Widescreen Gaming Forum

Crazy stuff man.
I live quite near melbourne.. be mad to actually see that in real life, hehe :lol:

Breathtaking!

I played it at 1 3x2 m projection and it was fun but this....holy shXX !

:shock: :shock: :shock:

lol ... and I was thinking I have a sicko setup .... lolol

I wonder. How hard is it to setup those projectors so that they perfectly line up?

Anyway, very very nice setup. You don't see that kind of stuff often. :D

That is incredible! Wow! Thats a very impressive setup!

Please oh please see if you can get a video of that and post it on youtube.

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EVGA GeForce GTX 970 SC ACX 2.0 3.5GB | 3 X LG Flatron 24EA53VQ in Nvidia Surround | Optoma HD20

I wonder. How hard is it to setup those projectors so that they perfectly line up?

Anyway, very very nice setup. You don't see that kind of stuff often. :D

You probably want to mount them on the ceiling and lock em so they don't move :D

Yea that must be hard especially if they have crossing light paths

Um, I didn't expect quite this response...

Let me say first that: I think small is beautiful :) in that by understanding what we are and aren't doing in surround gaming environments we can understand what is and isn't happening in immersive gaming environments. This is a healthy topic which has commodity gaming interfacing with the superset of modelling and simulation.

But what is the rig? Well, its a SEOS based VR Centre or V-Room. There are three modified Barco 909 projectors (yes, very well bolted to a steel frame mounted on a concrete slab) forward projecting onto a 6m diameter screen covering 150 degrees HFOV. Generally we have the image blended and spherised but most commodity games are not set up for this type of output (requires three 50/56 degree HFOV cameras and everything in sync between them). As I cannot find a simple method in Windows to cater for a desktop/channel overlap for anything other than two outputs I now use a single output and then set up a simpler display with no blends and a small black line between the images. The idea is to leverage the already accepted metaphor of monitor bezels and to avoid the direct abutment of the images which just looks like a cheap alignment and is hard to maintain (crts drift). In fact, I do need to do some work on the colour balance as you can see in the images. It works very well for the user so long as they are immersed in the action but for spectators is it quite nauseating due to the wide angle perspective distortion and often very twitchy POV change in FPS type games.

The machines driving it are a now two year old Xenon (Australian supplier, noisy but rock solid reliability) with a dual FX4500 SLI setup and an Apple G5. I do a lot of active stereo work so the Quadros are a requirement. Of course there is a little Matrox TH2Go box in there too. We can plug and play however with any other machine.

What really makes it sing however is the audio system. This is one area I have to say that when it comes to immersion, small can be improved upon ;) Sound design is everything where things should sound and effect you like they are.

And the centre itself? Well (plug coming up), it is an RMIT University facility for researchers in visualisation fields.
http://www.rmit.edu.au/browse;ID=3jgeft8n7gdj;STATUS=A;SECTION=10;PAGE_AUTHOR=RMIT%20Research. For gamers, access would be through the RMIT Game Graphics Programming or Games Graphic Design programs or events that such groups may organise.
http://www.rmit.edu.au/browse;ID=cptx0cv4q7qp
http://www.rmit.edu.au/browse;ID=8lxyo1gzf2g61

Yeah, a video on youTube. Good idea, I hope the mic on my little camera can handle the noise :twisted:

Great stuff ... thanks for the info.
A video would indeed be cool to see if you ever get around to making one.

As has been mentioned it is not often we get to see a setup that special so your posts are very much appreciated ... :D

Cool setup.

As for your wheel troubles, I offer the following advice:

NFS:MW doesn't really support a split pedal axis. It is a console port in its worst form, and as such can go slightly haywire when you try to drive with real computer hardware such as your wheel. I'm not too familiar with the R440, but if its anything like Logitech wheels you have the option to report a combined pedal axis (i.e. throttle is + and brake is -) or two separate axes. For real driving sims, of course you want two separate axes for realistic control. NFS:MW, however, is no sim. It is expecting throttle/brake input from a console-style thumb joystick (i.e. single axis) and it is this same thumbstick that controls menu options; that's why your menus selections are funky. If you must use a split axis, try holding the throttle down halfway in the menus. I just use a combined axis in this game since you are either all the way on the gas or all the way on the brake most of the time.

The steering is awfully funky, too, probably another artifact of the console port. It feels like you just sort of jerk the wheel in the direction you wish to turn, and the car keeps turning. If you hold it there (like you need to do in a real car), you oversteer through the turn. I love this game for the entertainment value, but it is near impossible to alternate between it and a real driving sim.


Speaking of real sims, have you used that setup with a quality racing sim such as rFactor? It has good triplehead support (none of this stretching nonsense like NFS:MW) and you can drive just about any car imaginable. It sounds like you have various people using your setup, and the variety rFactor provides could cater well to differing tastes.