How to set-up TRIPLEHEAD2GO for Lockon Flamming cliffs

[JEFX]

Hi all.

 

Since I posted in the tech section about my new TH2Go set-up, I received a pm yesterday from JimMack (ED team) who suggested me to post this type of how-to for the benefit of all.

 

First I must say that those who found really how to do are Joe, ggg87 and Teka Teka, summed up by Ratcatcher. I didnt find anything, just applied it succesfully! (see at the end of post for detailed instructions)

 

Here is the final product :

 

 

or my own loading screen in 3840x1024

 

 

Now, in order to use Matrox TripleHead2Go in those very wide resolutions with LOFC one has to fix a few things in various config and .lua files. It is really simple but one has to know what to do.

 

There still remains one unsolvalbe problem, with the actual LOFC code, it is not possible to play at 3840x1024 and zoom out very much. You end up naturally zoomed in with your nose in the windshield and you need to manually zoom out at the start of every mission. The drawback is that, even with a great comp and graphics card, when played zoomed out all the way, with the demands of such resolution, your FPS will drop dramatically.

 

As pointed already by several others, the way to go is to zoom out all the way and then zoom back in a little until you get a good balance between being confortable and having a good fluidity.

 

The other aspect is that playing a simulator on a TH2Go setup is a totally different experience than anything I had seen, even on a big monitor. It takes some time getting used to it :

 

1) you are much more zoomed in therefore all the details, either from the cockpit or from the outside world become MUCH bigger (and in my opinion much closer to reality). For example, even if you only see a small photo here, in my first picture, the HUD of the A-10 is 6x5 inches onscreen and the VVI has a diameter of almost 2 inches and still, there is a bit less than ONE FOOT of scenery on both sides of the cockpit!!!!!!!:D

 

2) Your field of vision becomes much bigger BUT much more horizontal (3 screens wide, only one high : some may like it or not...) which means that you will play around with your y view axix much more searching the skies for ennemies (especially looking up).

 

3) It is almost compulsory, in my opinion, to play this kind of setup with Trackir because of the increasing space to look at... I had to ajust my curves to accelerate my head motion in the up direction very much. I would recommend not using the Z axis with this because of the zoom problem mentionned above.

 

4) Because of the zoomed in problem, there is no way to see the full HUD and the instruments at the same time (as I always did before, since the first days of Flacon and then Lockon...). My solution was to set up a very sophisticated set of snapviews for each cockpit and program a direct link for each of then in the HAT of my Joystick, therefore I can look at the radar of my F-15 or the RWR of my MIG or the TV of my maverick very very quickly and come back to the normal moving Track IR view with the press of one button...

 

5) It is easy to replace the awful looking loading screen with a photo of your choice in 3840x1024 but harder to do so for the individual loading screens for each airplanes, since they are in .dds formal (which requires a special program), but possible. On the other hand, there is nothing to do about the GUI which looks really bad and stretched (but who cares? who really spends any time in the GUI?)

 

6) the map is another problem, though, since it is not only stretched very large (and one has to travel a lot with the mouse to perform all commands of the editor since one has to choose say a aircraft on the left side and then put its parameters on the right side) but also it is deformed where horizontal distances dont geometrically equal vertical distances (but I got used to it).

 

But...

 

Once you get through paying for it...:cry: and setting it up correctly, once you forget about stretched GUI and splashscreens, once you have your TrackIR curves accelerated to help your view move around, once you have all your snapviews programmed to help you focus instantaneously on the instruments that you need,

 

then...

 

you fire up a mission and you end up flying amost for real... the sky is really big, the details fo the runway, the lights of the cities at night, the rolling forests and mountains are magnificent and you fly through smoke and explosions and still have the rest of the landscape on both sides... it is amazing and compares to nothing I have experienced short of being in a real aircraft (sorry I have never flown an F-15 bot still, a nice little Katana with a bubble canopy, unfortunatly at 100 knots, is really nice:):)

 

And you can also enjoy all the extra desktop space for all other computer things and programs... You can drag things all over the place and really have lots of opened windows at once...

 

Here is a screenshot taken directly in 3840x1024... it was a really bad night... Imagine this with almost 4 feet of viewing...

