I have been an avid widescreen gamer for a very long time. I have used all the hacks to avoid “vert –“ behavior when gaming at 16:10 or 16:9 aspect ratios. However, I am currently on the fence about switching to multi-monitor gaming. After much research and “visualization” of what the final experience might be like, I have concluded that the best (and most expensive) gaming experience would come from a 5 x 1 portrait mode setup using Eyefinity. I have also decided that the best 5 monitors would all have 16:10 aspect ratios to make your center screen a little wider before noticing the bezels. But even this setup, and multi-monitor gaming in general, has persistent problems. The following is a list, with commentary, of the major problems that I see still exist with multi-monitor gaming. I’d love to see the entire industry, game developers and hardware manufacturers, address these shortcomings.
1. There are very few 16:10 aspect ratio monitors, and most of them are more expensive.
2. Running five monitors at 1920 x 1200 resolutions requires incredibly expensive video cards.
3. Most cheaper monitors are not designed so that the bezels are small and EQUAL on all four sides. They might work ok in landscape mode, but they won’t align evenly when put in portrait mode.
4. Most cheaper monitors won’t rotate into portrait mode. That means you have to buy aftermarket stands. I’m not even sure if a single stand exists that can hold up five 24” 16:10 aspect ratio monitors. For that matter, can you buy one that will hold up five 24” 16:9 aspect ratio monitors?
5. Bezels in general. It would sure be nice to eliminate these entirely.
6. For Eyefinity setups, the lack of monitors with native display port inputs. I know there are fairly inexpensive passive adapters available now, but yuck! If display port is the intended future for the PC, every new monitor released should have this connection.
7. The lack of completely independent horizontal AND vertical FOV settings in games. I consider this a major game developer mistake. I’ll try to explain. Currently, when you set an FOV in a game, you are only choosing the horizontal FOV. The vertical FOV is “fixed”. This is demonstrated by games that display nice, proper “hor +” behavior when you keep the monitor heights the same and simply widen the screen. As long as you don’t try to increase monitor height, this system works fine. But for immersive, multi-monitor gaming, you really want to increase the visible game world in all directions, not just width. As a simple (non realistic) example, you start with one monitor in landscape mode. The game world is properly proportioned. Then you add two side monitors in landscape mode. The hor + behavior gives you a new larger horizontal FOV and allows you to see more game world side to side, but the exact same amount vertically. The game world is properly proportioned. Now you decide to increase your vertical immersion by adding three more monitors on top. What you really want to do is keep the same increased horizontal FOV and now increase the vertical FOV to match. But current game design does not allow this. Instead, with this setup if you keep the same larger horizontal FOV, the game will just stretch the “fixed” vertical FOV to fill your new double monitor height. All in game objects will look extremely skinny and out of proportion. The only way to make the whole game world look proportioned correctly again is to decrease your horizontal FOV. That completely defeats the purpose of placing side monitors for your peripheral vision in the first place. I hope I’ve explained this current game design limitation clearly enough. I am not a computer programmer, and I don’t know if games could actually be coded with separate, variable horizontal and vertical FOV settings. But from my experience and understanding of current games, multi-monitor gaming could really be improved with the ability to control these FOV settings separately. I wonder if game developers have even thought about this.
Instead of simply trying to attain an immersive widescreen experience when gaming, it may be that the very best experience comes from a very large square screen with equally wide horizontal and vertical FOV settings. My peripheral vision extends in all directions, not just to the sides. But then of course, the WSGF founder may have to change the name of his website. :)
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