Computer Games

Being a games programmer you'd think I play a lot of computer games wouldn't you?

But the reality is... no. I used to, but nowadays with Hayden and the wife aboot it's not as much as it 'should' be. However recently there's seen a revival in the XBox gaming scene due to my English chums, Kelk, Nutter and Nogger being online at stupid hours (for them), playing through to some 2 or 3am whilst I play after the family has gone to bed :)

Also Hayden's Lego games being played alot.

But PC gaming... well that's a different story altogether. Aside from my last LAN Party (Xmas Stratlan 2008), there's been a few games of Left For Dead with office chums on a Sunday evening - lasted aboot 2 Sundays :( and some Quake Live at lunchtimes.

My PC is old.. very old and tired.

I spent many hours, nay several days in total last week or so 'cleaning' the PC. I wanted to reinstall Windows XP, but there appears to be some sort of hardware failure upon setup and I cannot install it. Left with no choice but to clean or buy new components. Anyway, a full virus scan, Adware scan, Disk cleanup and defrag of all disks - one of which took over 48 hours to complete!!!

and the PC is actually running rather quickly again.

So... long over due I decided to install some proper software for my monitors. Just before I left HRC, the IT department threw out some old monitors - not the best ever, but hey! So I took one and got my Boss to grab me another.

So I have this three monitor setup, great. :) But thus far has only been used for a large desktop which windows does automatically, not gaming.

I don't want to spend any money on hardware so instead spent a few hours trial and error and lots of tinkering last night until 2am, configuring the system to run the three monitors correctly for games.

This doesn't mean stretching the image across three monitors, it means expanding the field of view to see further around and to the sides.

It's awesome, the main middle monitor still acts and looks like it normally would do playing the game on a single monitor, but the side monitors show the extra peripheral vision normally unavailable.

I played Call Of Duty 4 today for the first time in ages with the new setup, it was really a different experience having all that extra angle to view. Sadly one of the freebie monitors seems to have turned a bit green in colour as you can see above.

This is a screen grab I took, click on it to see the full size screen that I'm looking at... if you're interested...

Next up Left For Dead and I can't wait to try it out on racing games and flight sims :)

Not bad, considering that a setup like this would cost hundreds (the Triplehead2Go device from Matrox is like £300!! let alone the extra monitors), and it was all free...

ahhh good times :)