It has been mentioned here before, particular in conjunction with Joes TripleHead (Matrox review).

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There i was sitting at STCC in gothenborg. WAITING for some action. It was training and then qual for todays race. I was really excited.

The telephone rang. Dang. Problem at work.

It ended up me leaving for work. And if not that was the only problem; Later in the afternoon some over enthusiastic electricians/digger guy cut some highpowered cable, which was the start of my very own and fun Friday the 13th.

Long story short. It contained alot of restoring, installing, testing and veryfing after our SAN had got a little cranky getting back to speed. During this time i was watching iracing forum on rsc and then a particular thread about triple head from matrox. They talked about the Softth .. and in my time between sleeping, waiting and pressing enter i started to read more about Softth and on my way home at 10 AM this morning (STCC will be watched on the telly, if i don't sleep) i stopped by MediaMarket and purchased a 8600GT card.

Using this 8600GT card (the same price as a XBOX360 game, or 1/6th of the price of a matrox card) and taking a "bad" TFT monitor from work, i have now my own triplehead rig.

I am totally blown away.

Running RACE07 in cockpit view, max detail, using 3840x1024 and three 17" tft screen. I don't know what i will have my TIR for anymore. (Not that i use it in racing anyway!)

Pros in using Softth instead of Matrox (Stuff that Matrox can't Currently do, altough widescreen support is on its way):
Widescreen support
Different sizes of the screens (mix a widescreen with two 5:4 screens. And why not pivot them?)
Use different reaolution on the side if your rig struggles.
Hide part of the pictures (Besel) thats behind the edge of the screens. (this matrox (digital does) and i also wanted to point out that softth is also able off doing it)
Use lesser quality on the sides to help performance
Use 16 bit instead of 32 bit if you have to.
Larger support then 3840x1024 available (much larger)

Negative
You have to install a second card!
No fancy software to support you getting the game running!
Antialising might not work.

What i was worried about was that i was about the get poor performance. But i am not getting worser performance. In RACE07 using cockpit view i can't tell if i lost any performance. This is rock solid performance.

My main graphics card is a 8800GTS and i use this 8600GT as a helper.

I know i am rambling, but i suppose i will join up at talladega this sunday, just to be able to run it online.

SoftTh definitly got my two thumbs up. Using lookahead when turning the wheel was soo cool.
Softth is defintily the cheap mans way to triplehead gaming. (Softth is free)

Nicely done T! Just checked out the Softth website and they've got some cool screenshots of the software in action

http://www.kegetys.net/SoftTH/

Thanks for posting that info Thomas. Question, how well does it support different sized monitors? I have a 22 and would like to flank it with probably 19 or 20s. Or should all 3 be the same size?

Another question. My PC only has 1 PCE slot. Do I need a mobo with 2?

Oh, thanks for the link. Forgot to add it. The STCC was about to start!

There is some great vids at youtube to.

It took me approximatly 15 min to get going. The longest time was spent unhooking the computer from the cords and open the casing.

Then i just put the neccesary files in race07 directory and off i went. Real easy. But if i want to change settings, then i have to adjust a *.cfg file

Requirement / recomendations: You should have a motherbord thats able to sustain two PCI-E x16 cards. (For best performance!)

My motherboard is : GA-P35-DS4 (A gigabyte board). The P35 has two slots, but you can't use two NVIDIA card for SLI. But you can have two NVIDIA card working as different entitys. So, the circuits from intel p35 and also x38 is suitablefor this. (If people are wondering).

The only card doing the calcualtions is your main card (in my case my 8800GTS). The other card must be able to do DX8 or DX9 and be a PCI-E card. I was planning to buy the 8500GT card but the shop selling that hadn't opened when i left work so i bought the 8600GT card. Probably overkill. The second card is only used for drawing.

Most setups has the main card attached to front and right monitor, and the "helper" card is attached to the left screen. Its no reason why, but most people do that according to the forum, as did i.

You don't have to have three monitor to use it, but you do need to have two graphic card.

