…Triple Monitor Gaming!

A while back I posted about Dual Monitor Gaming – it didn’t really work too well for the games I wanted to play, because basically you end up with the crosshair right in the worst spot possible – between the monitors.

However, I broke down today and added a second GeForce 8800GTS 512 card and a third iiyama ProLite B2403WS monitor to my rig. Sweet.

Setting Up

Hardware installation was painless – but the monitor was disabled initially. Once I booted into Ubuntu I ran nvidia-settings and it showed the second card, and I was able to enable the monitor.

I juggled them around a bit so that the main monitor was in the center, rather than the far left – and then there are three basic options you have here:

1. Set up each monitor as a separate X screen
2. Set up one huge screen using Xinerama
3. Set up TwinView on the two monitors on the one card, and a separate screen on the third.

The third option seemed crazy to me so I didn’t even try it.

The first option works with Compiz – Compiz does NOT work with Xinerama as far as I can tell – and it was a little neat.

However, I went with Xinerama, for one big old 5760×1200 screen. It was my impression that this would be the thing that worked for gaming … admittedly, I did not try the separate X screen thing (yet).

Game On!

Of course, you have to manually edit the game configuration to get it to support such a resolution. For Enemy Territory: Quake wars, I settled on this:

//3 monitor setup:
set r_aspectRatio "-1"
set r_customAspectRatioV "10"
set r_customAspectRatioH "64"
set r_customWidth "5760"
set r_customHeight "1200"
set r_mode "-1"

The only quirk here was that it did NOT work initially – I could only get the game showing up on the center monitor. I searched all over the place trying to figure out why. Finally, as a kind soul in IRC was assuring me it SHOULD be working – I pressed ALT+ENTER – and the game stretch across two monitors! I pressed ALT+ENTER again, and it was on all 3 monitors, fullscreen!

Excepting that small quirk (which didn’t seem small until it was solved), this was a dead simple process!

Owari

And that’s it! I must admit it is quite a bit harder playing across 3 monitors. For one thing the HUD elements are positioned at the corners of the side monitors, so it’s no longer a glance to check where you are on the map, for example. You have to actually turn your head.

Also, it seems to me that the aiming is a bit more difficult, and the FOV needs to be adjusted as well. I haven’t hit on the right combination of settings yet – and some of the difficulty may simply be adjusting psychologically to the new setup – but it sure looks good!

Screenshots

Edited to add by request! The opening screen at 5760×1200:

And here is a comparison of the same area. First screen is one monitor @ 1920×1200 with a FOV of 105:

And here is the same view across all 3 monitors, 5760×1200, FOV is 80:

In the screenie, the right most monitor section looks dark, but this isn’t apparent in the game – I don’t know why the screen shot turned out this way (they all did this – I took a few). The first two monitors (left and center) are on one 8800GTS 512. The last monitor (right) is one its own separate 8800GTS 512.

By default, the screenshots are TGA: 8.8MB for one screen and 26.4MB for three screens. These are JPG at 100%, so still big files.

Toggling monitors

Here is a bit of config for ETQW I am using so I can switch among 1/2/3 monitors. CTRL+BACKSPACE sets the cvars, and then I press ALT+ENTER to re-size the screen:

// Monitor Config
set mon1 "set g_fov 105; set r_aspectRatio 2; set r_customWidth 1920; set r_customHeight 1200; addchatline 'Single Monitor Config'; bind BACKSPACE $mon2 CTRL"
set mon2 "set g_fov 90; set r_aspectRatio -1; set r_customWidth 3840; set r_customHeight 1200; set r_customAspectRatioV 10; set r_customAspectRatioH 32; set r_mode -1; addchatline 'Dual Monitor Config'; bind BACKSPACE $mon3 CTRL"
set mon3 "set g_fov 80; set r_aspectRatio -1; set r_customWidth 5760; set r_customHeight 1200; set r_customAspectRatioV 10; set r_customAspectRatioH 64; set r_mode -1; addchatline 'Triple Monitor Config'; bind BACKSPACE $mon1 CTRL"
bind BACKSPACE $mon2 CTRL

I’m still messing about, trying various configuration options for my normal desktop – although dual monitors seemed to be pretty well supported and easy to get going, there seem to be a few minor quirks with triple monitors.

2008.04.24 Edited to Add:

BTW, although ET:QW is based on the Doom3 engine – I am not able to get Doom3 running right under Xinerama. Although I can get Doom3 to draw across all 3 monitors, there is no mouse cursor, and it is not fullscreen – ALT+ENTER does not function.

Also, when trying to run it on a single monitor (when Xinerama is enabled), the mouse cursor acts strange, can’t move it left or up, and it jumps quickly to the bottom or right and disappears. Best information I could find gives the same errors I see (Fatal X Error: Major opcode of failed request: 136) and general mentioning that Xinerama and Doom3 don’t play nice together.

2008.07.15 – Edited to Add:
I finally got W:ET and Doom3 working right with 3 monitors. Screenshots and details in this blog entry