Triple monitor HUD

Garoad · Post by **Garoad** » Sun Oct 16, 2011 2:29 am

Are there any HUD mods out there designed to fit 3 monitor (widescreen) setups? When I do this via 'eyefinity' w/bezel compensation it hides the edge of the HUD controls, as things stand for me now.

If there isn't something out there for this, where's the best place to start creating a custom HUD of my own?

Post by **DaveK** » Sun Oct 16, 2011 6:39 am

you can download a modding kit for EM from the starwraith site - it's a good place to see what can be done and how to do it.

I have seen a physical cockpit setup someone built with different bits of the HUD on different screen; do a quick search on the forum - there are several people who are VERY good at this!

Star King · Post by **Star King** » Mon Oct 24, 2011 3:15 pm

WOW!!!!!

Garoad · Post by **Garoad** » Mon Oct 24, 2011 5:36 pm

Wow nothing - someone has been moving posts from the other board here, which I don't really appreciate (and I keep getting forum connection timeouts). This board apparently gets a fraction of the traffic the other gets. If I could move the thread to the main forum, I would...

I'm new to these forums, and just located the "delete" option which I assume would let you delete the thread. I guess if mods decide to flame for the major sin of cross-posting as a new visitor, there's not much I can do. I'm just here trying to get a simple question answered so I can use this game...

[Edited on 10-24-2011 by Garoad]

Maarschalk · Post by **Maarschalk** » Mon Oct 24, 2011 6:02 pm

Garoad, since support for triple monitors on PCs is pretty new there are not many games that support it!
that might be the main reason this thread is not getting that many responses and I read this forum alot and I heard only one other instance about some one asking the same question and never saw some one on this forum showing the use or discussing how to use triple monitors with Evochron Mercenary! Only moderators can move these threads around!......

Garoad · Post by **Garoad** » Mon Oct 24, 2011 6:13 pm

I know it's rare, but I could have *sworn* that I saw someone post about this. Maybe I'm recalling something else.

I guess I was considering creating a custom hud anyway, so I guess I should just find the time and try doing that with the customizer kit.

Post by **Marvin** » Mon Oct 24, 2011 6:18 pm

Only you or an administrator can delete a post. But, for some reason, this forum does time out. It used to happen to me all the time ... now I just ignore long posts 'cause I know, by the time I've finished reading them (and maybe replying), all the lit bulbs for new posts have gone out. Making it necessary to check every post by date and time.

Post by **DaveK** » Mon Oct 24, 2011 9:38 pm

Not sure if it will help but pop triple monitor in the search function and search all forums; you could also try multiple monitors and three monitors

I did come across this

http://www.starwraith.com/forum/viewtop ... &pid=86169

and

http://www.starwraith.com/forum/viewtop ... &pid=99267

plus several talking about "tripleHead"!

Garoad · Post by **Garoad** » Mon Oct 24, 2011 10:16 pm

Yup, saw both of those already.

I don't think the threads have anything about customizing a HUD in this way, though.

Thanks for checking,

[Edited on 10-24-2011 by Garoad]

Garoad · Post by **Garoad** » Mon Oct 24, 2011 10:20 pm

But on the topic of creating a triple monitor HUD, if I set out to do this are there any features/capabilities/etc I should keep in mind?

From the reading I've done so far, it sounds like you can control which types of displays get rendered, where they get rendered, and seemingly even add extra info that the default HUD doesn't have (if you can fit on the screen). Is that correct?

Post by **DaveK** » Tue Oct 25, 2011 7:21 am

There a guy called Capt Mayne who built a physical cockpit with 6 screens. One of the thread responses mentioned that a triple monitor system is possible. I've also seen a post where Vice says that triple monitor testing was going well.

Try this

http://www.starwraith.com/forum/viewtop ... pid=103620

and this has a 3 page talk through of the whole build

http://www.starwraith.com/forum/viewtop ... pid=112188

I know you aren't building a pit but he might be the source of how to put different things on different screens

You might also email Vice and see if the triple monitor development is done/on going/abandoned

Maarschalk · Post by **Maarschalk** » Tue Oct 25, 2011 2:47 pm

Yes, these are good resources to start with. That was the one Person I was thinking of Capt. Mayne, could not remmember the name because he has not posted in a while. I think he is building a new pit.....

