Question How wide is too wide? Talking flight sim type use. Triple ultrawides? or Pentas?

[potato masher]

Anybody out there running something like 9600, 11520 or 12800 wide? I searched google and youtube but didn't get results. Because tooo wiiiiide? I was thinking a 5x setup could be done cheaply on 24" 1080's or even 27" 1440p. Or you could run partial screen across the center of 3x 4k televisions.

The two factors that make me want to ask this question are.. 1)Awesome gpus that can drive this are now affordable in 2020, and 2)Low refresh rate used monitors are dirt cheap on the used market. Both factors thanks to the twitch shooter crowd.

Two things that make me doubt its usefulness are: 1)Distortion stretch and 2)Having to always be turning my neck.

I have already found 3x 1440p enjoyable for flying planes. I've also done the partial screen thing across the center of a single 4k television and found it enjoyable. Thinking of trying wider now that better gpu's are in my price range. Anyway figured it would be a fun thread to gather some points of view.

 

[potato masher]

https://images.tweaktown.com/content/7/7/7708_998_nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-benchmarked-11-520-2160.png

A chart that gives an idea of the widths that can be reached while keeping the processing load down on your gpu by staying with crazy short ratios. With triple 1440's you get 8k width with less pixel load than a single 5k screen. With penta 1080p you get 9600 width for even less than that. Penta 1440p gets you 11520 for half the gpu load of an 8k.

After reading, penta setups I think you would be limited to AMD gpus as Nvidia cards max out at 4.

 

[SKORPI0]

Flight and racing sims are my favorite. current monitors are 2 27" 2560x1400 (Yamakasi) from 2012. If I were to upgrade I'd get 1 of these.

LG 49WL95C-W 49" 32:9 Curved UltraWide HDR IPS Monitor

Buy LG 49WL95C-W 49" 32:9 Curved UltraWide HDR IPS Monitor featuring In-Plane Switching (IPS) Technology, HDMI | DisplayPort | USB Type-C Inputs, 5120 x 1440 Resolution, 1000:1 Static Contrast Ratio, 350 cd/m² Brightness, 178°/178° Viewing Angles, 5 ms Response Time, 1.07 Billion Colors...

www.bhphotovideo.com

or ..

Samsung C49RG9 49" 32:9 120 Hz Curved FreeSync HDR VA Gaming Monitor

Buy Samsung C49RG9 49" 32:9 120 Hz Curved FreeSync HDR VA Gaming Monitor featuring 49" Vertical Alignment (VA) Panel, 1 x HDMI 2.0 | 2 x DisplayPort 1.4, 5120 x 1440 Resolution, 3000:1 Contrast Ratio, 1000 cd/m² Maximum Brightness, 178°/178° Viewing Angles, 4 ms Response Time (GtG), Supports...

www.bhphotovideo.com

 

[potato masher]

IMO 48:9 triples seems good but I want to try MORE. On triples if you move your neck and scan it can add a lot to the experience. I'm hoping penta would be kind of like VR with the neck movement, except without the Dramamine.

At normal viewing distances I think about 30 degrees per screen is right, so you're talking 150 degrees of your vision.. or I guess you could do portrait pentas for more height.

May be that the only way to know what is good is to try it for a good long while. Anything new is going to feel wrong at first try.. Screens are pretty easy to find, bigger problem is finding the right desk/stand combo to set it up. I think easiest is two dual arm mounts on your desk corners with the two outboards hanging off, then stand a fifth one off on its own floor stand. Just thinking out loud here because later I will forget all this... I'll snap a pic if I do end up setting pentas up.

Actually penta 1440p would be 12800 in total width, I misspoke earlier.

 

[SKORPI0]

I’d rather have a continuous screen than a gap between them. If you end up buying, let us know how it looks.

 

[potato masher]

Well there is no single that can do 12800 wide.

This seems to about as close a review I could find of similar width:height ratio.

I already have five 24's and five 27's. Problem I am working on is finding someplace wide enough to put them. Fittingly the guys in the video had the same issue, but solved it by tucking the side screens in at a hard angle. I will try to not do this...

This is a little more extreme a ratio than 5x1440p screens but similar enough. Seems like a first person shooting game like CS is not what you would want to do with this setup, but there it is.

