Tri-screen gaming, is it as good as it sounds?

[Erik_Twice]

It is now common for games to support multiscreen and some people like to play with three screens, one to the side of each other and the outer ones slightly curved.

This gives you a more inmersive enviroment because your vision angle (Somewhat around 120º) is completely covered. It also looks incredibly cool and gives you brgging rights.

Now, I wonder how good this kind of setup is. You have two black lines in your FOV unless you remove part of the case on each screen which is easily done in most models AFAIK. It's costly so perhaps a very big screen or projector would be better.

Also, I don't know what would happen with games that don't natively support that kind of screens. I have seen some games on those setups that very probably don't support it.

However seeing this 360º setup with Quake III you are willing to excuse that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqh_F4iN ... re=related

I think this kind of setup would work great for FPS, flight simulators and racing games but may not be as useful with other kind of games. It would be cool if you could see more of the field on a RTS but I don't think it's worth it.

This giganormous setup here shows an awful lot of inmmersion even in a video so I will put it here. I don't think having screens so big are actually useful, you can get the same thing by sitting closer and when you are focused your FOV is reduced to that of the screen so you can get the same with smaller screens IMHO.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5p58ZEc2fu

And then you get this guy who has money for three screens but plays FPS on his Xbox360:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJtPHqW1 ... re=related

So what do you think?

[PharmaceuticalCowboy]

It looks cool, therefore it makes you seem like a badass, it even gives you an advantage so it might be good to have. However, I really think that it's a huge waste of space. I personally don't ever see myself wanting to give up the vast majority of my desktop space to three monitors that I wouldn't even be using all the time. I've got pop cans, and stacks of papers to take up that space! Just my $.02

[GSZX1337]

I'll take this [When I can afford it].

[HoboJoe]

I personally think spanning one thing across multiple monitors looks ugly cause you have all the monitor borders splitting everything up. I do enjoy that panoramic thing though.

[Erik_Twice]

I personally think spanning one thing across multiple monitors looks ugly cause you have all the monitor borders splitting everything up. I do enjoy that panoramic thing though.

Yeah, I would remove the frames and use the screen themselves only, it's not hard to do.

@PharmaceuticalCowboy

I know! I think I would need to get used to not having anything else on my computer desk because I would not have any space left.

And the advantage thing, yes, it's true for some games (Like CSS, seriously, it's almost cheating on that game!) but others not so much (Like TF2 because it let's you select your field of view)

@GSX1337

Do want!

The thing is that I'm poor and I can't afford three more monitors =/

[fastbilly1]

It depends on the game. For RTS usually it is silly, sans Supreme Commander which was built for multimonitor gaming.

Ive done the triple monitor with gaps for FPS and flightsims and even with gaps it does help. And for most people you will endup blending the screens over eachother mentally. But it makes the games that much more disorienting...

Im all for games supporting multiple monitors, and not just because I want to build Battlemech inspired Cockpits... Mechwarrior reboot better support it, since 4 was rubbish for not.