3x3 Video Wall 5760 x 3240 @ 60Hz

[billman87]

Hello rocket scientist I don't play allot of KPS but I wanted to share some photos and descibe how I did this.

So I packed in a few GPU none the same, that makes like interesting.

Suspended 9 Vewsonic 22" IPS monitors on 3 Sets of 3 Ways mounting arms.

Wired up a few cables straitened up the monitors.

Configured SoftTH to abuse the frame size of games.

Proceed to test performance and find the limits.

Ok its a bit more complex than that but that the main points, feel free to ask further questions.

This setup peeks 50 FPS due to the 620 limited at 2x causing a bottleneck for the frame buffer SoftTH uses.

Next step is to get matched GPU's and remove the bezels.

Its a monster for some tasks and games it really not appropriate but, I really enjoy having an 18Mpix desktop.

More Photos of running games.

http://1drv.ms/13C6M4E

Some Random Hi res screenshots from other games.

http://1drv.ms/1qhQdpk

More Photos of unmatched 2x3 setup

http://1drv.ms/1z1hBaY

Have fun, I sure am.

Edited December 28, 2014 by billman87
added links to gallery

[RocketPilot573]

*Jaw falls off and hits floor*

Wow, that's a lot of monitors you have there.

[kujuman]

Can't read the version number, but it looks like 0.18, which is more astonishing than the displays

That'd be really neat in IVA of a RPM capsule or plane

[Scotius]

Impressive. But is it really functional? Or comfortable? It looks like playing from behind prison bars.

[billman87]

Yes its an old modded version I have had laying around, I have not had time to play the more recent versions but on this setup the buttons are too small and I need to down sample to 2880 x 1620. Once I hit my performance targets I will be spending allot more time in game and grab the new version.

Its hard to judge if this is functional for other people for me this is perfect and i normally hae no less then 6 full screen windows open at any time.

Yery few demand such high pixel density on such a large image and a single 4k screen is enough.

For comfort again that is an acquired thing, however none of my friends have had any problems with playing racing games for hours on end.

How ever I do have to try quite hard to see allot of fonts but on the same token, I can zoom a web page to 500% and still not need horizontal slide.

So the good and the bad weigh in about even, once I remove the bezles, upgrade the older GPU's and mount it i abit further back, the only drawback i see is lack of useful font scaling in windows, but my eye sight is fantasic so i can live with 24pt font at 5 feet. But most cant.

So I'm not going to recommend people go build one of these, its plain nuts.

Edited December 28, 2014 by billman87

[Technical Ben]

Wait, how do you get those gfx cards and systems working together?

Oh, and it's about 1 new Mac. Or a bit more than a 4k TV... but still cool!

[1of6Billion]

Are those resolutions supported by KSP? Or is it scaled up from 1920*1080?

[Voculus]

Very nice!

[Renegrade]

Are those resolutions supported by KSP? Or is it scaled up from 1920*1080?

Any 3D application or game should be able to support any practical resolution. The textures won't magically get better, but the vertex data is resolution-independent.

Most games with limited resolution support are either because they use a fixed set of 2D HUDs, or have (thoughtlessly) hardcoded resolutions.

KSP picks up resolutions from the operating system, so large resolutions should work fine (within hardware limits).

[NecroBones]

That's pretty darned cool. I have to admit, the seams (monitor frames) between the screens would drive me crazy. But nonetheless, that is quite awesome.

[Camaron]

This is amazing but.... personally I would recommend a Dell UP2414Q. I've had three of them, and they all have phenomenal image quality and 4K resolution in a 24" package. Get a big portion of the resolution in one monitor for much much cheaper. I actually have one on sale on Amazon right now, but only because my graphics card and my eyes are insufficient to utilize it well

[Motokid600]

Why three different gpu's? And how did you get them to work together?

[Camaron]

Nvidia cards have no difficulty sharing a load over different GPU's, and haven't for a long time now. You're thinking of ATi

[SlyReaper]

Very nice, but those bezels would drive me crazy.

[Deltervees]

Wow. I don't know why someone would need this, but it sure is amazing.

[Red Iron Crown]

I think the bezels would bother me, too. Do you notice them less after using the screens that way for a while? Can you compensate for them (i.e. make a gap in the image so that it looks like the bezels are laid over the game screen)?

Totally envious of the number of parts visible in the VAB screenshot, should hardly need pages at all.

