Five-Screen Racing PC Will Make Your Scarf Limp

[Andy Chalk]

Five-Screen Racing PC Will Make Your Scarf Limp

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There's only one thing to do when you have money to burn and a serious thing for racing games: buy some gloves and build yourself a killer five-screen PC gaming rig.

Contrary to what you may have heard, PC gaming is not all that terribly expensive. Unless you're Chad Smith, that is, and you've decided that the only way to satisfy your virtual racing jones is to build a killer five-screen rig that makes you feel like you're sitting behind the wheel of a screaming 600 horsepower Corvette C6.R. That probably costs some bucks.

The bulk of his gaming rig is impressive but not all that ridiculously overpowered. He's rocking an Intel E8400 CPU with a VisionTek 6870 Eyefinity 6 and 4GB of RAM, a solid but not breathtaking build; what makes it noteworthy are the five Dell 23" LCD monitors attached to it and arranged like racecar windows, a Logitech G27 force-feedback racing wheel with chilicoke adapter and Momo MOD 78 racing wheel, a Frex Shift+ sequential shifter and an iPhone running iRaceDash mounted to the wheel, feeding him real-time race data. Tying it all together is iRacing [http://www.iracing.com/], a hyper-realistic online multiplayer racing sim.

[If that name rings a bell, it's probably because of last year's story about the iRacing World Champion who took a real race car out for the first time ever and absolutely nailed it [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/105727-Top-Gear-Makes-Virtual-Racing-Champ-Upchuck], even though he ended up puking in his helmet.]

The results, as you can see in this YouTube video recorded with a GoPro head-mounted camera, are spectacular. Amazingly, aside from one or two quick glances, only three of the five screens are visible, yet it's still almost indistinguishable from the real thing, especially after you've stared at it for a few minutes. Another video [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZbvdT8WVOY], posted in November, shows off Smith's rig in a different kind of racing with Richard Burns Rally 2011.

I am, of course, intensely jealous. Love those gloves, though.

via: Tecca [http://www.tecca.com/news/2011/12/14/racing-fan-builds-five-screen-simulator/]


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[antipunt]

I never truly understood how you could split one game into multiple monitors. Seen it with desktops; it's probably a lot easier than I'm thinking

 

[MrTub]

I never truly understood how you could split one game into multiple monitors. Seen it with desktops; it's probably a lot easier than I'm thinking

You either use Nvidia Surround or eyefinity.

I personally use 3x24 screens with a resolution of 5760x1080.

And honestly that cpu is a bit dated and it must lag like crazy for him unless he is playing on low low low settings since stuff lags for me and I've got quite a better computer then him...

 

[AndyRock]

I never truly understood how you could split one game into multiple monitors. Seen it with desktops; it's probably a lot easier than I'm thinking

I've not done it myself, but I'm guessing extended desktop, then custom resolution and field of veiw that fits the monitors, I've seen this done on alot of games, so can't be too hard. I would try it myself, but I don't have an extra £350 to spend on monitors

(This is for 2 more screens + a psu that has enough power to crossfire/sli + a mother board that can crossfire/sli + a second 6850 for being able to play at reasonable framerates)

 

[RA92]

Well, FPS players with multiple screens will always have an advantage on peripheral vision in MP. But at least it shuts up third person perspective fanboys.

 

[Scrustle]

Pretty cool, although I think that's a bit of overkill there. I get how 3 screens are useful, but 5? When are you ever going to look at them? Also there's a small typo at the end of the article there. It's Richard Burns Rally 2001, not 2011. That game is very old.

 

[Jack Rascal]

Wow, that's pretty cool. If I had that I might even get into racing games! And thanks for including the link to that iRacing article, I had not heard of it before. Which is pretty strange as I live in Finland...

 

[Northern64]

gotta love the multi-monitor setup. I always love to see the ways people make a game better