Christopher Snow

Ok, we're getting first benchmarks on the new Matrox Parhelia cards, and while they largely don't measure up in simple head-to-head numbers with Nvidia, the card still offers some intriguing ideas for simmers...and perhaps for race-simmers above all (a point so far neglected by all the reviewers I've read).

Many here will remember the idea of using three monitors at once (occasionally done by a few I believe), but I've always had the impression that it was largely unworkable for online racing unless you happened to be the server host (and therefore had the ability to connect 2 side-look PC's via LAN to monitor the two side views). Even this ties up three spots, though, and any OTHER 3 monitor user connected to you also would need three spots (each connected independently). And heaven help him if his right side view should drop offline mid-race...he's screwed.

<Doh! bang...crash...>

But Parhelia might make three monitors workable for all:

http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardw...helia/page8.asp

also see:

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic...arhelia-05.html

...for an example of coding and configuring needed to get one game running this way.

----

Now...while GPL doesn't OFFICIALLY support adjustable FOV, we do have that option today using either Andy Cameron's FOVed utility or Phil Flack's GPLFOV tools. So in theory, GPL could be reset to...say...an FOV of perhaps 135 degrees, and then seen across three monitors.

I understand that the card supports a resolution of atleast 2400x600 when used this way (some other info seems to suggest it might be as much as 3840x1024), but there might be another problem or two as well: Because GPL is already "letterboxed" you might wind up with such a wide but vertically challenged view of the overall picture that the pitboard is lost again..not off to one side, but instead off the TOP.

There also may be a problem with the cards use of FAAx16, which gives a picture quality second to none it seems (and at only a small performance penalty), but which also seems to have trouble working when the game in question uses "stenciling." Does anyone know if GPL potentially suffers from this problem?

If it doesn't, then I suspect FAAx16 might work very well with GPL, since the latter is not particularly challenged by FPS issues when run on the current generation of fast CPU's....this might be a natural with GPL in fact.

Just opening the thing up here to ideas. Hoping anyone who knows definitively that it WON'T work (and who might be able to explain why) will jump in too...I'd rather get the real word sooner on this and not later.

Thanks


Christopher Snow

Pete Gaimari

Chris,

If you set the FOV to 135 degrees. It would give you good side vision, but looking down the track wouldn't look right. It would be far away, like looking at the wrong end of a telescope.

__________________
Pete

GPL for life. When i'm sliding, i'm smiling..:)

Stones

No clue Chris, on whether or not this thing will fly with GPL. That's beyond my technical realm.
With the affordable cost of monitors nowadays, compared to say just a few years ago, this concept is becoming more intriguing. Let's hope it can be achieved.

__________________
<img src="http://home.new.rr.com/stoned/name.gif" border="0">

FOV - The Pitboard Fixes

Christopher Snow

Stones, let me ask if you could...in theory (don't do it now unless you want to experiment)... possibly move the pitboard DOWNWARD just in case this card becomes viable? The same way you've done with your other FOV versions? If not, then it'll pehaps require some careful measurement of the placement of the board to be sure before investing in it.

I'm sorely tempted in any case, as I've thought three monitors would be a great view from day one if it were only feasible online.

BTW, Jam, the idea really is that you increase the FOV of the basic GPL view (with FOVed, say)....and perphaps a good example might be to increase it to 150 degrees, since it's three times as wide as the 50 FOV I use now.

In theory, and provided the three monitors were positioned around you correctly, you might then end up with quite a realistic perspective (an FOV of 150 degrees would only look distorted if you try to view it on a small monitor directly ahead--it would be exactly correct were you able to see it on a surround screen of 150 degrees sweep). I certainly find the 50 FOV quite realistic in perspective, much more than the default view. Three times that wouldn't hurt.

The three monitor solution comes reasonably close to this without investing a lot of money in a personal planitarium....or so it seems to me.....


CS

Stones

Chris, I'm 99.99% sure moving the board up or down is not a problem. I would bet that JSJ's GPLShift utility would also be able to handle it but, JSJ would know more about that from his end.

__________________
<img src="http://home.new.rr.com/stoned/name.gif" border="0">

FOV - The Pitboard Fixes

Christopher Snow

ok thx.

CS

Christopher Snow

I grabbed a screenshot from a copy of GPL altered to an FOV of 150 degrees....

(see image #1 attached here)

...and then clipped it quickly (although only by eye) to about a 4:1 width to height ratio to show what it might look like with Parhelia's 3 monitor "surround gaming."