 

 

Cheers:smilewink:

 

 

 

JEFX

 

 

-------------------------

Detailed instructions to set up the config and lua files for TH2Go as summed up for me by RATCATCHER (thanks to him!)

 

 

After plugging in triplehead2go (digital) I set the Matrox GXM panel to...

 

NUMBER OF MONITORS = 3

ASPECT RATIO = STANDARD

 

This gives a resolution for each monitor of 1280x1024@60hz giving a combined resoluton of 3840x1024@60Hz.

 

 

 

 

The following info has been gathered from the work of ggg87, so all credit to him, Joe and Teka Teka for what follows:

• OK first off you need to alter the config view.lua settings. (Lockon\Config\View\View.lua )
  

**The default values are 20.0,120.0**

 

The second figure is changed, apparently you can not go any higher than 175 or it causes instability.

 

 

Quote:

-- Camera view angle limits {view angle min, view angle max}.

CameraViewAngleLimits = {}

CameraViewAngleLimits[PlaneIndex.iSu_27] = {20.0,

175

.0}

CameraViewAngleLimits[PlaneIndex.iSu_33] = {20.0,

175

.0}

CameraViewAngleLimits[PlaneIndex.iSu_25] = {20.0,

175

.0}

CameraViewAngleLimits[PlaneIndex.iSu_39] = {20.0,

175

.0}

CameraViewAngleLimits[PlaneIndex.iMiG_29] = {20.0,

175

.0}

CameraViewAngleLimits[PlaneIndex.iMiG_29K] = {20.0,

175

.0}

CameraViewAngleLimits[PlaneIndex.iA_10] = {20.0,

175

.0}

CameraViewAngleLimits[PlaneIndex.iF_15] = {20.0,

175

.0}

 

function GetCameraViewAngleLimits(iType)

local p = CameraViewAngleLimits[iType]

return p[1], p[2]

end

The next thing to change is the "Camera Angle Limits" found in View\Server.lua

**Default values 140, -80, 90 **

Quote:

-- Camera angle limits {horizontal angle max, vertical angle min, vertical angle max}

CameraAngleLimits = {}

CameraAngleLimits[PlaneIndex.iSu_27] = {

200.0, -120.0,

90.0}

CameraAngleLimits[PlaneIndex.iSu_33] = {

200.0, -120.0,

90.0}

CameraAngleLimits[PlaneIndex.iSu_25] = {

200.0, -120.0,

90.0}

CameraAngleLimits[PlaneIndex.iSu_39] = {110.0, -80.0, 90.0}

CameraAngleLimits[PlaneIndex.iMiG_29] = {140.0, -75.0, 90.0}

CameraAngleLimits[PlaneIndex.iMiG_29K] = {140.0, -65.0, 90.0}

CameraAngleLimits[PlaneIndex.iA_10] = {140.0, -65.0, 90.0}

CameraAngleLimits[PlaneIndex.iF_15] = {140.0, -80.0, 90.0}

• Finally change the "Graphics.cfg" found in Lockon\Config
  

Quote:

DisplayMode

{

resolution = {

3840, 1024

};

bpp = 32;

fullscreen = 1;

aspect =

4.000000119

;

Interface

{

resolution = {

3840, 1024

};

bpp = 32;

fullscreen = 1;

aspect =

4.000000119

;

}

Simulation

{

resolution = {

3840, 1024

};

bpp = 32;

fullscreen = 1;

aspect =

4.000000119

;

 

Here it is vital that you change all 3 resolutioms and also the aspect ratio

 

** default is 1.33333 **

quick edit! - Just thought, it's important to understand the resolution issue. My setup has a max resolution of 3840x1024, therefore that is the number that must be input in the Graphics.cfg. If your max resolution is something else, that is what you must input.

 

To start with I didn't get that resolution come up ( I was using a 24" and 2 x 20" ) this just made the game crash on startup.

 

Also another thing I just remembered!!! When you install the triplehead you can install game software that creates it's own shortcut, for Lockon don't use it, as Joe found out as well, this results in Lockon crashing. Just edit your original config's.

[JimMack]

Hi JEFX,

 

Very many thanks to you and RATCATCHER for this post, it will be a great help for all moving to Matrox TripleHead2Go.

