Ok maybe you have heard of the big FOV thing brought up with Bioshock. I think the game is awesome in either my adjusted or the original FOV depending how far from the screen I am. I happen to have a triple head to go so the default FOV was just a bit big/close even if I sit as far back from my display as I can which does help. So a guy named Racer_s from toca edit has made many fov "hacks" for various games so we can adjust the camera to what we like. This is how it should be within reason I guess. There probably are idiots out there that would adjust fov to see around things they could not normally see and their game world would just look stupid so whats the point? That would be the cheater aspect of things which I am against in an online or multi player setting.. I do think the FOV should be allowed a parameter of adjustment based on screen size or resolution and aspect ratio.

When I tried to play Battle field 2 which is now an older game I found it didn't even have traditional widescreen support not to mention surround screen support for resolutions. A quick search found an edit to force particular resolutions like what I wanted. Great, I did it and found that the game was zoomed in and cropped off the top and bottom. Well it's not that it looks bad but its just to big/close for where I play from. Well there used to be an fov hack for this from racer_s as well but it would get you booted by punkbuster in online play. This was by mandated by EA/Dice. A bad decision I believe because the Fov hack worked great and the game was obviously able to handle the adjustment. Surround gamers are a small percentage of the market but we should still be able to enjoy the game the way it looked in the original fov in 4:3 single screen. 3.75:1 or 4:1 just lets you see more to the sides and gives more immersion. But the lamers cried about unfair advantage as if all the other "mainstream" hardware people can get for their PC means nothing.

So yes you can see more things to the sides if the FOV is not locked to the wrong fov like in BF2 but you are still focused on the middle monitor. As far as unfair advantage you dont have to turn as much to see whats on your sides but this could even be somewhat of a distraction anyway because you have much more visual input to process so I think it evens out in the long run. It just looks cooler in surround which makes it more fun...and thats why I play games.

I used to be a console gamer..well other than the C-64 days but wasn't that what it was for anyway. Later I jumped onto the PS-1 bandwagon and played lots of Tomb Raider and Resident Evil, Armored Core , Gran Turismo, Army Men and some others I can't remember. Then I built my first PC with the latest and greatest ATI card for games and HTPC use back in "99. I stayed with the trusty controller method at first with a gravis pad and then somewhere along the way realized a mouse was SO much better for aiming and adapted to the keyboard and dropped the controller from the mix for the most part.

I still love various controllers for PC Games but they all still revolve around the mouse. I keep finding newer better hardware to complement the various games I play and love the gadgets that make interaction with the game world that much better and the games more fun to play. My display went from one single screen to a singe screen with a Fresnel cabinet to a triple head to go 3 screens as one ultrawide screen. I would still like to add the fresnel addition to the triple setup like what FREX has. Totally removes the bezel from view and gives the image depth while making it a bit bigger.

Here are some of the other cool controllers I have been running as well. I picked up a touch screen addon that goes over a regular screen to run a free program called Touch-Buddy that lets you make a touch GUI for any game or software...very cool. I got a head tracker from Trakir for racing then flying and even at least one FPS called Armed Assault. This one really shows what the fps interface should progress to for other FPS titles...look around with your head and aim with the mouse which is much more natural. Saitek X-52 Flight sticks for flying and A Logitech G-25 wheel for driving. Hell, I even started playing around with the 3-d feature available with the Nvidia Cards with simple passive red/cyan glasses...the depth of 3-d is very cool.

Maybe too gadget hardcore and geeky for some but just a step towards the VR everyone who games is waiting for. Oh and on the keyboard side of things...I still use it but do have a smaller game version of a keyboard with some controller functions built in with a Nostromo N-52. With this i can have WSAD or at least thumb dpad movement control. Depends on the game, I use both but am noticing that WSAD is probably faster after all.

I pretty much suck at FPS games in general but just have fun playing them...it's just entertainment and I want to control the game with what ever input device works best for me. This brings me to my topic. I think the new consoles have some pretty nice graphics and power but would never think about getting one because I don't like playing most games with a controller anymore. So I figured I'd try to find out how I could make a mouse work on it. A quick search on youtube and there it is, the XCM XFPS 360 PRO adapter in action. People playing FPS and TPS games the way I would want to...on a console. Now I will buy an xbox 360. I'll still be building another gaming rig as well but why not have it all. BTW $80 is not much money for those that think the adapter is so much money...come on, what is that, a few tanks of gas for the car or one fill up for the truck?