21:9 Monitor Stretch/distortion

[Wrench]

Hey guys,

I posted a YT video of some issues I'm having in 21:9 aspect ratio.

 

I'm hoping one of the magicians out there can give me a hand.

${1}

 

Edited December 17, 2017 by Wrench

[John Hargreaves]

The video doesn't seem to be working for me, could you do a written description too? I'm on a 21:9 working fine, so I'll try to help.

 

 

I'm guessing if the image is stretched, DCS is not picking up your native resolution and forcing a normal 1080p res or something like that.

[Wrench]

Yeah, I had only just posted the video. Should be up proper by now.

 

Essentially, the sides of the screen are much more stretched than the center, making it pretty obnoxious. I've tried editing the snapviews.lua, but that really didn't change anything.

 

DCS reports 3440x1440@2.38888 aspect, which should be correct. I think I'd actually prefer the whole image be stretched evenly, even if that does distort the whole image, at least it would be consistent.

[Goblin]

At 21:9 the AR should be 2.3333. Did you try that?

[Wrench]

It doesn't seem to make too much difference.

I'll leave it there though, given that's what it's supposed to be.

[grunf]

Decrease your FOV, i.e. zoom in.

[Mars Exulte]

I have the same distortion. It's a sideffect of the wide FoV. Flat monitors display a fixed 'window like' FoV, when you expand said FoV you start getting the fisheye effect. There is no 'fix' for it, except to zoom in.

[Sideslip]

As mentioned above, it is the way 3d games are rendered and it infuriates me, but there's nothing you can do about it. Every single game in existence does it whether you notice or not.

 

You can reduce the effect by using the 3 monitors option which will split your FOV into 3 smaller chunks (say dividing 120 into 3 40 degree segments) but that costs a whole lot of performance and looks bad unless the FOV is set perfectly. Zooming in would look really weird.

 

The problem is 3d games are rendered for flat monitors. Well that's what most people have right, where's the problem? The thing is, it assumes your monitor takes up the same FOV in the real world as you have displayed in-game. The monitor in front of you probably fills about 40-60 degrees if you are close to a decently large screen, or less if you have a 20 inch. Most games need at least 70 or more for it not to be too restrictive. I use 100 in DCS and 80-90 in most shooters. So if you use 100 in the game, it is rendered in a perspective as though you are sitting 2 feet from a 55 inch wide screen (not doing the math, sorry), but you aren't so you see the distortion. If you shove your face right up to the screen, you will see everything looks normal on the edges, because now you are seeing it the way it was rendered. Imagine how wide a screen would have to be to fill 180 degrees of your vision, an infinitely wide screen, which is why the closer you get to 180 the more messed up it gets. There may be software available from industrial flight simulators to warp the image to apply a static correction, but it would not work if you change the FOV (zoom in/out) and probably costs thousands of dollars).

 

I pray for the day when everything is rendered assuming a curved monitor always facing directly at the viewer. That would mean a circle would be a circle no mater where it is or how wide the view. You wouldn't have a problem on a flat monitor because no one sits close enough for it to be distorted. Trouble is it will be a big change and of course cost performance, and the industry is too lazy to change.

 

/rant

 

TLDR; No you can't fix it, it's a problem with every game out there whether it be an ultra-wide, triple monitor or curved projector screen. Set the max FOV lower, not much past 100 or buy yourself an 80 inch flat TV and sit 1 foot away.

Edited December 17, 2017 by Sideslip

[Deezle]

Totally normal.

[Wrench]

Like I said, I understand it can't be perfect. I just wish it would stretch the image linearly, rather than an exponential increase of distortion from the center to the edges.

 

I understand that zooming in will reduce distortion, but given I sit 2 feet from a 34" curved screen, that feels much too claustrophobic.

[Beamscanner]

-Move the default view as far back as possible.

-Set max FOV to 104 (or reduce the saturation in the zoom axis to something tolerable)

 

EDIT: 104 is what I use with a 16:9 monitor. So play with your settings to see what you like. It may be easier to adjust the saturation of the zoom axis because you dont have to leave the game and go into LUA files.

 

 

Also, I've seen other flights sims where the edge distortion isn't nearly as bad at the same FOV.. I understand the logic presented here as to why this occurs, but never the less the effect isn't noticeable as much with the other sim.. IDK why..

Edited December 22, 2017 by Beamscanner

[John Hargreaves]

As Scotty might say, 'Ye cannae change the laws of physics'

 

 

https://epxx.co/artigos/pinhole_en.html

 

 

Basically, it's perfectly normal and can't really be avoided, unless you get a rift.

[PiedDroit]

Interesting topic indeed.

I've been researching this a while ago, I found this good read on the subject:

 

Reducing stretch in high-FOV games using barrel distortion

 

Right now the 3D engine we have does not (I think) offer such camera type / transform but maybe in the future...

 

WebGL sample from the same article

 

Pictures from the article:

Edited December 23, 2017 by PiedDroit

[SinusoidDelta]

Interesting topic indeed.

I've been researching this a while ago, I found this good read on the subject:

 

Reducing stretch in high-FOV games using barrel distortion

 

Right now the 3D engine we have does not (I think) offer such camera type / transform but maybe in the future...

 

WebGL sample from the same article

 

Pictures from the article:

 

I’ve wanted such a feature in DCS for a while now.

 

Barrel distortion is used in DCS for VR though I think it is performed using the Oculus SDK. I’m not sure if that same method could be applied for monitors though. It would be a amazing for those of us with 21:9 curved ultrawide displays.

[PiedDroit]

I’ve wanted such a feature in DCS for a while now.

 

Barrel distortion is used in DCS for VR though I think it is performed using the Oculus SDK. I’m not sure if that same method could be applied for monitors though. It would be a amazing for those of us with 21:9 curved ultrawide displays.

 

It has to be provided by the graphics engine, I assume that doing such transformation after rendering is quite costly in terms of processing power.

Or maybe it's not that costly, but it still has to be applied after rendering. Which means new software development.

 

The day graphics API (DirectX) and 3D game engines will be able to render pictures directly with barrel transform applied then it will be possible to add this even for monitors quite easily.

 

Good thing is that VR is pushing us right in that direction :thumbup:

[Scal]

Any news on barrel distortion implementation for 32x9 curved monitors?

[The_Nephilim]

Well back when I had a 21:9 triple Projector setup I had used a warping software to correct the image. as being this large and AR the image gets distroted and such the Warping software fixed that in a Projector..

 

I am not sure but I do not think there is such software for a monitor.. but I am pretty sure it can be fixed in a lua file or similar.. the warping software I used in the past was nThusim and SimPit warp..