Distortion when using 3 monitors, anyone seen this and know how to stop it?
- Thread starter Evilkyote
- Start date
There is no way to stop the distortion. I wondered myself when I started playing games in Surround. The "distortion" is actually the way it's supposed to be. It gives it a "peripheral" type look from what I've heard. It's like that for all games played in Surround.
IIRC, this is actually a product of the formulas used to project 3D onto a 2D screen. There's no way around it.
Just what happens. Adjust the FOV as best you can. ED is fairly open, you may be able to edit some configuration file to pick a relatively absurd FOV that looks at least better than what you have now.
This is what I had to do on my triple screen arrangment. I decreased the FOV slider right down to 0. It's still not ideal, but a lot better. The other option I'm personally considering is a single 21:9 monitor with less width, as that would likely be a better visual balance.
CMDR Insomnia has some tweaks for barrel distortion here https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=196635
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Never tried myself though.
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Never tried myself though.
As mentioned it's basically unavoidable that the projection that the game uses will distort like this. Other simulators let you adjust vertical and horizontal FOV and/or have individual cameras for each monitor. We don't have that for now.
The first thing you should do is file a bug report. The devs have lots of things to work on and they will prioritise things which affect more people. Triplehead is seen as a niche thing, hence Calaban's unhelpful comment, so if no one complains they will assume that no one sees or cares about the issue.
Secondly I recommend you set up bezel correction. I have 6000x1200 myself. What that will do is make the view look more seamless as your eye isn't drawn to the sides by the weird gaps at the side of the screen. That in turn relegates the distorted side monitors to your peripheral vision. When I play I am basically looking ahead at the centre monitor and out of the corner of my eye I see stuff which is all distorted but doesn't bother me because I'm not looking at it. With TrackIR I can turn my head to see that stuff which is then centred and no longer distorted.
If that doesn't work for you then rendering a narrower window in borderless mode over a black desktop may be less jarring or of course you have the 21:9 monitor option.
The first thing you should do is file a bug report. The devs have lots of things to work on and they will prioritise things which affect more people. Triplehead is seen as a niche thing, hence Calaban's unhelpful comment, so if no one complains they will assume that no one sees or cares about the issue.
Secondly I recommend you set up bezel correction. I have 6000x1200 myself. What that will do is make the view look more seamless as your eye isn't drawn to the sides by the weird gaps at the side of the screen. That in turn relegates the distorted side monitors to your peripheral vision. When I play I am basically looking ahead at the centre monitor and out of the corner of my eye I see stuff which is all distorted but doesn't bother me because I'm not looking at it. With TrackIR I can turn my head to see that stuff which is then centred and no longer distorted.
If that doesn't work for you then rendering a narrower window in borderless mode over a black desktop may be less jarring or of course you have the 21:9 monitor option.
The distortion occurs because of the separation between the view point assumed by the rendering algorithms and where your eyes are actually located, the redering view point is generally much closer to your screen(s) that most people actually sit. It get more noticeable the wider the FOV so you notice it more with multiple monitors because your FOV is effectively increased, and the apparent distortion is actually made worse by the fact that most people angle the side monitors in to some degree. If you have a single super wide physical monitor you would still get the same effect.
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Deleted member 38366
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This Game has always suffered from a very distinct Aspect Ratio distortion.
My take on it was always that this might be required to satisfy VR users.
Either way, it will occur regardless of Screen size or Resolutions used. It just gets worse if you push it to the extreme (i.e. use a wide multi-monitor setup).
Fixing it would be possible (after all other Games using similar POV we do don't have this issue to this extreme) - but that would require a complete rewrite of the way the Engine renders for non-VR use, including everything Cockpit-related.
No way they'd ever do that.
Thus, everyone has to get used to it and see Planets being torn into weird, stretched ellipsoids when moved to the corners of the screen...
My take on it was always that this might be required to satisfy VR users.
Either way, it will occur regardless of Screen size or Resolutions used. It just gets worse if you push it to the extreme (i.e. use a wide multi-monitor setup).
Fixing it would be possible (after all other Games using similar POV we do don't have this issue to this extreme) - but that would require a complete rewrite of the way the Engine renders for non-VR use, including everything Cockpit-related.
No way they'd ever do that.
Thus, everyone has to get used to it and see Planets being torn into weird, stretched ellipsoids when moved to the corners of the screen...
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Despite zeroing my FOV this distortion is driving me away from a 3 screen setup to either the Dell Curved 34" Monitor (Dell U3415W) or the Phillips 40" Monitor (Philips BDM4065UC). Plus i miss out on SweetFX (Thats proably possible across 3 screens, but i have tried and failed), The in-game Trading extension, (Again possible to setup for clever ies, but i failed good and proper), and when i take screen shots they are like a Panorama shots.......So it's bye bye 3 screen and hello Dell or Phillips.
I have the philips 40" and its a beast of a monitor, fantastic for ED (and pretty much everything else) but you will still get distortion at wide FOV settings for the reasons I mentioned above, although the aspect ratio of the monitor isnt a "super wide" one so even at max fov the distortion is not too bad (but then your not getting a wide fov ...).
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So......would you recommend the Phillips as a gaming Monitor (Especially ED!)? I am worried not about the actual size of the Monitor as my desk station will easily take the size, but worried about sitting to close and not seeing a Sharp Picture. I currently sit about 25" to 30" away from my triple setup (Sorry i am to old to give you that in this modern cm stuff
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Indeed, I understood that. However, what I meant was, a 21:9 monitor is narrower than the triple screens at 3440x1440 or 2560x1080 versus 5760x1200/1080. Therefor it's a compromise that can work better to still give you more field of view but not so extreme that the fish-eye effect is off-putting.
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So......would you recommend the Phillips as a gaming Monitor (Especially ED!)? I am worried not about the actual size of the Monitor as my desk station will easily take the size, but worried about sitting to close and not seeing a Sharp Picture. I currently sit about 25" to 30" away from my triple setup (Sorry i am to old to give you that in this modern cm stuff
I sit with my face about 30" from the monitor. These pics give an idea of how big it is an how close I sit, included the ED launcher in the pic you can see the detail level of the screen.
The widows DPI scaling is set to default (smallest) for the purpose of the pics but I normally run it 125% (medium) otherwise the default text in folders etc is too small for me.
All in all I find it to a brilliant monitor for gaming generally with the caveat that the response time is probably not good enough for online twitch shooters like counterstrike/quake but I've had no problems with ED CQC for example.
-- forgot to mention that the FOV is set to max in the 2nd pic
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