(see image #2 in the followup post)

That single large wide image would spread equally over three equal sized monitors, so in this case it might be 50+50+50 degrees.

For me, it would allow having the image in the side mirror back in the mirror out toward the side, so it's an intriguing idea.

Christopher Snow

Attached Images

150_degree_fov.jpg (77.8 KB, 1148 views)

Christopher Snow

And here is the 4:1 ratio section which would be spread over three monitors


CS

Christopher Snow

(so much for previewing things...seems it loses it when you do--HOPEFULLY the money shot has gone through here tho).

CS

Attached Images

parhelia_3_monitor_format.jpg (37.9 KB, 1056 views)

do0g

Surely the aspect ratio would need to be changed though? Or does the parhelia automatically crop the excess from above and below the output image?

Christopher Snow

As far as I can tell, it does just that. I suspect it might be a bit different with each different version of Windows too, as Microsoft seems to change the features and methods for multiple monitors and extended desktops with each release (I'd likely go with Win 2000 rather than XP, BTW).

The impression I get is that it simply "crops" the section out of the created 3D space, and in a ratio which totals 4:1 over the three monitors.

For example: 800x600 x 3 or 2400x600 (4x1) resolution.

---

Tom's Hardware points out that the maximum "gaming resolution" of the card is that same 2400x600 over the three monitors, but they also say the card supports an absolute maximum resolution of 3840x1024. I presume the latter might simply be the dimensions of the "view-section" of any particular 3d envirnment, and since GPL's FOV is set unofficially (by changing a byte in the program) I'm hoping this might actually allow use of that higher resolution over the entire view. Because it's done "on the side" and not through the gaming software.

If that were true, and if it would also do so at Parhelia's very good 16x FAA setting...it could really be very good indeed.


CS

do0g

Chris, now you're getting me excited!

I wish I were capable of telling myself that GPL isn't worth buying another couple of monitors...

aaltomar

You also need to change the screen resolution independantly from the fov. There was an example on one page (Anandtech/Hot Hardware/Tom's Hard..?) where you needed to make some twelve steps to enable it in "a supported" game (Quake3?), registry and game configuration editing. I don't think it's enough to just adjust the fov.

do0g

Yeah, you need to be able to run in odd resolutions... can GPL run in custom res's?

andrew3345

I know F1 2002 will allow this, after a patch. So maybe its needed afterall?

__________________
Andreas Nystrom

Yamaha driver - LMS

chriso

Hi Christopher

If anyone can get this 3-screen idea working, here's the gear to use it with:
http://www.panoramtech.com/products/pv230.html

Well, we can all dream!

Chris O'B

Attached Images

pv230_c.jpg (18.9 KB, 467 views)

MiguelR

My Dream

With the price of normal monitores this days,and if PApy or some good friend of the large GPL comunity made the Patch for parhelia to have sorround gaming in GPL with out 3 computers,i bet every single nuts out there who love this game mutch as i do,would get the matrox card with no second thoughs.
till then i'll keep dreaming

chriso

MiguelR

Let's keep the dream alive! Those flat panel monitors are getting cheaper all the time. I presume you've seen K. O. Sletten's video of his 3-monitor, 3-computer setup. Now that's real simulation!

Chris

ChrisBSim

I'm just coming to this thread having decided to go down the Parhelia route with 3 17 inch LCD panels . The main sim I plan to play with this setup is Live For Speed, as it supports custom resolutions and FOV's, and runs well on the Parhelia by all accounts.....

BUT...

I would absolutley LOVE to be able to play GPL on this setup . I used to play GPL a fair bit a few years ago, but never really had enough time to practice. Having recently browsed the GPL forums here I've been amazed by the quality of the add - ons available.

Matrox have obviously encouraged some developers to add support for surround gaming, including Papy with the Nascar 2003 title. I know the GPL team are no longer at Papy, but what do folks think the chances of a patch for GPL to support surround gaming are?

Is it a major piece of coding, or could it be done with the skills available in the GPL modding community?

I would PAY good money for someone to add surround gaming support to GPL - it would transform the sim and make it so much more immersive..... I am a developer myself, but sadly have little experience of graphics / driver development.

Still, I suppose the market for this is very small..... here's hoping...

Chris

chriso

Ah, a fellow Chris after my own heart!

I posed this sort of question on Matrox's own forum, and eventually got this reply from "David Chait, Principal Engineer, Papyrus Racing Games":

Since this has been an open question for a long time...

