Posts made by Mike Ralston

For that much you can pick up a card which should crank out lower end titles at extremely playable framerates with all graphics settings maxed out. I would recommend jumping up to the $200 price bracket, but if on a fixed budget, you can pick up a Radeon HD 7790 or a 7770. I've had experience with both, and I've gotten the 7770 to push 37 FPS on Battlefield 4 on Ultra settings at 1280 x 1024, but a sad 28 FPS at 1920 x 1080. The 7790 is on slightly faster on paper, but is better optimized for modern titles. If you were looking to spend a bit more, I would recommend an EVGA GTX 660 SC at $209, which will run anything but the most demanding games at Ultra settings around 60 FPS in 1920 x 1080P. If you want any further recommendations over price, brand, specific types of Video Plugins, Video Encoding/Decoding, or Chipsets, go ahead and ask!

@StrongBad Nothing really so far, just what my PC can stream, and Dead Trigger 2 (Very impressive title). I'm planning on picking up Portal, Half Life 2, and Grand Theft Auto 1, 2, 3, Vice City, and San Andreas for it soon.

Absolutely worth it, if you have money to spare. I wouldn't recommend buying one as an Android device. It's a PC peripheral, basically, a really expensive one that a few other things. Works extremely well as a media device, as you can grab an HDMI to HDMI Mini cable, and hook it up to your TV, and it currently only outputs in 1080P, but it's been promised we'll get all the way up to 4K for media playback soon. It also (again, dual band router needed) effectively replaces any game console you could want via the PC streaming. You can hook it up to the TV, grab a Bluetooth Controller or a mouse and keyboard, and play your PC in all of their hyper detailed glory, making any console game look like a sad mobile version. The only drawback is that they're going to release a SHIELD 2 at some point in the next while, so it almost defeats the purpose of this. The next one is supposed to have a 1080P screen, a better controller, 4GB of RAM, and a Tegra K1 Processor (The one based off of the TITAN SuperComputer), which is supposed to be faster than most last Gen desktop CPU's under the $500 mark. Absolutely crazy power for a handheld, but the current SHIELD is still the most powerful mobile device.

Well I've already spent some time playing with and testing it. The streaming feature is absolutely mind blowing, so long as you have a dual band router. I've had the chance to use one before, and it was great, but without that 5 Ghz connection, it drops connection and has screen artifacting, even two feet away from the router. I'm only running a GTX 660 SC, but for the 720P streaming I can get a smooth 90 FPS on ultra settings, so it works quite well. As far as the Android end, it works beautifully. Very fast, very smooth. I'll post more updates

So I got my hands on an Nvidia Shield just this morning. An amazing device so far, and has way more power than any Android device I've seen yet. Valve even fully ported Half Life 2 and Portal to run on it. I'll probably post a full review of the device when I've got some hours on it, but for now, I'm in love.

@alexntg said:

As a hardcore gamer (not quite pro), if it's too immersive, it's difficult to play in extreme situations. VR would be a nightmare. On the plus side, it would reduce the obesity rate amongst gamers.

As a "Pro" gamer, I find things that are extremely immersive very distracting. However, if I was going to sit back and enjoy some Skyrim or something along those lines, VR is awesome. Thinking about going with a 2560 x 1440 full 3D setup, and just disabling all the fancy frills for competitive gaming.

@don91 said:

@Mike-Ralston said:

For gaming, 16:9 or 16:10 are really optimal. I think it may be good for Flight Simulators or such, but for RTS, FPS, any sort of Racing, and anything competitive, it would make it harder to keep track of everything. I've had a bit of hands-on experience with 3 monitor and 5 monitor setups for gaming, and the other monitors just subtract from the immersion and make it harder to pay attention to what's in front of you. Surround sound headphones is a much more viable and reliable solution for telling what's going on around you.

i love my eyefinity setup for gamign: batman, dirt3, fable3, lots of fps's (metro,bioshock)
this statement is really outdated. eventually you get used to it..i find it easy to keep track of everything the trick is making your fov perfect you dont want to have to turn you head too much just keep stuff int he corner of your eye. the most common mistake with large format monitors or eyefinity setups is sitting too close.
sources ? ....see my last post.

As far as just enjoying yourself in a single-player game, I wholeheartedly agree. But as soon as you throw Multiplayer in there, where the amount of "Fun" that is had is more reliant on skill, VR, EyeFinity, and 3D Surround just become distracting.

@scottalanmiller Really? I'm not a fan of their mainstream products, they're terrible. But the ones they actually put effort into, those turn out VERY well. Their TV's and handheld consoles are wonderful and reliable pieces of hardware. So far I've not found a peripheral that they've had a hand in that's bad.

Seen the Sony variant of the Rift? It's already running in 1920 x 1080P with full surround sound integrated into the headpiece. Not available for sale yet, though.

At that distance, you would have trouble identifying the difference between 720P and 1080P. But it would be significantly less of a strain for the 3D in 1080P.

@scottalanmiller said:

@JaredBusch said:

I would prefer that to be more a VR thing, but a large wrap around would still look sweet.

I'm thinking about an Occulus Rift once they are available. Very tempting.

They are available, just a bit more pricy than they will be at release.

For gaming, 16:9 or 16:10 are really optimal. I think it may be good for Flight Simulators or such, but for RTS, FPS, any sort of Racing, and anything competitive, it would make it harder to keep track of everything. I've had a bit of hands-on experience with 3 monitor and 5 monitor setups for gaming, and the other monitors just subtract from the immersion and make it harder to pay attention to what's in front of you. Surround sound headphones is a much more viable and reliable solution for telling what's going on around you.

That it did, fixed a nice number of issues.

@scottalanmiller Big monitor like that would be TERRIBLE for gaming. I would imagine it would be used for people running several programs at once. They can all be set up to run as multiple virtual monitors on one panel, and borders can even be set. I'd say the main purpose is for graphic artists, but they may see use in other fields.

It seems with the new update all issues have been solved. On both the VM's and physical devices, everything works fine, except that pesky Nexus 10 with the format. This issue is now closed!

@scottalanmiller As of yet, these panels are only in 1080 height format, but Sony and Samsung are already working on 4096 x 1600 ones. Should give you plenty of extra vertical space, and if we see curved panels come to this area, you could effectively replace a 5 monitor setup with a single monitor. Of course, you would need a beastly GPU to even view text files at 60Hz and a DisplayPort 1.2 connection, but the technology does exist.

For work purposes and the maximizing of realestate, have you guys seen the new 21:9 resolution monitors?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824005396

This one specifically is a 2560 x 1080, but they also make 4096 x 1080 models.

@Dashrender We've been testing internally on separate S4's. Would you mind being a guinea pig once more?
EDIT I'm mistaken, the Razr Maxx and the S4 listed in the root post are yours.

@scottalanmiller said:

I use Chrome on an up to date Nexus 7, no issues.

In my experience, the Nexus 7 is one of the most stable Android devices. My personal favorite for testing and troubleshooting Android.

@david.wiese Are you running any sort of software/application on that phone that does any sort of Browser Filtering?