Have you ever seen an nvidia surround setup, eyefinity, or those flexscreen TV's? I got this idea when I started preferring letterboxed 16:9 resolutions on my 16:10 monitor when gaming. Couldn't this be simulated on a regular monitor? Wouldn't it be the same as letterboxing, but more than a simple rectangle? Why have we never been able to make dynamic resolutions like this? I know it would involve a sh*t ton of aliasing though.
It might work, but the screen would have to be very large and you sitting very close for it to be of benefit. What you came up with is pretty much the lenses you see in VR kits, just projected onto a monitor at distance instead of 5cm in front of your eye.
You are not changing anything. You are simply removing monitor real estate. Surface is still flat, perspective is still the same, edges are still the same... You'd have the look without the functionality. The really big screens are going to be curved, not to look like from sci-fi, but to actually have the edges closer to your head in an angle so that the image won't get so distorted from your close point of view. With those screens you'd be able to set your angle of view into something really wide. If you set it now on a single monitor, you'll see that the things at the edges are stretched out. But on that curved screen/surround gaming setup, it'll look more natural.
I'm thinking he meant more along the lines of squashing the screen into that space, but yeah, the rest of what you said is on the spot. Btw, this could be done with a reasonably simple shader, out of the game, sweetfx possibly?
Well he was talking about letterboxing it with a curve instead of a box. (If i got it right) I think it's possible with a shader to take the frame from the memory and distort it, and show that one instead.
I'm already using letterbox, so I wouldn't mind, I'd actually prefer it. But the proposed method with sweetfx sounds like it would add a sh*t-ton of latency.
Found software called Immersive Display Lite 2 which is very f*cking expensive, which I don't appreciate. :flame:
I tried it and it does exactly what I proposed above. I don't understand why such a simple feature is not available for free yet? Nvidia has done it for "free" but you have to sign up for the Registered Developer program, which is impossible for me. It only works if games are run in Dx9 mode. Tried it with Alan Wake, and lo and behold the 97% opaque watermark.
No it doesn't. It's designed for multiple displays. Why do you want a horribly distorted image on a single flat screen?
Silliest idea I've heard in ages. No matter how 'effective' the simulation may be (it can never be), it would still look worse than a normal flat screen, with a distorted or 'squished' FOV. A curved screen has more surface area showing more of the image and FOV in perhaps roughly the same physical space of a flat screen. Thats the main design purpose of curved screens along with less reflections. So its either a real curved screen or a flat screen if you want a satisfactory looking image.
It worked. I used the loader to execute the Alan Wake exe, and there appeared my horribly distorted and unsatisfying (to each their own my man) image. It looked exactly like my art above, except the frames from my gpu were actually pushed in, so nothing was hidden/removed, increased fov to max. It was also efficient, meaning no noticeable performance loss. Should I re-download and screenshot? Anyways this is a moot topic until I find some freeware.
This is silly. The program might work, but that's not how they intended it to be used. The fact that a physically curved screen changes how your eyes see the pixels in real life is something that would be impossible to simulate... well maybe with a some sort of head tracking device it 'might' be feasible. But lets face it, I doubt you are referring to that or thought it out that much.
Also the new curved screens are different to the old curved screens. The old screens were curved due to the function of the cathode tube, it actually led to a distortion of the image. The new curved screens (concave, not convex like for CRT) is to create a more immersive environment. You simply can't simulate that on a flat screen, you either lose screen real estate or you distort the image. People may not know this, but your visual acuity is actually significantly greater in your central vision, the 'resolution' of your eyesight drops off significantly to your peripheral. Simulation a curved screen on a flat surface will actual centralise the distortion/removal of image from the centre of the screen, right in the part of your eyesight where it is the most noticeable! The image on the new curved screens isn't distorted. It's cleverly done so this doesn't happen. The main disadvantage with curved screens (besides the current expense) is that they only really benefit the person sitting directly in front of it. If you are watching from the side it would actually be more of a hindrance than a benefit. If you are sitting on the right side, the left side of the screen will actually be part that is most direct to you, the right side being the least (and vice versa). This will have the effect of your eyes wandering to the left part of the screen instead of the central part, which wouldn't be ideal. This all depends on the location of the screen, the size of the screen, how far away you are sitting and the angle you are sitting.
It just isn't logically a good idea. You're trying to basically create some sort of "detail", of which type i have no idea what, by eliminating display area. Curved screens aren't squished.... they're actually CURVED. They're still 1920x1080 (or 4K or something of the sort)... not some goofy resolution with a lower pixel count in the center. It just makes no sense to do on a single, FLAT display.
Misguided attempts at increasing fov past the norm without distortion (and with out letterboxing 75% of the screen). I still want this to be a thing, preferably a free thing