In order to make it function, Papyrus would have to rework many areas of code, of a long-defunct project. It would require a near-rewrite of the rasterizer, and many modifications to the main application.

At this time, Papyrus simply cannot undertake the level of effort involved in bringing GPL fully and properly up to date to support triplehead gaming. We do appreciate the large GPL fanbase, and hope it continues to grow and thrive.

Well, at least he said "At this time...", so we can hope. But how dare he call GPL "a long-defunct project"!

I've also put the question of GPLers doing it themselves on this forum a few times, but no response as far as I could see. There must be some GPLers with the talent to do such a thing, but there are no doubt copyright rules etc.

I entirely agree that 3 screens would absolutely transform GPL, and I too would be willing to PAY to see it happen. Do you suppose that Papyrus would give the GPL community permission to do the work with guidance from their engineers? If not, maybe we could ask Papyrus how much it would cost, and then consider the possibilities. Hmmmm...

Chris

MiguelR

They got my Money to do it also.
i think its better for them to make a price,and we will pay it,beleive me we do
Cant stop to think that more people would jump to parhelia,if GPL was supported by it,and corrent parhelia users would be much more happy with their product.GPL comunity is to big to "ignore"

cheers

ChrisBSim

Sadly to me this suggests that it would not be a likely project for Papyrus. I am sure I have read elsewhere that much of the main "talent" behind GPL is no longer with Papyrus anyway...... 5 years is a long time in the software industry.

From that response it sounds to me as though the effort required would not be far off that of releasing a proper GPL 2 sequel, which I think has been discussed many, many times before. I think if Papyrus was going to produce GPL2, they would have done it by now.

I think the main ray of hope for me is the example that the Live For Speed developers have set. Those 3 guys have produced arguably one of the best online racing sims since GPL without the financial backing of a large software house or extensive resources, and have distributed it direct to their customers.

Whilst I think Live for Speed is an amazing achievement I do miss the "real" cars and tracks available in GPL - having the history there just adds to the atmosphere.....

If Papyrus are not going to develop GPL2, then I wish they would go down the route that ID software went with older versions of Quake and release the source code into the public domain. I think GPL has the hard core following and mod community to make it an ideal candidate for open source development.

I guess whether that would ever happen depends heavily on how much of Papyrus's current sim titles are based on the GPL code.

Aside from LFS, I think the only hope of historically accurate sim racing is Racing Legends..... but that could be a very long time coming, if it arrives at all.

Just my tuppenceworth,

Chris

chriso

Hmm... How does one even broach the subject with a company like Papyrus? I really wish I knew something about all this stuff so I could talk intelligently about it to them, but I'm a real techno-peasant.

Are you saying that if the source code underlying Papy's present games isn't based on GPL's code, then they would be more likely to release the code into the public domain?

Chris

ChrisBSim

From a commercial perspective I would think it extremely unlikely that Papy would release code into the public domain if it gave away much about their current products. Papy are not daft - they know they have about the most realistic sims out there at the moment, and its taken them a lot of time and money to build that up....

Bottom line is they don't want to give competing software companies a short cut to producing competing products I guess.

Perhaps a more realistic option would be only releasing the parts of the code needed to rewrite the rasteriser (and the other bits that would need updating to support custom FOV and resolutions).

This could maybe be done on the understanding that Papy would be free to release an updated "enhancement pack" for GPL as a new product (an unsupported one though). This would maybe give them some incentive to release the necessary code - perhaps....

All you would need to find then would be a team from the mod community to tackle the project for free, and then be happy about Papy making money off the results of their work . That may sound like things are stacked in Papy's favour, but they are!! They do own the code after all... I would be willing to contribute my time to a project like that as I think the enhancement to GPL would transform the game, but then not everybody wants the custom FOV / resolution enhancement as I do .

At the end of the day the number of people out there with Parhelia cards is VERY small. Although this kind of enhancement would no doubt sell a lot more Parhelia's, it is by todays standards not a great performer for the money. I'd go as far as to say the triple head functionality in fact is the only reason to buy the card from a gaming perspective. Sure the 2D quality is amazing for CAD / Photoshop type work..... but that ain't the reason I'm buying it

Anyway, I digress. Maybe another group of developers will see the LFS development model and how successful it has been and decide to go down the same route with a historic racing sim. The main problem I think though is not the techy / software issues, but more the thorny issue of trademarks / licencing of cars / tracks etc - that costs a lot of dosh to sort out.....

Cheers,

Chris