Assetto Corsa native dual screen output or SoftTH?

[Mattross]

With my recent upgrade, I just started testing mismatched dual monitors with SoftTH 2.08b. I have a big 1080p monitor as the main view centered, then a smaller 1680x1050 screen on the side. I haven't tried AC yet, but with other games it may work for one race then crashes. I just looked at the Rendering Mode settings for the first time today and I see Triple Screen and Oculus Rift support, but no dual screen option. Would it be possible to add a Dual Screen mode or run Triple Screen mode with only two screens with a disabled phantom third screen?

Has anyone tried SoftTH with Assetto Corsa? If you were successful, which version did you use and could you please post your config?

 

[Yoschl]

As far as I know, the triple screen setup of AC only works if you have three screens with identical resolution (i.e. you need to be able to use e.g. AMD's Eyefinity or the Nvidia equivalent).

SoftTH won't work since that's DirectX 9 only and AC uses DX11. The original developer of SoftTH stopped development last year and released the source code. Some people apparently started trying to get it to work with DX11, but I haven't seen anything released yet.

I have a similar problem since my center screen is in 4:3 format, which means I can only run AC on 1 screen at the moment, until i either get round to buying a new screen or someone manages to convert SoftTH to the new DirectX version.

 

[Mattross]

SoftTH won't work since that's DirectX 9 only and AC uses DX11. The original developer of SoftTH stopped development last year and released the source code. Some people apparently started trying to get it to work with DX11, but I haven't seen anything released yet.

Thanks for setting me straight. DX11 is new for me this week and I was testing SoftTH with older games. I'm not ready to invest in a matched set of screens, but I already had two different screens on hand. I found some mention of a company called ImmersaView that might eventually offer an updated SoftTH-like product, but there doesn't seem to be any news lately. You'd think it wouldn't be too much trouble for Nvidia and AMD to support this feature in their drivers.

 

[Yoschl]

What you could do in the meantime is run the game in windowed mode (i.e. uncheck 'Fullscreen Rendering' in the options) as Single Screen. You should be then be able to resize the window and move it so your view is centered in the screen you want to (followed by resizing it again). This way you could roughly emulate your idea of a phantom 3rd screen.

 

[Pete Bone]

As far as I know, the triple screen setup of AC only works if you have three screens with identical resolution (i.e. you need to be able to use e.g. AMD's Eyefinity or the Nvidia equivalent).

SoftTH won't work since that's DirectX 9 only and AC uses DX11. The original developer of SoftTH stopped development last year and released the source code. Some people apparently started trying to get it to work with DX11, but I haven't seen anything released yet.

I have a similar problem since my center screen is in 4:3 format, which means I can only run AC on 1 screen at the moment, until i either get round to buying a new screen or someone manages to convert SoftTH to the new DirectX version.

I have 40" center and 2 32" side screens and they render fine with AC's auto triple screen system. I have the main screen at 1080p and the 2 side screens running 1600x900 and they line up fine after raising the 2 side screens.

You need to open your MyDocuments folder and find the file in the AC folder named 'triple screen' and edit it, there is a guide somewhere on RD for it.

 

[Mattross]

What you could do in the meantime is run the game in windowed mode (i.e. uncheck 'Fullscreen Rendering' in the options) as Single Screen. You should be then be able to resize the window and move it so your view is centered in the screen you want to (followed by resizing it again). This way you could roughly emulate your idea of a phantom 3rd screen.

Thanks for the suggestion. I wasn't able to get it working initially, but after trying a handful of utilities, I found Simple Runtime Window Editor v2.1 (click Files and look under Miscellaneous).

In the Nvidia control panel, I created a custom resolution that was main screen width + (2x side screen width) wide. I disabled Fullscreen Rendering in AC and set that new resolution. With SRWE I was able to set a negative X position that perfectly centered the wide view on the main screen. It works okay, but I have to switch between two left alignment values between driving and using the menu, since the menu bar floats on the left side.