[Norpo]

...Can you compensate for them (i.e. make a gap in the image so that it looks like the bezels are laid over the game screen)?

I can only feel this would be more annoying, what about text boxes (like the part informationals?)

"Let's see, it has a mass of 5, an isp of... Wait a second, the border is in the way" - ad infinitum, for everything

[DeathFromBelow]

Nvidia cards have no difficulty sharing a load over different GPU's, and haven't for a long time now. You're thinking of ATi

From what I've seen the opposite is true, AMD seems to have done a very good job with multi-gpu scaling on the R9 cards (other than quad crossfire). The R9's also handle high resolutions like triple-1080p eyefinity or 4k better than Nvidia's current top-end offerings. Nvidia offers better efficiency/overclocking headroom.

I'm currently playing on a 50" Seiki 4k TV, though I run at 120hz 1080p most of the time rather than 4k. I need to find a couple spare screens and try eyefinity... I'm not sure if it's really worth it compared to one big 4k screen.

[Red Iron Crown]

I can only feel this would be more annoying, what about text boxes (like the part informationals?)

"Let's see, it has a mass of 5, an isp of... Wait a second, the border is in the way" - ad infinitum, for everything

That's a good point. In the VAB or map mode it wouldn't be an improvement, but in the flight scene I think it's be better. It'd look like a canopy frame then.

[Slam_Jones]

So I'm curious... why do folks do something like this (multiple monitors making a big one), what with all the borders between em, minimal increase in actual resolution, etc, when you can buy a projector for much cheaper? My buddy has an HD one, and it works amazingly. If we do split-screen on COD, we still each have the equivalent of a big-screen TV, in HD no less.

The downside being we have to make the room dark as ***heck to work at optimum, but that seems like a small price to pay.

Edited December 31, 2016 by Slam_Jones

[Red Iron Crown]

So I'm curious... why do folks do something like this (multiple monitors making a big one), what with all the borders between em, minimal increase in actual resolution, etc, when you can buy a projector for much cheaper? My buddy has an HD one, and it works amazingly. If we do split-screen on COD, we still each have the equivalent of a big-screen TV, in HD no less.

The downside being we have to make the room dark as f*ck to work at optimum, but that seems like a small price to pay.

Big multimonitor arrays have other uses. I know they're popular with the day-trading crowd, they can never have enough windows visible at once.

[billman87]

Quite allot of feedback, ok here goes this response might get a bit geeky.

Are those resolutions supported by KSP? Or is it scaled up from 1920*1080?

Native at 5760x3240 thanks to SoftTH, where needed it can stretch any resolution to any resolution form 320 x 240 to 15360 x 8640 and vise versa.

Not everything will go over the normal resoultions as things have been hard coded to a location rather than use variables provided by DirectX.

Example Need for Speed Undercover will only render a max of 1600x1200 and must be stretched, 5 Nights at Freddies just crashes above 1280x1024.

But both work fine when scaled up, So I have plenty of options there.

Some games crash or render parts of the HUD in wrong locations or skewed but for the most part keep the aspect ratio either 4:3 or 16:9 and its fine.

Biggest issue with this res is games don't offer a feature scale HUD and they end up so tiny I have to leave my seat to read them. (might install a telescope)

Here is a video of GTA SAMP debug mode super sampled and recorded at 1080.

I have better net coming so I will upload some comparison videos in the coming months.

This is amazing but.... personally I would recommend a Dell UP2414Q. I've had three of them, and they all have phenomenal image quality and 4K resolution in a 24" package. Get a big portion of the resolution in one monitor for much much cheaper. I actually have one on sale on Amazon right now, but only because my graphics card and my eyes are insufficient to utilize it well

If I could have 9 of them I would, but you need Display Port 1.2 to make full use of it.

I plan to use 144hz monitors when they come down in price hopefully G-SYNC compatible, that could be quite some time yet.

For what I paid for all mine I could have had 2 of these, once they hit $500 each, a three way of them would be the go.

Why three different gpu's? And how did you get them to work together?

Because I'm poor and need to do some more work to afford matched GPU's, I plan to use two 970's as singles, this should see me up to 90 FPS.

After learning of how SoftTH does its thing I'm considering the next build should have an ATI 295x2 combined with a Maxtor 8 head output card.