 

Jim

[hitman]

Off topic kinda...but is there a chance I can get that B-1 wallpaper? :D

[JEFX]

Hitman

 

No problem, give me an email address and I will send it to you.

I have it in original format 1600x1067 .jpg (around 850k) or in 3840x1060 (photoshop trimmed for my widescreen wallpaper needs) also in .jpg and around 600k. If you want better quality but really more heavy I do have it in .bmp format but at a weight of 15 meg.

[hitman]

kevin.utley@Yahoo.com :)

 

Ill take it in a bmp thats zipped up, I can always edit it in photoshop. I appreciate it! Ill go for the whopper.

[G3]

JEFX great points you made about the trackir,

sounds very familiar and reading it made me smile.

 

somethings that come to mind for the th2go in the graphics.cfg:

the apsect ratio autodetected is 4.000, but try 3.75

the ui can be set to use the centre screen only,

yet the in game map view still stretches.

 

@@@ config post here later @@@

 

i think? the view edits are currently only good for sp

as server settings overide the clients view settings.

it would be great to get this sorted out for dcs.

if not now in a future release/patch, JimMack?

 

although i did have a look at it quickly once,

i have no specific th2go software installed,

just curious, is there any real advantage in doing so?

Edited August 10, 2008 by G3

[Ratcatcher]

Hi Mate

 

Nice post, also hoping that BS resolve the issues. Has this been confirmed?

 

Unfortunately I'm "grounded" at the moment having decided to upgrade my CPU/MB and one of them is FUBAR'd!

 

Oh well, at least BS isn't out yet, ( Never thought I'd hear myself say that !!! ) - would have pushed me over the edge! :D

[Groove]

Thanks for the excellent tutorial!

[graywo1fg]

how are the monitors connected? since most video cards only have 2 outputs?

[DarkWanderer]

how are the monitors connected? since most video cards only have 2 outputs?

 

[JEFX]

Triplehead2go is an electronic device that actually splits the ONE outpout from the videocard in 3 separate outpouts that make in reality only one image. If your monitors are native 19' LCD they are usually 1280x1024@60Hz native and if you instruct TH2Go (via its software that comes with it) that you want one desktop made of 3x that resolution it is going to do actually ONE 3840x1024 large image. There is one input and 3 outpout on the box...

 

http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gxm/th2go/specs/

[JEFX]

i think? the view edits are currently only good for sp

as server settings overide the clients view settings.

 

ggg87,

No, the server overrides your choices of external or not and so on but not your snapviews and zoom angles. I have personnaly experienced LOFC on hyperlobby with all my settings and it works flawlessly (despite the fact that there is not much going on there... friday night at midnight eastern time here, there were 3 people altogether, shooting at each other... but that would be the subject of another post...)

 

i have no specific th2go software installed,

just curious, is there any real advantage in doing so?

 

Do you mean that you use TH2Go without their desktop management software and bezel management? You need them at lest to specify what resolution you want the thing to work in? Their last version released a few days ago allows new (wider) resolutions.

 

The real advantages of the software could be at least for some games because they have that game management software with all sorts of tips and how-tos to make games work with it unfortunately, (as Ratcatcher pointed out) one should not use it with LOFC.

 

One thing that I do use the most and it is a MUST in my opinion is their Bezel management software that allows the user to adjust the leftmost and the rightmost image and push them inside so that lines match with the middle screen, despite the width of the bezels. That makes a tremendous difference in the impression of them not being there.

 

The other thing is the managing of opening programs on which screen, You can choose the screen on which you want programs to open. At first I had the middle screen do that and it sounded logical but then I had a problem with X-Plane 9 that would open, even in 3840X1024 on the middle screen and stretch only on the right screen, ignoring totally the left one. I solved the problem by assigning the left one as the starting screen and LO! it then stretched X-plane through the whole thing.

[G3]

i should have said the server controls/overides your edits to the

camera angle limits in the server.lua :) at least i think it does.

 

the th2go model i have is all vga not dvi,

picked it up ages ago, set it up, it worked, and basically forgot it.

as for the bezel management i do that manually thru the screens own positioning ui,

your way does sound better :), as i loose the outside inch or so of both left and right screens all the time.

