Widescreen Gaming Forum

I understand what Fish Eye effect is, but what i dont understand is if this problem is because of the graphics cards or software related or is this something that the game itself when being developed needs to be fixed.

Also does the invidea or ati surround platform fix this issue

Thanks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3ZdrwXEzcs

As has been stated countless times on this forum and is best explained in this video, the "fish eye" effect is a natural process that happens in any video game regardless of the aspect ratio because of the way that field of vision is calculated. Triple-head gaming such as Nvidia Surround, Triplehead2Go, and ATI Eyefinity exaggerate this problem because your FOV extends to a greater area due to your increased aspect ratio. This issue can never be fixed as it is the way your field of vision is calculated to account for the way your eyes perceive images and peripheral vision. The monitors don't understand you're looking at the side monitors, so they can't account for you staring at the side monitors where the peripheral vision, or "fish eye" effect is located. You're supposed to look at the center of the screen and allow your eyes to naturally perceive one large image across all 3 monitors.

The view distortion is what surround is currently based on. There might be more games like the one linked below but that doesn't actually remove the distortion.

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=8879

If you could control or eliminate the distortion there are much better ways to support surround but I doubt it will change anytime soon if ever.

Sorry, forgot about what rfactor did, but for the most part it won't be messed with as most games calculate a single very wide FOV instead of multiple FOV's. And I doubt we'll see such madness again anytime soon.

Sorry, forgot about what rfactor did, but for the most part it won't be messed with as most games calculate a single very wide FOV instead of multiple FOV's. And I doubt we'll see such madness again anytime soon.

Guess we'll have to forget about IL2:1946, Black Shark and iRacing too, as this would be just madness to properly support 3 screens properly !
Sure most companys won't support the wider screen because they feel they have no target audience, but then not so long ago you had to hack a game to be able to play it on 3, now support is being built in as default more widely.

I'm sure there a other ways to fix the fisheye, as I dont like the 3 viewport mode, as my monitors aren't facing 90 degree angles to each other (22 deg would be more desirable imho) so isnt practical for most.
We know that the further from the centre the worse it is, and can anticipate these numbers, so could apply a software (ingame or overlay ala softTH) compression to compensate for this, sqeezing the display the further out you go.
This would probably leave some black space on the sides of the monitors, but small price to pay for a clean view.
Maybe if you have 1. 16:10 monitor and 2. 5:4 on the sides you could connect the primary to the centre DVI and run the 5:4's by a DVI to vga adapter on your widescreen resolution to compress the outer monitors display, to offset the distortion.
Obviously normal stuff like the desktop would be all screwed up, but I'm thinking outside the box to suggest possible other ways to address the issue.
I don't think this is impossible to fix, and its more a matter of time before its supported properly or some kind of hack is found.

Guess we'll have to forget about IL2:1946, Black Shark and iRacing too, as this would be just madness to properly support 3 screens properly !
Sure most companys won't support the wider screen because they feel they have no target audience, but then not so long ago you had to hack a game to be able to play it on 3, now support is being built in as default more widely.

I'm sure there a other ways to fix the fisheye, as I dont like the 3 viewport mode, as my monitors aren't facing 90 degree angles to each other (22 deg would be more desirable imho) so isnt practical for most.
We know that the further from the centre the worse it is, and can anticipate these numbers, so could apply a software (ingame or overlay ala softTH) compression to compensate for this, sqeezing the display the further out you go.
This would probably leave some black space on the sides of the monitors, but small price to pay for a clean view.
Maybe if you have 1. 16:10 monitor and 2. 5:4 on the sides you could connect the primary to the centre DVI and run the 5:4's by a DVI to vga adapter on your widescreen resolution to compress the outer monitors display, to offset the distortion.
Obviously normal stuff like the desktop would be all screwed up, but I'm thinking outside the box to suggest possible other ways to address the issue.
I don't think this is impossible to fix, and its more a matter of time before its supported properly or some kind of hack is found.

Okay... to more accurately answer razzar's question: Yes, it can technically be adjusted and has been by some games. Will it be adjusted? Most likely not. Should it be? It's debateable, I find the fish eye perfectly fine as I keep my monitors at about a 15 to 20 degree angle. If I kept mine at a 60 to 90 degree angle, I would probably want the rfactor solution. I think we can all agree that right now and for a little while in the future, most of us will have to tolerate fish eye most of the time.