ATI are latency freaks and Maxtor know how to use a frame buffer, this would provide 13 outputs and that not counting the onboard. ( yes I have issues )

SoftTH is software that create a SLS (Single Large Surface) then chops the game up and distributes to the panels per user configuration.

The render is done on the First GPU so only one needs to have any horse power, the rest are attached for outputs of the frame buffer created on the first GPU.

However the frame rate is dictated but the RAM speed of the slowest card. At this stage that the 620 holding me at just under 60 FPS.

Diagram of how SoftTH funtions

http://www.kegetys.fi/SoftTH/diagram.png

Nvidia cards have no difficulty sharing a load over different GPU's, and haven't for a long time now. You're thinking of ATi

In this setup I'm only rendering on one card but windowed apps are a different story the mixed GPUs mean I have to wait for the slowest feature of each card.

But SLI on the 900 seem to scale much better than any other combo I have seen so far, I'm keen to see a dual 980 GPU board.

Wow. I don't know why someone would need this, but it sure is amazing.

I research and mod allot having a library on information on screen at once speeds up productivity.

Also I love old games and for most of my early gaming was restricted to a mere 320x240.

Playing Quake and Carmageddon 2 on my CYRIX 586 and S3 Trident 2MB was utter torture,

Screw you cyrix a look up table IS NOT MMX don't report to the OS have what you ain't got. no wonder you went broke, ok rant over

So to be able to go back to my child hood and play the games I grew upon at a resolution that matched imagination of the day is spectacular to say the least.

I think the bezels would bother me, too. Do you notice them less after using the screens that way for a while? Can you compensate for them (i.e. make a gap in the image so that it looks like the bezels are laid over the game screen)?

Totally envious of the number of parts visible in the VAB screenshot, should hardly need pages at all.

It actually makes them really hard to use the descriptions are about as big as this font, I'm thing about getting glasses and I have don't any sight issues.

The bezels are not annoying for me when in game but once I played a PS1 on an analogue TV I can do image rectification in my head.

Once you have been playing something like iRacing for a while they almost disappear as you get engrossed with the race.

While I am setting up and configuring I wont bother with bezel comp as I have to edit the config manually each time I change the layout in the config file.

SoftTH allows for 2 methods, Overscan increase game res by the width of the bezels and re-position each frame or zoom each screen until they match.

I would use over scan and keep the screens displaying a native image as zooming will cause pixel dubbing to some extent.

Zooming perform faster but you loose a bit of the outer edge as well.

Here is a video of iRacing with a small amount of bezel comp.

I can only feel this would be more annoying, what about text boxes (like the part informationals?)

"Let's see, it has a mass of 5, an isp of... Wait a second, the border is in the way" - ad infinitum, for everything

Once I get motivated to tear them all apart and glue to a back board the bezels will get much smaller, but I can live with them.

I have had to deal with much worse situations. Honestly the blue LEDS are doing my head in the most

So I'm curious... why do folks do something like this (multiple monitors making a big one), what with all the borders between em, minimal increase in actual resolution, etc, when you can buy a projector for much cheaper? My buddy has an HD one, and it works amazingly. If we do split-screen on COD, we still each have the equivalent of a big-screen TV, in HD no less.

The downside being we have to make the room dark as f*ck to work at optimum, but that seems like a small price to pay.

4k (8294400 pix) and Ultra 5k (18662400 pix) are worlds apart.

I could have 9 games each with there own full screen assuming I connected 9 PC/Consoles or ran 9 VM's (might need more power for that last one)

These screens are very low power less than 20 watts each how I use them and is easily viable in direct sunlight durable and have no consumables.

I paid $1500 AUD for 10 brand new panels so I even have a spare just in case.

Big multimonitor arrays have other uses. I know they're popular with the day-trading crowd, they can never have enough windows visible at once.

Yes this is a very handy computer and I'm learning this is not extremely uncommon anymore, but D3D performance on a wall is a niche thing at this time.

Thanks for the feedback and questions.

I can be stubborn however your options and comments are valued greatly.

I'll post back when I have removed the bezels might be a month or two.

Have fun.

[Kotagi]

Everytime I try to load ksp with softth is crashes ksp on load. Any tips on why this is happening? Ive tried with multiple versions of ksp and same problem. On 64 and 32 bit as well. Am I missing something?

[something]

I always thought the 1x6 panels used in the control rooms of gravitational wave detectors (at least our detector) were a bit on the 'too many' side of the spectrum...