Either way, the diagonal lines in game like horizon when banking must line up for the best results.

 

i do like the idea of choosing where apps open,

can you click full screen and only maximise to one screen, or do apps still go enormous when maximised.

 

thanks for discussing, might revisit the software.

 

did you by chance try that differrent apsect of 3.75

Edited August 10, 2008 by G3

[JEFX]

Hi ggg

 

i should have said the server controls/overides your edits to the

camera angle limits in the server.lua :) at least i think it does.

It does not change the angles that are pertinent to TH2go (those that one has to edit for the thing to work) because I have played online with it and everything was normal.

 

as for the bezel management i do that manually thru the screens own positioning ui,

your way does sound better :), as i loose the outside inch or so of both left and right screens all the time.

Either way, the diagonal lines in game like horizon when banking must line up for the best results.

As bezel management is concerned, you are right, lines really should line up (such as horizon) but even with their software that allows to ajust it very finely and precisely, you lose an inch on both sides to achieve it.

 

can you click full screen and only maximise to one screen, or do apps still go enormous when maximised.

You can have an app. that is windowed and when you double click on its title bar it maximizes to that one screen (really neat).

 

id you by chance try that differrent apsect of 3.75

Finally last night I did try and I thought it made no difference (???) Perhaps I thought I had a little bit more zoom out? Anyhow, I had great FPS, going through a battle with lots of explosions over populated area (like the screenshot at the top of the post) and having 40 FPS throughout.

 

cheers

[G3]

here's an extract of a modified graphics.cfg

this one makes the user interface on centre screen only.

 

the down side is the th2go has to swap resolutions between ui and flying

so the side screens turn on and off, you know :)

 

remember to set the aspect to 1.25 for 1280x1024

 

note: the top settings appear to follow the middle settings.

(the top res will set itself to the middle res once you run the game and return to graphics config)

its not a problem, just an observation.

 

here we are then:

 

DisplayMode

{

resolution = {1280, 1024};

bpp = 32;

fullscreen = 1;

aspect = 1.25;

Interface

{

resolution = {1280, 1024};

bpp = 32;

fullscreen = 1;

aspect = 1.25;

}

Simulation

{

resolution = {3840, 1024};

bpp = 32;

fullscreen = 1;

aspect = 3.75;

}

as for the 4.00 or 3.75 aspect ratio, look at round-ness of gauges to compare,

square-ness of the VSD etc.

 

 

"i should have said the server controls/overides your edits to the

camera angle limits in the server.lua :) at least i think it does."

 

It does not change the angles that are pertinent to TH2go (those that one has to edit for the thing to work) because I have played online with it and everything was normal.

 

As bezel management is concerned, you are right, lines really should line up (such as horizon) but even with their software that allows to ajdust it very finely and precisely, you lose an inch on both sides to achieve it.

 

cheers

 

not meaning to argue the point, just not sure why we are getting different results.

i tried the camera angle limits on the gameserver tonight just to be sure,

editing the server.lua camera angle limits in the horizontal from 200 down to 50, and the client view was

definitely restricted.

so maybe our values are different or the server u are flying on has then modified, unsure?

could be the different aircraft, i am test in the eagle, you are in the A-10,

maybe i am looking around further than you, buggered if i know.

 

as for the bezel management, does it loose the two inches in normal desktop like i do,

or does the software give a full size 2d desktop, with cropped gaming?

 

we have now officially turned this into another long messy thread of th2go thinking, collective thinking now.

sure would be great to maybe move all this to another thread and keep the th2go guide free of discussion,

and keep it focused on just the facts.

its a top idea to get all this info together, cheers to JEFX

 

a thread cleanup is in order, where's groove :) when you need him,

maybe a few topical political comments would catch someones eye,

that seems to work around these parts for fairly obvious reasons.

 

oh yeah and that maximizing a windowed app to just one fulll screen rather than across all three sounds very nice.

appreciate your info on the pro's and con's of the software .

Edited August 11, 2008 by G3

[JEFX]

Hi ggg

 

Thanks for all those precisions!

