3 monitor setup

Hey, I was at a store recently and there was a 3 monitor setup for gaming. one straight on in the middle and two angled on the sides. The racing game they were showing looked awesome, and the extra peripheral vision seemed really useful.

Does anyone have any experience with this?

There is an nvidia site that talks about it. but sales and reality are two very different things.
http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/3d-vision-surround-technology-uk.html

I don't want to spring for the bucks if it sucks or doesn't work on most games, etc. Your thoughts and experiences appreciated.

This seems a bit of a Gimick to me. I would wait to see what games and other media are being released that support a 3 screen system before you buy. I'm guessing not many as the image rendering and data space needed will be prohibitive and unnecessary for most game designers if not a lot of people will be using it.

You don't want to end up like those you bought an HD-DVD player only to find that everyone else went with Blue-ray, lol.

The page says that it suppose over 425 games, but I can't find what games those are. I'd wait to find out what games it works with before shelling out the dough.

I've seen stuff like this before and it does look pretty awesome. I'd love to play STO like that.

It seems you could with STO. Minimize your STO game so that you can still see it but not at full window. Then drag the edges into a long rectangle and boom, it extends out the peripheral vision

From looking at the Nvidia website one key consideration is the disclaimer "Compatible with all 3D Vision-Ready desktop monitors and projectors". Not only do you need the special Video Card; but you may need to purchase all new "compatible" monitors and even then, as others have already pointed out, your games may not take advantage of this. Finally there is no reference to minimum specification requires for the computer or the operating system. I agree with other the previous postings, while this is a potentially cool technology, I would wait to see how it shakes out before spending any hard earned dollars on it.

There are actually two different things being discussed here.

The nVidia site you linked is talking about 3D gaming displays, which at the moment require active-shutter lensed glasses to work as well. The principle requires a monitor with a refresh rate of ~120Hz, which is about twice the speed the eye can detect... however, the glasses lenses alternately go opaque to block one eye's view after the other, at that speed, while the screens draw slightly different images for you left and right eyes, the differences between them being what tricks your brain into believing there is perspective, and so makes you see things in 3D.

However, if you don't want the game in 3D, just lining up three monitors simply relies on the power of your computer; obviously, if you've got three 1680x1050 monitors, then your computer needs to draw three times as much as it would for one monitor! Generally, most high end GFX cards only have two output ports, which pretty much matches their output ability. But get a second graphics card, and set it up in SLI or Crossfire (i.e. nVidia or AMD dual card mode), then hook up your three monitors and choose to 'Extend' your desktop (if you're running Windows 7, the short cut for those options is 'Windows Key + P', not sure about earlier versions off the top of my head).

I'm technically running two screens from my HD5770 now; however, one of them is my monitor and the other is a much bigger TV screen for watching movies/programs/etc in bed.

Thanks for all the feedback. I was interested in the 3D but it's been out 2 years apparently and isn't very good. I can wait for that.

But the 3 screen thing seemed cool, plus when not playing games 3 monitors can be awesome. In my programming days I had 2 and loved it.

The local computer place I like (ncix) is pretty good at giving low prices and good advice. So if I decide to check it out I'll coordinate with them (bought my pc from them). Maybe they'll let me return it all if it sucks hehe