Does anyone know a graphics card that can handle 3 monitors - or combined with two gfxcards. So it should be possible in LFS to setit up.

Left monitor: Look left (45 degrees)
Middle monitor: Look ahead
Right monitor: Look right (45 degrees)

And is this possible in LFS?

It is possible for LfS to spread the pircture over three sreens, But I doubt that you can assign different viewpoints to the different screens.
Anyways, if the view us that wide, you will propably end up with the desired results anyways

Just don't forget to check "show non-square modes" in the options ingame.

Come on guys! I'm about to order the Logitech DFP-Wheel because of LfS! (Currently driving with a Microsoft FF Wheel).

I don't want to buy a new Graphic-Card and 2 more monitors!!!

But if that works I assume I have to... Damn game!!

very very very remote chance that it'll work

It's not a remote chance at all. It works perfectly fine. The Parhelia also works with most other games too (Quake, GTR, MS Flight Sim, etc).

I'm running this card and three monitors at home and it works perfectly. The two outside monitors make a huge, huge difference in the sense of speed and it's much easier to see when another car is next to yours since you can use 120 degree field of view.

Check out the "Post your LFS Rig" thread, page 5, in the Hardware section of this forum for pictures of my setup.

Parhelia is probably the only way to get 3 monitors for LFS. We want LFS to support more than one graphics card at a time! A simulation needs true multimonitor support. 360 degree vision would be cool be cool

too bad the Parhelia is worse than even the cheapest NV/ATI cards

You just HAD to add another pointless comment. Truth is it works fine
for him, who cares about the rest.

uhm, so people like to do other things then just run LFS with medium detail you know, any recent game (Doom3 / HL2 / FarCry) will be unplayable on the Parhelia; so yes, sure it may work for him, but that doesn't mean it's a good solution.

Doom3 http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/21178
Nascar 2002 in surround... 32FPS
http://www.nvnews.net/reviews/matrox_parhelia/page_15.shtml
Flight Sim in surround... 29FPS http://www.nvnews.net/reviews/matrox_parhelia/page_12.shtml


maybe you want to research things a bit before branding them as "pointless".

so yes, my original statement is still correct, playing LFS on different monitors will largely depend on the coding of the game and the graphics card you are using. None of the current FAST VGA cards is able to display 2(or more) 3D screens; not because they lack power but because the programs (games) and drivers need special attention. One of the few games I know which can use multi monitor is Flight Simulator from Microsoft. So the change IS very remote. because the market % of people owning more than 1 monitor is.. not very large, so not an interesting market to develop products for.

So sure, sue me for making a "pointless" remark, which I just HAD to ADD, apparentely, but if anybody here buys the Parhelia and that person does not ONLY play LFS, then he will be out of a lot of cash and performance at the same time.

I was just saying that there's no need for bashing. If you have facts to
support your claims fine, but i don't see the need to simply post "your
hardware sucks". Your first comment "very very very remote chance that
it'll work" wasn't too brilliant either. These are the comments meant to help
which ironically make finding any sort of reliable help impossible. Seeing how
"It's not a remote chance at all. It works perfectly fine", it just shows how
researched your comments are and unfortunately reflect on your credibility.
Your last post is the only have to actually have any content.

It makes me think of those people always telling you "get a better pc, MY pc
is 9573 GTR-XYZ, blah blah blah, AM-more-than-you". Bad vibes. No one is
selling me a stereo by telling me i'm stupid to have a 'crappy' radio instead.
Quite the opposite. "I'm running this card and three monitors at home and it
works perfectly." This customer seems satisfied, and as a person who actually
owns the card and uses it, i'm more inclined to trust his experience.

The Parhelia isn't the fastest video card on the planet. I knew that when I bought it. But, when paired with a decent machine it IS fast enough for Live for Speed which is the ONLY game I play on this machine. In fact, this machine was purchased, built, and setup JUST to play LFS. I already had three monitors laying around and knew that the Parhelia was the ONLY way to get three screens working in LFS. So far, i'm quite pleased. I don't get 200fps, but the gameplay is smooth enough to be very playable and the extra monitors make a HUGE difference in the sense of speed and general "feel" of the game. It's a lot more immersive when you have so much of your view taken up by the game instead of looking through a single screen.

Eventually the Parhelia and three monitor setup will get replaced by a higher-end Radeon and a 26"+ widescreen LCD, but for now it works great and is FAR superior to a faster video card running a single monitor. I've got a second machine with a Radeon 9600 and a bigger screen that gets a much higher frame rate but I'd never choose to play on that machine over the "slower" three monitor machine.

