FPS

A familiar face

Anyone who’s tweaked a config file in Quake will find that setting up Surround Gaming in Quake 3 is not difficult. Detailed instructions on how to get Q3 running at 2400x600 are posted on Matrox’s site, along with instructions for all the other games. You’ll also need to do a little bit of tweaking in the registry, but Matrox’s instructions are quite clear on exactly what you need to do – a simple insertion of a binary value. Using the settings Matrox suggested, I was able to achieve exactly 100 frames per second running high quality, 2400x600. Cranking the resolution up to 3072x768 (1024 x 768 x 3), we still achieve well over 70 frames per second.

Hud stretched

My crosshair's an ellipse...

...but I can still frag

Not all peaches and cream

There is a problem with running Quake 3 across three monitors and it stems from having to do that one registry tweak. If you do the registry tweak they describe, your HUD in the game (displaying your health/armor/ammo) will display normally on your center monitor. However, the menus, console, and other text in the game look squished and unreadable. This makes it difficult to connect to online servers using the in-game server browser (which admittedly, no one really uses anyway).

If you choose to play without doing the registry tweak, then your console and in-game menus look normal, but your HUD becomes stretched out over all three monitors, and the scoreboard becomes difficult to read. This wouldn’t be that big of a deal except that the crosshair is considered part of the HUD and thus, becomes distorted as well, without doing the registry tweak. I usually use the circle with the dot as my crosshair, so that instead becomes an ellipse with a short line segment with the HUD stretched. It’s very distracting. Even switching to a simple dot crosshair doesn’t help, as it appears as a short line segment, throwing off your aim. My work around for this was to first make sure all my settings were to my liking, and then include the registry hack afterward, so I could have a normal crosshair. Using Gamespy or another server browser means not having to deal with squished menus. You still can’t read messages from other players though.

Ahh, normal HUD and crosshair

But text at top is unreadable

Look ma, 3 screens!

Actually playing the game

Interface issues aside, playing Quake 3 CTF and instagib is quite a different and exhilarating experience when the game is on three monitors. People with decent peripheral vision (I knew playing all that basketball would come in handy) can use the flanking monitors to their advantage, spotting opponents out of the corner of their eye. I feel like I can definitely see more of the playing field, and not have to swing my mouse around as much to evaluate threats while entering a new room or area. Having a wider field of view is akin to watching a football game unfold from the press box as opposed to the tunnel vision you can sometimes feel from watching a game from “quarterback cam.” You get more of the big picture perspective, while not losing too much of the in-your-face adrenaline rush.

I did a little playtesting in RTCW also, and found that there were some areas where I could guard or watch two different doors/entryways at the same time without being blind to one as I would using just one monitor. Having said all that, I think Surround Gaming would work a lot better in tactical shooter games or shooter games with a slower pace than Quake 3. It would be perfect for a game like Counter-Strike or one of the Rainbow Six games where you enter a lot of rooms and need to gain as much information as quickly as possible about surrounding threats. The list of games supporting Surround Gaming is very shooter-heavy at the moment, but one big one coming up on the horizon is Unreal Tournament 2003. We can’t wait to try that game on the Parhelia, especially becauce the UT 2003 team seems to have this card’s surround gaming feature in mind as they finish development. Hopefully that means we won’t need to deal with the same interface issues as in Quake 3 presented for us (RTCW’s menus and text are a little friendlier with the registry tweak on than Quake 3).