:P

Garoad · Post by **Garoad** » Tue Oct 25, 2011 10:15 pm

Oh, the triple monitor thing works fine for the most part really. It's just a matter of scaling or positioning HUD stuff on the screen so it fits on the center monitor as it should.

Post by **Vice** » Wed Oct 26, 2011 3:57 am

Could you post a screenshot of what you're getting now? Particularly the HUD leaving the edge of the center monitor. I'm not certain that a problem like you describe is necessarily a HUD/mod issue, but possibly just one of aspect ratio and resolution. And if that is the case, I can go over some options to adjust the ratio to narrow or widen the field of view that may help stretch the HUD enough to fit where you want it. What resolution are you using?

Garoad · Post by **Garoad** » Fri Oct 28, 2011 4:43 am

Will post a cap once I get a chance, but yeah it's quite possible a tweak of resolution is all I need. But there were either so many choices I couldn't find a good one, or maybe what I need just wasn't listed as an option. Or, wider resolutions looked too stretched... can't recall.

I was using 5760x1080 (ATI eyefinity w/bezel compensation). I'm using 3 Hanns-G 27.5" global warming accelerators.

[Edited on 10-28-2011 by Garoad]

Garoad · Post by **Garoad** » Sun Nov 20, 2011 5:41 am

Here's an example of what I see in game with AMD's 'bezel compensation' turned on. I blacked out two parts of the screenshot. The black areas are the parts that are "behind" the monitor bezels (to simulate a real cockpit's view) - I had to modify the screenshot to demonstrate what it actually looks like, since the game "thinks" that it's rendering the entire view to the user.

http://postimage.org/image/udmmtckyt/

http://postimage.org/image/udmmtckyt/full/

If I turn bezel compensation off, it gets better (at least I don't lose view of parts of the HUD entirely), but the edge of the monitor falls at a rather crummy spot so part of the HUD (menu at top, target view screen) ends up on the side monitors.

If I could compact the HUD horizontally slightly, it'd be fine. If I could increase the resolution horizontally it'd compress the HUD similarly, but I'm not sure how it'd look (maybe too distorted?)

Resolutions options are limited. In game the only thing that seems to work is the "optimized" setting (the others are way too low), which seems to use the Win 7 desktop resolution. I just tried it at 6048x1200, but I also have a few others available: 5760x1200, 5292x1050, 5040x1050, 2520x600 (which I think will look like crap), and lower which are useless using Eyefinity w/3 monitors.

(Btw comment above was a mistake I think, I don't think I have 5760x1080 available.)

Garoad · Post by **Garoad** » Fri Dec 02, 2011 2:47 am

Man, I just can't get things to where I need them to be using 3 monitors. I tried 5760x1200, but still no good. Not sure if the game was using that res or not though, since the only setting that works well is when I set it to "optimized".

It's not working well enough with or without Eyefinity. Even with Eyefinity turned off, the nav screen and a lot of the hud stuff is split between two screens. You can kind of make out what you're looking at but it's just crummy and hard. All that stuff really needs to be constrained to one monitor (center or otherwise... actually showing the nav screen completely on the right monitor would be cool!)

Might have to try making a custom hud, but is it possible to customize locations of the nav screen, inventory screen, etc?

Post by **Vice** » Fri Dec 02, 2011 3:37 am

Here is the information on adjusting the field of view setting, which will let you manually dial in the FOV to different levels, which may impact how the scene is rendered across the monitors. When you make a change, you'll want to exit the game and relaunch it to test.

Open the sw.cfg file in notepad, edit line 17 (sixth from the bottom) to a value between 0.1 and 5.0. Restart the game to test the change. This method may produce unexpected results (such as clipping or stretching), but is an available option if you're having trouble getting the display field looking the way you prefer.

Garoad · Post by **Garoad** » Fri Dec 02, 2011 4:10 am

Oooh, thanks, I'll try this.