We're sort of hoping the third year's the charm for Ostendo and the
CRVD display -- we first spotted the crazy 43-inch curved monitor at
CES 2008 with Alienware and NEC branding, then just
NEC branding at Macworld 09, and now it's CES 2010 and Ostendo is actually selling it directly. Even better, the company's hooked up with ATI for a pretty sweet
Eyefinity demo -- sure, you might have seen the three- or six-screen Eyefinity demos in the past, but having three CRVD screens wrap 180 degrees around you is pretty wild. We played a little Dirt 2 and did a little Google Earth zooming on the rig -- we might never scrape the $6,499 per screen for a setup like this, but we can certainly watch the videos after the break and pretend.
P.S.- Yes, the CRVD still has the same weak 2880 x 900 resolution, but Ostendo tells us they're working on something with more pixels for the future. Just don't make us wait another three years, okay?
Update: Our friends at Engadget Spanish went back with their super-sweet fisheye lens and took
some more pics -- you definitely want to check them out.
posted January 8th 2010 8:32PM
Video not available only the first one.
@MoonWalkerCTE
For $19,500 I could fly to the UK and spend a month and a half at the world famous Silverstone Rally Driving School.
Or buy these 3 crappy monitors..
Just saying...
@formetopoopon So what you are saying is that you would buy the monitors. Me too.
Whats the big deal with this Eye infinity. I can do this with my gpu
@MoonWalkerCTE
that's because you have an Eyefinity GPU
@JeremyBenthem No I have the gtx 295
@MoonWalkerCTE Ahh... no you can't run three curve displays on that video card.
@MoonWalkerCTE
there's a difference between just having a multimonitor setup and being able to actually run games across the multiple monitors. Non eyefinity cards to my knowledge, can only hardware accelerate on one display at a time
@JeremyBenthem
I run all my games maxed out easily on my triple 22 120hz displays with no problem.
@Canizorro
What do curve displays have to do with anything they function just like ordinary displays only they are curved... And they will work on any gpu
@MoonWalkerCTE
For any non-eyefinity card you need a connector that cost 100-200.
@k2001 What kind of connector?
@MoonWalkerCTE
Well, playing games on multi monitor setups is nothing new. I am sure many of us can remember those promo ATI/nVidia videos showing off MS Flight Sim X on 6+ monitors few years back. Even before then I remember playing games on my dual 22"'s. Just go to your display settings, set both monitors to be an extension of one another, launch the game and there you'll have a game on both monitors. That's where the fun ended, because to add more monitors you needed to add more video cards, at least till Eyefinity was released. Now with Eyefinity video card and monitor with display port (or display port to DVI adapter ~$99), you can run upto 6 monitors on a single ATI 5xxx series video card. That's about it.
it still just looks like wide camera to me, what they need is to make it three independent cameras otherwise you're not getting a real peripheral view
@JeremyBenthem
that doesn't make sense.
@sweet greggo
They are 3 screens not cameras.
@sweet greggo
think of it like this, the way eyefinity works now is that you have one big wide camera in the game, and then you split it into 3 parts and have one on each monitor which is fine if the monitors laid out flat, but all this tilting of the side monitors is really not right. You need independent cameras in the game's engine to be configured to that degree of tilt so ideally if you tilted those side monitors 90 degrees to the side of you, you'd see exactly what's on your left and right and not an extension of the front
@JeremyBenthem
I see what you're saying and I totally didn't think it warped the image until I read your comment and watched it a second time. If you look closely on the side screens, you can see that things that have vertical lines are tilted where they shouldn't be. Not that I think it would be entirely noticeable during action, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't want the option to stop for a second in Crysis and take a look to my left or right without distortion.
PS - extra points for the awesome avatar. Tuesday's coming, did you bring your coat?
@Levi
They said that when you are in the center of the display you never see those lines.
Only if you stand out side of the screens
@Levi
um, you kind of got it and don't got it. The tiling boxes are really just the flat parts of the LCD that join together to make it look curved. but my point is about the other part where the image looks warped. another example is to look at perspectives, if you're playing like GTA and you're in the middle of a street interesection, you'll definately see the street ahead of you go to vanishing point, but ideally you want to the left and right turn streets to go also their respective points also when you turn your head at them, instead, like a flat image they follow the street ahead
@Levi
oh and I don't think that's the right skit, my avatar is the one where he pulls the guy's abdomen off and puts it on his head
@JeremyBenthem
What some games (such as this one) need is to have their Field of View adjusted to compensate for the viewing position of the monitors. Curved or flat, the game has no way to know where the monitors are and how they are positioned unless it is configured. There are tools that help do this, or sometimes games will have this ability in a .ini file.
Does anyone else find the resolution on these things really weak?
@Wes Steele
yeah 2880x900 is really...limiting.
@Wes Steele
It's the whole point why no one buys those monitors. It's a laughing stock.
damn i want at least 1 of those..
That... looks f'kin insane.
DO WANT.
meh, I'm sorry but the price isn't practical.
I don't get it, as much as everyone would love to have setup in their home, maybe 5 people out of all of NA will own this....so...is it made to appeal to arcade owners or something? Serious question...
It's awesome... But I can't afford it
So i'm going to have a cheeseburger. It will be awesome and affordable.
Crazy! I would love to have :)
That Dirt 2 video looks pretty nauseating...
And the displays should be convex for Google Earth...
MEIN GOD!
Someone hand me a kleenex. I just fell in love.
I think the game still treat the CURVed screens as a flat ones. So image looks to be distorted, especially for the two side screens.
Anyone else see the vertical segments on the screens in these photos? It looks terrible...
CRT like thickness and vertical segment lines on the screens = fail in my opinion. Though I do like AMD's Eyefinity...
I'll wait until the bendy screens that they're making for ePaper and eReaders come to TVs...
@Chaosdivine
You can't see those if you're the one in the middle of the screens, its only at this angle that we can see them.
@Chaosdivine
Your dam avatar gets me everytime
@Supraman
LOL! Sorry to cause you pain... ;)
At least its easy to spot in a thread! Funny thing is, now when I go to Walmart and walk past the lamps, I find myself secretly checking for tourtiere styles similar to this one...I feel kinda naughty doing it!
With OLED screens, why are they still using CRT. I do believe this was mentioned but you do see a series of screens laced together.
@khaosmatrix
It's actually powered with 4 micro-projectors, which is what allows for the curved screen. This is also why you see some brightness difference when you are off-center; the light is being attenuated down to the central viewing point. Flexible OLED is still very small, costly, and unavailable.
cant they apply this on big LCD/plasma TV?
price is also a factor,but overall power usage?
shitty camerawork
I second.
@t3yf5g stepping stones...
$6500 for that crap resolution? Ouch.
That thing is worth $1000 tops. (More than twice the price of a solid performing 23 incher)
I don't see this thing catching on at all
its great, but feels like a 3 year old product. By now it should at least be slimmer and have a better resolution. I wouldnt even consider this at this pricepoint with that res.
Well, at $6500 per monitor that thing has no real "mainstream" chance. Sure, some guys with money to burn will go out and buy 10 of those, but even typical enthusiasts won't bother till it gets cheaper.
Personally, with a budget of $19500 for my monitors, instead of buying 3 of those Ostendo monitors, I would buy 20 30" Dell monitors for around 1k!!!! There are plenty of pictures on the net of Eyefinity running 24 30" monitors and they are a lot more impressive then Ostendo pics. :)