Quote from Fonnybone :

I was just saying that there's no need for bashing.

please quote me where I was bashing...

Quote from jmkz :

please quote me where I was bashing...

Just let it go. I wasn't offended, so it doesn't really matter.

<group hug>

Cue-Ball, it was not my intent either to offend you, since you build that PC just for LFS that vidcard was a good choice for multimonitor setup

Isn't this a solution to the problem?
The example configuration I imagin consists of two PCs, let's call 'em GamingMonster and Ol'Chap. GamingMonster is a state-of-the-art-dualscreen PC and the Ol'Chap is an old 500 Mhz single-monitor PC. Now you place all three screens around you. Maxivista says now it can make Ol'Chap's monitor appear as if it was the third monitor of GamingMonster, displaying exactly what a physical third monitor would display, regardless the content and that without having GamingMonster recognize the difference between the physical and virtual monitor.

Vain

<Buys a round of drinks for everyone that posted in this thread>
There, now we can all be friends and be happy

Quote from Vain :

Isn't this a solution to the problem?

Does that support 3D accelerating? If it does it could be the solution for this. If it does not it's no any use, because games work as fast as the slowest "monitor".

The vendor states that anything works. In their example they also show a DVD-movie drawn across multiple screens.
It looks pretty much like it streams the video-data that the virtual monitor recieves pixel-per-pixel. That would mean it supports accelerated graphics, shouldn't it?

Vain

Yep, Parhelia works well with LFS - it is a proper DX8 card... but isn't as fast as more modern cards and you can't turn up the resolution too high.

The problem is, that ATI (definitely - they told me) and nVidia (probably - i guess) believe that there is no customer demand for triple head cards. So they just make these dual head cards.

Dual head is absolutely pointless for racing games, or any game in first person. I think that triple head cards would sell, to people who will make that extra effort to find some old CRT monitors, second hand at a good price, or actually spend the money to buy new ones...

But it's no good me saying that, please write emails to nVidia and ATI and ask them when / if they will make a triple head card, and explain to them why it's so much more useful than a dual head! It can work as dual head anyway if someone only has two monitors... so they've got nothing to lose! No harm in writing to Matrox to ask them to make a nice new DX9 super fast triple head as well.

Oh BTW - ATI have this idea that you can have a "triplehead" by adding a PCI video card into your PC.

But, every game developer then has to write a kind of double-3d-engine which manages two sets of everything - very hard to do. Programming for Parhelia is just great, the program simply selects a wide mode and gets on with it, no difficult coding at all...

Allegedly, some future version of Windows, in conjunction with DX9 will be able to manage two video cards as a single surface. That's very vague, i'm probably wrong, forget i said that!

Thx for the heads-up Scawen
I've had three monitors for years, for other purposes other than gaming.. personally I cant understand there mentality in not supporting tripple head cards illepall we now have dual core cpu's which give four virtual cpu processes we have 64bit operating systems capable of many multiple tasks and they think we want to do all our multitasking on one or two monitors max! Jeez in my opinion the more monitors I can have the better So being able to use my extra monitors in a 3d game would be great (I dont at the moment) you have inspired me to write an email to the video card manufacturers..

Cool... please do! If they believe there is customer demand, they will make them!

Quote from Scawen :

Allegedly, some future version of Windows, in conjunction with DX9 will be able to manage two video cards as a single surface. That's very vague, i'm probably wrong, forget i said that!

I think that ATI Crossfire system will do that. Correct me if I am wrong, just thinking too hard .

I recall a few years ago sourcing and selling a triple-screen LCD monitor to one of my customers. He was a stock trader and wanted three screens so he could monitor the market more thoroughly and watch his share movement while attending to normal business. The screen folded outwards from the centre and consisted of 3 LCD panels. I can't remember the brand, but the fact that this was a few years ago shows that someone once thought 3 screens was a pretty good idea. So it doesn't just have gaming applications and Video card manufacturers should stop guessing what people will use and instead do some actual research. If promoted with the same hype, gusto and outright BS that their other products are launched with they should have no problem gaining momentum in the marketplace.

Quote from Tweaker :

I think that ATI Crossfire system will do that. Correct me if I am wrong, just thinking too hard .

Yeah. How about SLI or Crossfire?
Does 4 connectors change anything?