It's not too bad, but it has no options like SoftTH to account for different screen resolution, PPI and bezels, so it doesn't line up or scale properly with different screens.

 

[Pete Bone]

Thanks for the suggestion. I wasn't able to get it working initially, but after trying a handful of utilities, I found Simple Runtime Window Editor v2.1 (click Files and look under Miscellaneous).

In the Nvidia control panel, I created a custom resolution that was main screen width + (2x side screen width) wide. I disabled Fullscreen Rendering in AC and set that new resolution. With SRWE I was able to set a negative X position that perfectly centered the wide view on the main screen. It works okay, but I have to switch between two left alignment values between driving and using the menu, since the menu bar floats on the left side.

It's not too bad, but it has no options like SoftTH to account for different screen resolution, PPI and bezels, so it doesn't line up or scale properly with different screens.

If you tell me your screen sizes, what res they are running and you bezel width i will work out what you need to enter into the 'triple screen' file to get them to match up better.

 

[Mattross]

If you tell me your screen sizes, what res they are running and you bezel width i will work out what you need to enter into the 'triple screen' file to get them to match up better.

Thanks, but as I mentioned, I only have two screens. The main center screen is 1920x1080 and the screen on the right is 1680x1050 aligned with the bottom edge of the center screen. I don't have an option to configure Nvidia Surround because I only have two screens and they are mismatched in physical size and resolution.

With my relative PPI calculation for SoftTH, the resolution for the side screen works out to 1522x951 (transport resolution) and 116px bezel. So, in SoftTH, I use a virutal resolution of 5196x1080. The center screen starts rendering from 1638,0. (1522+116) The right side screen starts from 3674,129 because of the bottom alignment.

 

[Pete Bone]

I use softTH for rF2 and the rest and i basically removed the extra border pixels. The setting im using are

[VIDEO]
FULLSCREEN=0
ANISOTROPIC=0
AASAMPLES=1
VSYNC=0
AAQUALITY=0
SHADOW_MAP_SIZE=512
DISABLE_HDR=1
WIDTH=5240
HEIGHT=1080
INDEX=49
REFRESH=60
FPS_CAP=60

They are found in mydocs/AC/cfg. I usually use 5440x1080 in softTH for any other sim. I had to raise my side screens and tuck them behind my main screen but they line up almost perfect.

 

[Mattross]

I use softTH for rF2 and the rest and i basically removed the extra border pixels. The setting im using are ...

Thanks for sharing your settings. I tried them adapted to my setup with a custom resolution created in the Nvidia control panel. Surprisingly, it does work on my dual screen setup just like the SRWE utility I tested earlier. The middle screen is properly aligned to the center, even though I am missing a third left side screen. The nice thing is that the menu bar is on the middle screen, so I don't have to switch left alignment to select menu options.

As with SRWE, the downside is the missing PPI compensation, so the mismatched screen renders don't align at the same scale (which is possible to correct with SoftTH). I wonder if this is possible to correct by editing the triple_screen.ini. I'm not exactly sure how to calculate the values, but perhaps the horizontal resolution is simply a percentage of the main screen resolution, so the 1920 is 1.0 across (-0.5 to 0.5), then I could adjust the side screen to 1680/1920 = 0.875, so (0.5 to 1.375). Side screen height may be 1050/1080 = 0.972, but the default is already 0.947665. Maybe there is also some FoV value involved in the calculation.

triple_screen.ini defaults:

[LEFT_SCREEN]
LEFT_POINT=-1.49863,0.947665
RIGHT_POINT=-0.5,1

[CENTER_SCREEN]
LEFT_POINT=-0.5,1
RIGHT_POINT=0.5,1

[RIGHT_SCREEN]
LEFT_POINT=0.5,1
RIGHT_POINT=1.49863,0.947665

EDIT: Now I see there is a sidebar app for triple screen setup, but it assumes three identical screens.

