Civ5 & Eyefinity

[drfish]

Civ has nearly always been multi-monitor friendly, I was stretching Civ2 across 3 screens with dual Matrox cards back in the day - so I'm not worried about Civ5 playing nice with my current 5040x1050 setup FOV or otherwise. However, I'm curious if the increase in popularity of triple screen setups has lead the developers to consider some special treatment for such wide viewing...

Specifically I'd like the HUD to be on the center screen when Eyefinity (or Nvidia Surround) is detected. Civ4 is just a little awkward interface wise when you have to manage most of your primary buttons 5,000+ pixels apart. Of course further refinement for bezel compensated resolutions would also be needed so the HUD would be cropped properly for the center 1680x1050 of the 5540x1050 that I actually have my res set to.

Second to that would be the FOV issue, Civ4 starts to look a little wonky on the outside edges of of the viewing range. Civ2 and Civ3 obviously didn't suffer from this issue but I was wondering if the camera in Civ5 would be a little more extreme FOV friendly... Just curious, not sure what the hex tiles will do to the way they point the camera, from the screen shots released so far it looks a little more top down than Civ4 which is a big help...

Anyway, haven't read anything about this myself, curious if others have or if someone from 2K or Firaxis can speak up.

 

[Col Kurtz]

Second to that would be the FOV issue, Civ4 starts to look a little wonky on the outside edges of of the viewing range. Civ2 and Civ3 obviously didn't suffer from this issue but I was wondering if the camera in Civ5 would be a little more extreme FOV friendly... Just curious, not sure what the hex tiles will do to the way they point the camera, from the screen shots released so far it looks a little more top down than Civ4 which is a big help...

drfish, I would recommend you try the BUG mod for Civ4 if you haven't already. It provides a slider for adjusting the angle of the camera (how top-down it is). That might help you make it look much better on your 5540x1050 setup. It makes many other additions to the UI as well, which many of us greatly appreciate. No gameplay changes.

Further, I would recommend Better BUG AI mod even more highly, which is a merge of BUG and Better AI mods. Also, I'd throw in the Blue Marble terrain graphics for good measure.

 

[drfish]

I've already modified my ini file for a decent FOV. I tried the BUG mod but the slider didn't appear to have any effect. Maybe it doesn't play nice with my ini mod...

I've used Blue Marble in the past and tried it again - still looks nice - but it would only work with vanilla Civ, not BTS - which was not a problem before... Also it wouldn't work with BUG at the same time - but maybe that's because BUG only works with BTS? Not a big deal. Mostly wanted this thread to be about Civ5 anyway. Thanks though!

 

[Geek113377]

multi monitor would be nice. i currently only have 1 on my laptop, but i'm eventually (before civ6) going to get a multi-monitor desktop with sweet everything.

 

[Shiggs713]

if you just rip the textures from blue marble and put them in the correct directory, it will work with any version of civ4, even with other mods.

 

[TheDS]

What, are you living in the Stone Age? Only 3 monitors? All the cool kids have 12 monitors so as to regain their righteously beloved 4x3 screen ratio. 5760 x 4320 can even handle hi res digital camera images up to 24 megapixels.

Three screens... how quaint.

 

[__JR__]

What, are you living in the Stone Age? Only 3 monitors? All the cool kids have 12 monitors so as to regain their righteously beloved 4x3 screen ratio. 5760 x 4320 can even handle hi res digital camera images up to 24 megapixels.

Three screens... how quaint.

Lol !! Scroll bars ?? We don't need no stinkin scroll bars !!!!

 

[drfish]

Seriously though, any real news about this?

I've been playing Elemental one three screens and it's quite nice, same problem with the UI though...

 

[Mercade]

Seriously though, any real news about this?

I've been playing Elemental one three screens and it's quite nice, same problem with the UI though...

Not until the demo comes out on 21 September, I'm affraid.

 

[Zhahz]

I wouldn't imagine something like this is high on their list of priorities when only an extremely low number of people use this kind of setup.

 

[12agnar0k]

I have never got why someone would want more than one monitor unless they were using 1 monitor on a game and another for doing otherstuff at the same time. Why use all 3 of your monitors all for the game, why not just use one, anyway, this is my opinion on multiple monitors .

 

[Snoopaloop]

Having 1 monitor on the game, a second on the civilopedia would be interesting while you are trying to learn the game. It would probably be less useful after the 100th time through though.

 

[drfish]

I wouldn't imagine something like this is high on their list of priorities when only an extremely low number of people use this kind of setup.

I agree, I'm just curious. Allowing for a customizable UI really isn't that hard though, hoped someone in the know might speak up - or at least assure that it will be easy to mod...

As far as why 3 monitors? It's just nice for immersion, especially in FPS but even in Civ or DoD or Sins it's really neat seeing your vast empire spread out in front of you on your vast screen real estate. Also it frequently saves you some map scrolling...

 

[PieceOfMind]

Yeah, 3 monitors is nice for "immersion" games like flight sims or racing sims, especially if combined with head-tracking tech like TrackIR.

The problem is it's quite an expensive option compared to just getting a bigger monitor, plus it takes up a lot of space.

I remember Supreme Commander (an RTS) let you put the strategic map on one monitor and the normal view in the other. Pretty neat, but required a lot more graphics card oomph for little gain. Actually, the excellent UI in that game with even a single monitor made a second monitor fairly pointless.

 

[drfish]

If you already have a large monitor getting a bigger one can be much more expensive than buying more of the same kind. 30" screens aren't cheap! Personally I've got about $450 into my three identical screens, I consider that a pretty reasonable deal, especially with the money I saved building my monitor stand myself. Also, space isn't a problem for everyone (especially with a good stand). I won't argue about "immersion" it's too subjective to get worked up about, but you can't deny that the difference in FOV of three screens vs. a single large one is pretty dramatic - and it works for me, I couldn't go back, even for games like Civ.

 

[civ_king]

I want to play Civ V on a projector, I hope it supports super high resolutions

 

[ShaqFu]

Civ4 supported what was the then-unheard of resolution of 1920x1080, so I'd be surprised if Civ5 didn't take the same approach. These games are designed to last 5 years, and Firaxis seems to have it geared towards future computers (scaling to arbitrary numbers of cores), so I'm sure they accounted for multi-monitor/projectors.

Me, I'm hoping that, even with my lower-end system, it'll look nice on my 42" TV. Even Civ4 shines on it, and the demo I saw in March was on one, and it's almost enough to make me upgrade right now.

 

[civ_king]

I 240" screens (projectors FTW)

 

[moopoo]

you are all wealthier than me and i hate you for it

 

[casualty]

Playing at 5969x1080 on Eyefinity currently. Game runs but with some graphical glitches. Also splash screens and intro movie do not display. Leader screens also fail to display but fortunately the text box shows.

Comparing the full widescreen to windowed on single monitor I noticed in triple monitor resolutions that the zoom level is in closer and won't zoom out as far as when in single monitor resolutions - this annoys me the most becuase I like to played zoomed right out.

Short answer it works but its glitchy/buggy/not thought through - sums up the game really.