If people are thinking about it i just thought i could fill in some of MY blanks when i bought the extra card on a wim and out of fatique!

EDIT:
Chipwich, i missed this: Many people are having a big nice monitor at their center and something else at the side. Like one 22" and something like 19" i think pivoted 90" do match the height of the 22". But there is also possbilitie to match different sized screens.There is pictures of it at the forums, i have no clue to how its done... Or if the screenshots is taken when stuff IS perfectly aligned. I think the best thing to have is to have the same height. Either pivoted or not pivoted as the center screen!

Why is it that i always post 99% av the posts in my own threads? No interest to other then me?

Well, if somebody else venture into softth land.

There is a relese candidate of 1.08 to download through a forum link. That version crashes my computer. But it contains some interesting fixes.

And also, if you have tft screens. Use 128 as deadspaces. Work wonders with alignment.

And, i also had trouble with strange views on the left and right monitor. I have tried to fix them all day. Now i find the solution. Place the monitors in a straight line, not as i did with a curve to get a feeling to be inside. It works better if the game creates the room for you by placeing the monitors correctly.

Now if nobody has question i will leave this thread to search heaven!

I've been using SoftTH since last year, now if I run without it for any reason, my 24" display looks tiny :).
I'm using that 24" in the middle and two side 19"s. The side monitors at a slight angle, but almost straight. As Thomas says, it takes some adjusting until everything looks right. Then you just avoid moving anything.
I'm running all monitors at their native resolution, plus a bit more to "jump" the frames. That means 4780x1200 resolution, which works decently enough, about 40-50 fps in rFactor without lowering details.
Main card is an 8800GTX, secondary a crappy 7100GS.

I'll try to upload a video showing it. It won't look 100% right, because the camera will be a bit offset, and things are set so they look right when sitting in front of it.
___

Here is it, not great, and not showing the full width, but I guess it gives an idea of the enhanced inmersion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZxjUcriZvk

Nice! if i'd knewn i would have asked you for advice. I thought the general consencus was that matrox was the king and this softth was more of a "gimmick". But beeing able to put a big screen in the middle with two supportive on the side is what makes this so great. Its cheaper and you acheive more.

I was thinking about buying a 7600 card, but i didn't dare if the performance was crap.

One thing i noticed and is very apparent in your exellent little video, is that weightshift are so much better visualized and experienced. In race 07 i was blown away how much it added to the experience.

And also one more thing, youre using track-ir to that? I also realized that trackir is now really useful, for me in racing. Atleast my limited trys yesterday.

Very nice video. Perhaps we should share more of our racing setup, again. To see if we can get ideas from eachother!

(My brother laughed and shoock his head... said, "Your never getting married!")

One word. Wow!

I can't believe how much that adds to the experience. Great vids on the Softth website.

It's a no go for me with a gaming laptop--I'd have to use the matrox unit, but for some time I've been having the itch for a desktop rig so I can upgrade my graphics easier, etc, etc. I'm not sure my laptop 7950gtx mobile GPU would drive 3 monitors, in fact, I'm pretty sure that for the newer games, it would not. Maybe Wings Over Europe, or IL2, but I doubt Lomac or COD4 would. Rfactor might...

If I did, this would be an awesome piece of kit. For those with an extra pci express slot, it's looks to be a lot cheaper (80-100 bucks for the 8600gt on newegg) than the 300 dollar matrox product (digital version).

Pretty cool, Thomas.

SpyDoc,

A 7950GT will drive most triplehead games just fine. Some reduced settings might be needed but it's worth it.

I will add two things to Thomas's list of negatives for SoftTH:
1. reduced performance compared to the TripleHead2Go; transferring a portion of the image over the PCI-Express bus costs frames.
2. Not as many games are supported as the the TripleHead2Go; check the SoftTH website.


Also, you don't need to spend $100 on a secondary card for SofTH - it can truly be a junk card - 7300, 6200, etc. An 8600 is overkill.

Will twin 8600's work? that's what i have currently .sli configured.