Triple monitor games

Dan_D said:
It had a novelty early on and you did get a bit of an advantage in online multiplayer titles. However, there are very few games where I would say the experience really stood out. Dead Space was one of them. I recall it lacking the fisheye problems that plagued all the shooters. I also played the Aliens Vs. Predator game that was all the rage for about 20 minutes when the Radeon HD 5900 XT. I remember that game working well with it also.

Really, Eyefinity and NV Surround were something I got used to. I switched from those to a 48" 4K Samsung TV so to be frank, I didn't miss it when I stopped using it. I had a more immersive experience and far less trouble with games on a technical level.
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I'll get Dead Space and try it out. Space games was another genre I thought would look good on multiple displays.

So far I've only tried;

Minecraft - Game I recently started playing less than a week ago. It worked when I loaded it up, UI stayed in the middle display and the side displays worked as they should. Although the image does look slightly distorted on the side monitors, but it's not something that bothers me (yet) as I only focus on the middle monitor it seems and the side monitors just kind of fill in. It helps me to see monsters sneaking up on me from the sides though. Was getting a steady 143 - 145 FPS, but when I unlocked VSync is went up beyond 200. Max settings. Haha. However, the middle display kept going completely black every so often. I read that it might be a problem with G-Sync/Adaptive Sync causing issues. So I disabled it, but haven't loaded MC up to test if that fixed it.

Snowrunner - This game also worked correctly when I loaded it up. Couldn't really tell any distortion going on, but I only loaded it up for half an hour just to see. Was getting 25 FPS though. Oooooof! The middle monitor never gave me any issues, but I had G-Sync disabled already.

One thing I can see being a problem is switching from NVSurround to a normal triple display desktop. The monitor on the far left keeps wanting to act as the primary monitor and I have to go into the settings to switch it back to the middle monitor. Also loading up NVSurround is a pain having to go into the menu all the time to enable it. There has to be an easier way to this?


Ditchinit said:
Even though the intent, as I read this thread, is the desire to play a game stretched across multiple monitors at the same time, I personally love using multiple monitors while playing but not as intended here. I usually play the game on one large monitor in the middle, then use the two side monitors for additional information such as a web browser or spreadsheet for tracking info. I would be hard pressed to ever give up a multi-monitor setup for gaming. I suppose I could play on an UW with the game in a window and then have other windows open, but then you lose options such as gamma adjustments in windowed games. So multi-monitors + games are great, just not having the gaming environment stretched across all of them.
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I've done this for many years. I've even used three monitors (albeit different sizes and resolutions) while only gaming on the middle/primary monitor and using the other monitors for other stuff while I gamed. I will most likely still be doing this for most of the games I play though.

Brian_B said:
I've run dual monitors for a long time doing this - can't fathom doing it any other way now.
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The two games I've played so far I wasn't disappointed. It really added to the immersive feeling.

Grimlakin said:
Yea dual monitors for the MF win.
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I kind of want to get a 4th monitor (well, connect one of my old 1080P monitors) so I can still have that other monitor showing stuff while I am gaming. HAHA
 
I'd have more monitors on my desk if I had the space. The 43" takes up a ton of room. I then have two 20" on a vertical stand next to it. That's all I have room for.
 
That's pretty awesome. 3x ??

The last time I tried surround vision was with IL2 Sturmovik: 1946, and while the game was really fun (I played it for many years off and on), getting the surround vision working along with facetrack and all the other flight sim technologies was just too much hassle. I just wanted to fly. As they say ... "the juice wasn't worth the squeeze."
 
Ditchinit said:
That's pretty awesome. 3x ??

The last time I tried surround vision was with IL2 Sturmovik: 1946, and while the game was really fun (I played it for many years off and on), getting the surround vision working along with facetrack and all the other flight sim technologies was just too much hassle. I just wanted to fly. As they say ... "the juice wasn't worth the squeeze."
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So far my only issue has been switching between NVSurround when I play a game I want to on all three monitors and disabling NVSurround. It always moves my "primary" display to the far left display where I want it to be the middle display.

Also switching between the two takes time. I have to go into the Nvidia control panel, enable the NVSurround setting, then reposition the displays so it shows them in the correct order, then close that out and open the game. Repeat the process for disabling after I close the game.

Supposed to be a keyboard short cut (ctrl + alt + s) that does this, but it doesn't seem to work for me.
 
I wonder how definitive this list is: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_games_that_support_multi-monitor
I don't see some games listed that I could have sworn supported multi-monitor, like World In Conflict. Maybe I am just remembering wrong about that one.

This talk of multi-monitor gaming reminds me of the [H] days when Kyle and Dan and such really got into Eyefinity. I used to work for a freelance software QA company (we tested all kinds of software but mostly games). One of our clients in the mid-to-late 2000s was nVidia. We had to test their hardware and mainly their drivers. Did a lot of f*cking around with NV Surround. @Dan_D wasn't kidding about what a pain in the *** it was. I always assumed Eyefinity was better. Plus back in those days, NV Surround only supported what, 3 or 4 displays? Eyefinity I think went up to 6 displays from the get-go.

I run 3 displays for normal PC use (for the past several years, and before that two displays for many years), with my HDTV as the 4th display that only sometimes gets used. But I only ever game on the primary monitor. Of course all my monitors are different sizes, resolutions, and refresh rates, so not ideal for multi-monitor gaming anyways. I've never experienced multi-monitor gaming outside of stuff like the racing setups at Micro Centers. Heard it was always great for that and flight sims/games.

Ditchinit said:
I usually play the game on one large monitor in the middle, then use the two side monitors for additional information
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LeRoy_Blanchard said:
I've done this for many years. I've even used three monitors (albeit different sizes and resolutions) while only gaming on the middle/primary monitor and using the other monitors for other stuff while I gamed. I will most likely still be doing this for most of the games I play though.
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Yeah that's pretty much what I mean. I have 3 monitors active at all times for general PC usage, with the primary in the center, and that's the one I play games on.

(The triple-portrait setup at 18:40 is the kind of setup I mainly remember from reading [H]. I remember wanting to do that myself for a long time.)


I wish the [H] webpages were still up. Hard to find specific articles even using things like wayback machine and Internet archive.

LeRoy_Blanchard said:
Snowrunner.

View attachment 2563

I need to get a triple display mount/stand so I can fine tune the position of the monitors to better line them up.
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That sh1t looks glorious.

LeRoy_Blanchard said:
I kind of want to get a 4th monitor (well, connect one of my old 1080P monitors) so I can still have that other monitor showing stuff while I am gaming. HAHA
...I got to figure out a place to put it on the desk. These monitors kind of take up all the real-estate.
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My friend has a 6-display setup:
https://imgur.com/AlX5rGn
The center-top is an HDTV (1080p I think, not sure what size), the center-bottom a 27" (I think) 4K high-refresh-rate + VRR display, and the other 4 monitors are about the same size and res (which I think is 1080p). He only games on the 4K screen as far as I know.
 
DrezKill said:
Lots of stuff ...
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My previous setup was a run of the mill standard DELL 20-30-20 in PLP, but with the new system, I upgraded the primary to a 32" 4k only because the new GPU doesn't have a DVI-D output (they don't do that anymore) and needed a monitor that could support DP input. The primary is shorter than the two sides even though it has greater vertical resolution ... so there's an annoying resolution blockout step when mousing from the main to the sides.
 
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