 

[potato masher]

Hardest thing was figuring a spot to try this. Figured one out. Last pieces ordered, 2 last monitor arms. Going to try first with an rx580 5 output on 5 across. Then 1 or 2 screens above on a 2nd gpu if that can work. I think I've got 700$ sunk into the monitors and arms. Makes me think triple $230 4k tv's is smarter money for your sim rig. Mind you I have added to this junk pile 1 by 1 over the years, not like I bought 7 at the same time.

update edit:

Began screwing around with settings in eyefinity. It is working with the single GPU with all five outputs utilized.. Which is a relief since I didn't know if it could do that. Just need to wait on the arm setup and decide if I like it enough to make it permanent. My initial impression is.. five 27's are too wide. I will give it some time to dial in and edit a review in here later. Also it seems in its current version, eyefinity *is* still able to do some mix/match type work with its auto config. Which is interesting. I was under the (perhaps wrong) impression they did not allow that anymore. I'm going to re-try PPPPP and PLP when I have time. What I really want to work is an eyefinity PLP 1080/1440/1080 as I think this would be an awesome compact lo-budget sim setup.

 

[potato masher]

I went back to triples if that answers this thread. Because reasons below.

Still do not have a robust perm mount solution wide enough. Also most sims/games have wide info placement assuming you are running triples. Which is not good for pentas. Or worse they will display garbled HUD information on ultrawide settings. Also, my GPU is not powerful enough to run 60 frames mid to high settings on 12800x1440. So I will revisit this when I have more space and more GPU. And hopefully by then devs will have HUD issues sorted out. It was fun messing around with it though.

 

[SKORPI0]

So that 12800x1440 is 5 27" 2560x1440 screens. Too much head turning for me to do that, 3 screens would be good enough for me too.
Take a pic/video for us to see how it looks.

 

[potato masher]

Pic added of the desk.... 5th monitor in the bottom row was out of frame on the right side on a stand not connected to the desk. It gets inconvenient when you go five wide, starts getting in the way of life.

Head turning, GPU power, desk space, mounting arm config, color matching, alignment.. are all solvable issues. The deal killer is the lack of penta app support. Garbled info or incorrect screen placement of elements is annoying.

FYI on triples once I learned to visually scan, believe it or not, it is actually an enjoyable skill to exercise. Like part of the skill set in game. Head turning is a little bit like VR if you think about it, but without the Dramamine.

 

[potato masher]

Just for kicks moved one of my 4k's and ran it letterboxed with four 1440p screens.

Very long span, made my neck hurt. I am now satisfied I have answered the question posed in the thread title. This is not useful. Triples are where its at. Run 3x 1080p for low budget, 3x 1440p for medium budget, I guess if you're a baller try 3x 4k's. I can't imagine how much gpu power you would need for that last one.

Need some pain killers now..

 

[Midwayman]

I wonder if many games can address the screen as individual displays? It would be interesting if you could run 4k front and like 1080p side. You don't really need that much resolution for peripheral vision. I have 32:9 and sort of wish I could dial down the outer edges for speed while retaining sharp internal resolution. It'ld need to be smooth though.

 

[potato masher]

Nothing I've seen will do what you're saying.. Would be excellent to run 3 matching 4k screens, and to be able to run the left and right at reduced resolution to make GPU load more reasonable.

It'd be even better if the game dynamically reduced the graphics quality based on distance from center and load.

 

[Midwayman]

Would be excellent to run 3 matching 4k screens, and to be able to run the left and right at reduced resolution to make GPU load more reasonable.

VRSS https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-vrss-a-zero-effort-way-to-improve-your-vr-image-quality/
There are some more complex ways of doing it too.

VRWorks - Variable Rate Shading (VRS)

developer.nvidia.com

I was just looking into if that were a thing yesterday. Its a Turing feature and is part of dx12 ultimate. A few games support it now and you can force in on some more. Since MS is really pushing it for the next xbox we should see a lot more support soon. It'd be really nice on my 32:9 to have the outer edges a little softer.

 

[potato masher]

For triple 4k 48:9 features such as those could help a lot. Otherwise you might need a 3080ti just to get to 60fps..