Quote:
Originally Posted by karamazovnew
I've been wondering...
How many people would like a wide-rez interface mod? "
"It might not even be feasable unless you all want to use the same interface mod. It can only be done for a specific aspect ratio. Most probably 16:10 since most monitors now use this resolution. In that case, 16:9 screens would see a 0.9 vertical deformation. (current deformation is 0.75). Plus, many items simply can't be changed (such as the periscope bearing text). Also, such an enterprise would require a rebuild from scratch of the SH interface. This is by far NOT easy.
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Only one relevant comment in response from me.
I run a triple screen rig using an NVidia 8800 GTX running through a MATROX TripleHead2Go splitter box. My 3 flat screen 21" colour LED monitors creating a display that is 12 inches high by 5 feet wide, absolutely perfect for portraying the ocean, sky or landscape totally convincingly in a wrap around way. Once one has experienced this kind of perspective one can never be content with a single small screen again. Being old, retired, with no woman in my life currently and having a classic addictive personality, I use this rig to compulsively enjoy the most ultra-immersive and realistic simulations available, including motor racing and civilian flying but especially ground, sea and air combat.
Currently that includes the following simulators.
Ground combat . . . . ARMA ii, Modern Warfare 2 & Red Orchestra
Civilian Flying . . . . . FSX
Air combat . . . . . . . IL2 1946, Lock On (LOMAC), KA 80 Blackshark, Rise of Flight.
Ocean Combat. . . . . SH II, SH IV and as soon as it comes out SH V
(Although they have the correct wide-screen option I so seldom use the best of the motor racing sims like GRID and DIRT that I haven't included them above. This is largely because their user interfaces are appallingly clunky perhaps because they only have to cater to a younger and shallower gamers market not a mature bunch of obsessive, critical, intelligent and demanding realists like heavy sim users!)
My MATROX driven triple display gives me fantastically immersive HD wide angle and transorms ALL the sims above into things of wonder that cause visitors jaws to drop. They virtually (sic) always say something like "I never saw the point of them before because I never knew that simulations could be THIS realistic but now I can entirely see why you are so enthusiastic and involved!" This is almost inevitably followed by "Can I have a go?" Even non-computer literate women have this reaction rather than the near universal dismissal of simulators as "video games".
The MATROX software automatically allows for the deviding bar between screens and keeps the perspective correct, with no "jumps" and also adds a triple screen resolution or 3XXX by 12XX to all one's simulators but not all of them adjust the perspective, so it is the game sw not the MATROX sw that needs to be updated or Modded. I should add that triple-screen users are an exceedingly rapidly expanding community who tend to only buy games that have the correct perspective, so the gaming houses need to see this as a sales issue too as the gaming drives the tech and the tech then drives the gaming in a highly profitable cycle that WE all pay for as long as they give us what we ask for next!
[Note. I only actually play ONE or at most TWO of the above obsessively most of the time, the others are occasional treats. Otherwise I would scarcely have time to do anything else! I seldom post for the same reason but my rare posts are always too long anyway.]
If you have seen Avatar and had your ear to the grape vine in 2009 you will know that the future is 3D and that will include TV and Gamingnot just "a few movies". I disagree with complacent and pompous self-appointed TV pundits like Mark Kermode who think 3D is just a re-run of a "geeky fad. The same was said of the ZX80, Commodore 64 and BBC B by the same kind of pundits who proved to be only "legends in their own lunchtime"! LOL Remember?
So what's my problem, comment or response for this thread?
Well, apart from FSX, ARMA II, K-80 Blackshark and Rise of Flight which are all modern sims built with state-of-the-art and future tech in mind, virtually NONE of the simulations listed above (plus dozens more unlisted that i have and have tried) have true "correct perspective" for triple-screen, ultra-wide-screen or even simple wide-screen displays.
So when fighting in Modern Weapons 2 for example although the landscape and buildings all look pretty correct, the human avatars look squat, broad and a tad comical, wasting the vast effort put into their now near "photo-realism". The mind rapidly adjusts and ignors this but it does cancel out some of the immersive realism of expensive wide or triple screen displays.
I mention it here because all such comments equally apply to any ultra-wide-screen view in any simulation.
Can I take this opportunity to sincerely commend MATROX TripleHead2Go to every virtual submariner on this forum! You cannot BELIEVE how gloriously real the waves, weather and night sky all look in SH IV in a 5' ultra-wide-screen view. As currently configured however, as in part this thread addresses, SH doesn't utilise my display edge-to-edge but creates a kind of semi-wide-screen display that half overlaps the left and right screens, wasting and denying me the "full width display" that i have invested so much to enjoy.
It is worth adding that I also employ Track IR, so in aircraft, race cars, tanks or on the bridge of a sub it is very very like being in a real cockpit as one can glance in any direction and the screen view responds to one's head movements in real time.
UM . . . . I don't get a lot else done and sometimes forget to go shopping or cook meals. LOL sad I suppose but HUGE FUN and my grandsons love it!
Another setting I would love to see in most or even all simulators is split sound channels with one channel for ambient sounds t be output from one's surround-sound speakers and one for one's headphones and boom mike. This simple division would enormously enhance all those simulations of real world situations where one wears, hears and talks clearly on a headset whilst in a noisy surrounding environment, such as a modern race or rally car cockpit, an aircraft cockpit or in modern infantry combat.
The headset position is already picked up by Track IR and the screen view moved with the surround-sound remaining oriented to the craft, vehicle, or aircraft's orientation and sounds. i.e. when one looks to the left in a twin-engined aircraft one hears the left engine more loudly than the right and when one passes a nopisy static object such as a steam train, it's sound passes the moving aircraft or vehicle in the correct directional way, reflected also in the motion of one's head. So such a dual sound channeloption would need to tie the head motion to the headphones and the surround-siound to the vehicle. This is feasible using one's head as one (mobile) axis relative to the vehicle, plane or craft, whose orientation relative to the surrounding virtual landscape, sky or ocean is the second axis.
Final note. IMO the sound track of the title sequence of our current SH IV is absolutely stunning and I often replay it just to listen! But am I alone in finding the "speeded up visuals" utterly utterly dumb, distracting, inexplicable and unnecessarily destroying the theatrical granduer of the voice over? Who ever accepted those visuals should be shot and whoever chose the sound voice over promoted and put in charge of the SH V titles! I say this as a modern jazz loving art house movie goer, not as a conventional visual conservative. I can see what the intention may have been but the conflict between the pace of the voice over and the pace of the visuals just looks like a system failure and does NOT work IMO.
Sound is SOOOOOOO important. A young jazz orchestra leader friend of mine, sadly now deceased, once made the telling observation that a crap film with a stunning sound track appears deep and one will tolerate a great deal of ambiguity and wait ages to see what it's about, yet a deep film with a crap sound track is almost unwatchable and one may turn it off in seconds. This is perfectly illustrated by almost all porn although of course "I've seldom watched any" NOT.
Hence the ocean sounds in SH are extremely important as are the underwater sounds from inside and outside the boat. Far from being as it was once called a "silent world" the sub-sea environment is surprisingly noisy and sound highly directional thanks to being transmitted 4 times further than in air. As a professional saturation diver back in the day it often sounded in deep water as if I were being "digested by the sea" with very similar sounds to those heard by stethoscope in the human allimentary tract! This is generally well-simualted in classic submarine combat movies underwater views and needs to be an equally important focus in SH.