 

[eSEA One]

Just came across this thread here. So I thought I would add my 2 cents that might help some. I have recently posted this in the AC forums:
I have two monitors, but different sizes which I think makes the 2 screen set-up work a bit better than the same size set-ups.

• I take the dimension of the small screen 1280 x 1024 as the basis of the set-up, this screen is placed on the left.
• The big screen is 1920 x 1080 (my primary screen on the right)
• In AC I choose the 1280 x 1024 screen size. I have full screen checked, I did try it unchecked but can't remember why I did't stick with it.
• Start a AC session
• Using the SRWE tool I added the with of both screens 1280 +1920 = 3200 for the width of the image and used the hight dimension 1024 of the small screen. I then used the -1280 as the offset. ( this is all from memory, I will get back to you on the details once I get home)
• I saves this in SRWE as a pre-set
• Running a AC session you might find that your apps tend to get re arranged each time, a bit annoying so using the "....\Users\XXXXX\Documents\Assetto Corsa\cfg" I changed the post processing and this fixed the issue.
  Another thing I have to check is if post processing works with this video. ini setting. When trying the post processing it distorted the image when the setting was set at my 1920 x 1080 primary screen size but did not distort when this was checked off. I'am not fussed due to my low end GPU but will check it again now I have set the value of the post processing
• I use the standard mod of CD/DVD cases to adjust the hight of the small monitor so that the top edges line up

You will have an empty band on the bigger monitor due to using the 1024 hight but doing it this way I can see the hole image and nothing is hidden. With this asymmetric set-up the car steering positions is located on the left of the big screen and fairly centred on the complete width of the two screens. This places the bezel of the two screens in way of the position of most car's pillars, taking up any misaligning of the two screens . I also move the small screen behind the big screen so that its bezel is behind the primary screens bezel, reducing the overall thickness of the two bezels. This all works well for left hand drive cars, I guess this set-up would have to be changed for right hand drive cars -small screen on the right Also my GPU is a GeForce MSI N460GTX so the smaller resolution helps it out and I can get a reasonable frame rate at low but not minimal settings in AC.

 

[James Woods]

@Edwin Collingridge , does this not put the steering wheel pretty much in between both monitors, or am i doing something wrong here?

 

[eSEA One]

That is correct if your screens are the same size. my setup I have two different sized screens, I am not using a little on the bottom of the bigger screen due to the height difference(otherwise I would have some missing on the small screen).
The only workaround I see for you is have the image not as big as both screens, maybe 100% on the right 75% on the left, if you are driving a left had drive(other way round for a RHD) On the plus side you can use this space for web based apps that are not in AC maybe somthing from http://www.simracing-tools.de/simtools/index.php/en/news-2

 

[James Woods]

Thanks for the help.

In the end i found the only way round this was to run it in triples mode and run a resolution of 5760x1080 (which is triples res). That way when i moved it to where i wanted, it put the wheel in the usual place. The downside is the third non-existent displays pixels are still rendered, so frame rate is indentical to triples. Still, it does work, which is better than nothing.

Using this method, i actually got a 24" monitor in portrait to work properly next to a 42" TV (they are both the same height once you put the monitor in portrait). Had to use a res of 600x1080, but still had to use 5760x1080 in AC. Not worth it for that tiny bit of extra space on the side. However, if i had 2x42" TV's, i'd definitely use it quite often as it does all work well

 

[bejvalo]

hi mates. please i have question about double screen. i used SRWE soft for this solution -

i had no problem. but after some update, SRWE didnt work. respective it works, but with very very low details. i dont know where is problem. but i read, that anybody have other soulution for double screen. please, can you help me about that? i must rewrite cfg file for monitors? sry about my english and thank you for answer.

i have two 24" lcd 1920x1200

bejvalo

 

[Robert vd Heide]

i just let assetto corsa render in windowed mode and SINGLE SCREEN with 1280-786 resolution selected

then when on the track i stretch the window to its fullest width and height
and then i move the whole window
until the wheel is straight in front of me ,and the windowcorner on the screen edge