Playing in widescreen resolutions.

[Lich]

I'm interested in seeing what people's opinions are on this.

I recently added another monitor to my setup. It's a 22" Dell widescreen. One of the first things I did was to pop open ZDoom and see if it supported the 1920x1080 resolution. It did, and I tried it out. Even though I knew what to expect, it was still interesting playing Doom with a greater field of vision. When I was playing through The Shores of Hell again, I sort of felt that I had an additional advantage with the extra field of vision.

Does anyone think that using widescreen modes in source ports confers an unfair advantage?

Mods: Feel free to move this thread. I posted it in the source ports section since wide screen modes in Doom were introduced via various source ports.

[Csonicgo]

Unfair? I wouldn't say that. after all, Doom allowed a 90 degree view at one point. would playing doom.exe with -left and -right be any more unfair than using a widescreen mode, which doesn't cover the range that -left and -right did? :P

[PhilibusMo]

Having played Doom for 8 years on an old style square screen and then having gotten a 22" wide screen samsung this summer I haven'e noticed any huge difference, it is slightly more convenient having the wider field of vision of a wide screen but not a significant difference to make it unfair. Like if one athlete in a race had less hair than another, making him lighter and therefore slightly faster, he does have an advantage but not enough to make it unfair. It has made no-where near as much difference as the swithch over from arrow keys, Ctrl, and Alt in vanilla doom to the WASD and mouse format that is available in modern sourceports. Now that really has made doom easier, giving players the ability to move more freely and fire at exactly what they want to, as aposed to what the engine thinks you should be shooting at.

[Creaphis]

WASD and mouse was perfectly possible in vanilla. Now, there's no way in the engine itself to disable vertical mouse movement, but that's what novert.com is for. Also, you can't disable autoaim, but that's a smaller issue.

Do any source ports make -left and -right possible? That would be fun, if I had a wrap-around desk and three monitors.

[Vermil]

Creaphis said:

Do any source ports make -left and -right possible? That would be fun, if I had a wrap-around desk and three monitors.

I've heard that Doom Legacy does.

[fraggle]

Creaphis said:

Do any source ports make -left and -right possible? That would be fun, if I had a wrap-around desk and three monitors.

You can do it with Chocolate Doom.

[Lich]

Creaphis said:

Do any source ports make -left and -right possible? That would be fun, if I had a wrap-around desk and three monitors.

I have three monitors on my desk... That sounds like an interesting thing to try out...

[PhilibusMo]

ooo now that would be fun, i'm sure I could rustle up another couple of monitors from somewhere, as this has to be tried.

[Edward850]

Keep in mind that you need 3 computers, considering its a network setting, not just 3 monitors.

Unless you already knew that, then by all means ignore this message.

[Creaphis]

Darn. That does make more sense though.

Is coding this to work on one computer within the realm of feasibility? I suppose it might have a high cost:benefit ratio.

[myk]

I wonder if the view of the monitors would overlap if one were to have a three wide-screen monitor setup.

Lich said:
I have three monitors on my desk... That sounds like an interesting thing to try out...

You can connect them all to your system?

If so, source ports could adopt such a method, which might be more convenient than the 3 computer network method used for the early versions of DOOM and Chocolate Doom.

[DeumReaper]

I got a 22" (1680x1050) Samsung last year and I enjoy it a lot; I had upgraded from a 17" (1280x1024) 3:4 one.
One site I recommend for gaming on a widescreen is the WSGFWiki. It tells you how to switch to widescreen resolutions and adjust the FOV (usually just console and config edits) in various games if you can't ingame. I usually set my FOV to 100 in most games if its not too much trouble.

Lich said:
Even though I knew what to expect, it was still interesting playing [ZDoom] with a greater field of vision.

Do you know how to set the FOV permanently in ZDoom? Because I tried setting the FOV in the console and I could only have it keep the FOV for that specific save and whenever it changes levels it resets back to 90.

myk said:
You can connect them all to your system?

I've never tried it, but some graphics cards have three video outputs (2 analog/DVI) and maybe an S-video; or if you have dual-video cards with at most 2 analog/DVI outputs in your computer. I've seen some advertisements for a dongle that had three video outputs specifically meant for a triple-screen setup. Also there is a program that can sync a third screen (like an unused laptop) to a dual-screen setup via your network; but I don't remember the name of it or if it even works well.

[PhilibusMo]

If I could use my main desktop and then put a laptop on either side of the monitor then yes all is well. I'm guessing it wouldn't matetr that they are all wide screen and thatthe laptop monitors are a bit smaller than the desktop monitor.

[DaniJ]

It should be perfectly possible to play with multiple monitors using pretty much any GL port. Its just a question of whether both your video driver and the GL port itself supports a large enough resolution so that the video driver can simply split it up as needed.

[Catoptromancy]

Ive seen shots of choco doom with 3 windows on a monitor. Also choco doom with 3 fullscreen monitors. Was quite epic.

[exp(x)]

Edward850 said:

Keep in mind that you need 3 computers, considering its a network setting, not just 3 monitors.

Unless you already knew that, then by all means ignore this message.

Ever heard of 127.0.0.1, a.k.a. localhost?

[Lich]

myk said:

I wonder if the view of the monitors would overlap if one were to have a three wide-screen monitor setup.

You can connect them all to your system?

As I type this, I'm using my system with all three monitors attached. However, I did have to install a second video card. I've got a GeForce 8400GS and a GeForce 8600GT. I'm not sure if having two video cards makes it any more difficult as opposed to a video card with three or four heads...

[myk]

exp(x) said:
Ever heard of 127.0.0.1, a.k.a. localhost?

Interesting, I hadn't thought running multiple Chocolate Doom clients and connecting them within one system was possible. I was just testing and that can even be done with different nodes (players), and not just drone view-clients. This should be a good way to test multiplayer in a rudimentary fashion when one doesn't have access to two or more computers. And just one monitor will do, of course, if one uses windowed mode for each client.

[fraggle]

Edward850 said:

Keep in mind that you need 3 computers, considering its a network setting, not just 3 monitors.

Unless you already knew that, then by all means ignore this message.

No, because you can normally set up a server and then run loopback clients back to your local machine. However, you do have to run the clients in windowed mode.

In Chocolate Doom:

chocolate-doom -server
chocolate-doom -connect localhost -left
chocolate-doom -connect localhost -right

It looks like this (my dual head setup), or you can even do three "screens" on a single monitor, like this.

myk said:

Interesting, I hadn't thought running multiple Chocolate Doom clients and connecting them within one system was possible. I was just testing and that can even be done with different nodes (players), and not just drone view-clients. This should be a good way to test multiplayer in a rudimentary fashion when one doesn't have access to two or more computers. And just one monitor will do, of course, if one uses windowed mode for each client.

Yes; however, you can get a slight problem if you have multiple players on the same screen, and have windowed mouse grabbing enabled: the first client grabs the mouse, then the second client also tries to grab the mouse but is stuck waiting, so the game deadlocks. This is what happens in Linux, anyway. So make sure you turn off mouse grabbing first :-)

[Patrick]

1440x900 ... halp?

[chungy]

heh

[Csonicgo]

MikeRS said:

heh

You're doing it wrong

[GreyGhost]

MikeRS said:

heh

Try the DirectX driver and don't correct the aspect ratio - worked for me.