I tried your graphics settings and it does not work for me. When I set the numbers like you quoted, the game does not even want to start:(

 

I think you are right about the roundess of gauges at 3.75 but I dont really have time to experiment a lot right now.

 

as for the bezel management, does it loose the two inches in normal desktop like i do,

or does the software give a full size 2d desktop, with cropped gaming?

 

Yes, it unfortunately looses those inches (one on each side) but once I fire up a mission, I forget totally about it.

 

I still have to do some more experiment on multiplayer... I have flown both A-10 and SU-33 in multiplayer and it was fine (but I play around with the zoom a lot, therefore I cannot say really...)

[G3]

Hi ggg

 

Thanks for all those precisions!

I tried your graphics settings and it does not work for me. When I set the numbers like you quoted, the game does not even want to start:(

 

oh dear, it was a direct cut and paste from my working graphics.cfg so ?

maybe the th2go digital version works differently, once again i am unsure.

maybe try with the fullscreen options set to 0 instead of 1. in the cfg

i recall having to do this once before when messing with weird resolutions.

 

all else aside, i know you are loving it,

as i do, the emotion is obvious in your earlier descriptions :thumbup:

enjoy my friend, we shall no doubt

continue our discussions in the future.

Edited August 13, 2008 by G3

[hannibal]

how do you calculate aspect?

i have 3 20" widescrens where my monitors are 20" wide @ 1600x900..

[G3]

aspect is calculated as:

total horizontal resolution divided by the vertical resolution.

 

in your case that would be:

(1600 x 3 ) = 4800 horizontal

divided by 900 vertical

 

aspect ratio = 5.33333 and lots of other 3's :thumbup:

 

just use the same amount of decimal places

as the default settings.

when this is set incorrectly circles appear as ovals etc, thats the easiest way to tell if you got it right.

 

thats a hell of a lot a dots, please share some screens when you get it working, cheers.

[Guest gremlinkiller]

help me chose lcds for my th2g set up.

 

hey guys, im new to the whole 3 lcds thing but it looks a sounds really sweet and id like to do it.

 

id like to have 3 22" or if the res can still be good 3 24".

what lcds and other things will i need??

frame rate wont be a problem since im building a bad ass rig soon.

 

 

bad ass rig to come soon :D

i7, rampage 2 extreme or classified, 6g of 1600 or 1800 detonator to start with if i need to ill get 12g, two gtx 295s to make 4 way sli or 3 way with a physics gpu, two 300g raptos in raid 0, 4 250g WD hdds in raid 0, some kind of raid contorler ????, blue ray drive, 2 dvd drives to save swaping out games all the time and to top it all of twin loop water cooling first loop consisting of the cpu,nb,sb,ram and the second is only for the gpus. this rig will be finished in about 2-3 months all going well cant weight !

 

thanks guys for taking the time to read and reply :thumbup:

[Total]

I always said I'd post a vid up, but never got around to it

 

The first part of this is Lock On. Shot this for a friend of mine who is thinking about going with the menage-Ah-Triplemonitor :D

 

[hannibal]

do you have a problem on triplehead in which labels in a campaign mission do not appear on the right half of the triplescreen?

 

what is your sistem specs?

[Total]

I generally keep labels off, although I think I remember there being some sort of label gap when I first got it going.

 

System Specs:

 

EVGA 750i FTW Motehrboard

Intel Q9650 2.83GHz Quad Core

MSI nVidia 8800GTS 640MB OC Edition (soon to be replaced by a 260 or better)

4GB DDR2-1066 RAM

Audigy 4 sound card

CoolerMaster Centurion 590 case w/ Antec Tri-Cool fans

Matrox Triplehead2Go digital edition

Three Acer 20" LCD's (X203H model)

Saitek X52 Flight System

Logitech MX-518 Mouse

Turtle Beach Earforce HPA 5.1 surround headphones

Saitek Exlipse Keyboard

Custom switch panel using the X-keys matrix board

[thaFunkster]

This looks really great.

 

Now with the new Radeon 5xxx series, maybe we can all do this!

[hannibal]

your view.lua... what do you set your viewcameraanglelimits to? when i used to have triplehead, i remember my computer could NOT handle the program when i zoomed out to see the whole cockpit...