[Linux][All Source] Multi monitor problems

[DaMadOne]

I had opened an issue report in the portal 2 section about 5760x1080 being an issue with it and all of the source engine games I have tried including HL1,2,ep1,ep2 Portal1&2 and Team Fortress. This may be a better place for it since it's affecting all source games. Once I worked around the problem of the games refusing to actually run at 5760x1080 by forcing X to only see a single 5760x1080 resolution and not get info about the individual monitors, more problems arose. The engine needs to be fixed to be able to run at this res without resorting to what I did. All other linux games I have tried do. See the following report for more info on that subject. -> ValveSoftware/portal2#222

Now on to what happens when the games actually run at that res. The biggest issue is that everything gets very blurry. This is even noticeable with HL1's already low detail textures. I have not tried TF2 since the workaround but P2, HL1, HL2 and the episodes all suffer from it. It seems that AA and AF go out the window as well which is why I wonder if the res is freaking something out and causing it to default to lowest settings maybe?

HL2-ep2 has it's own bug that does not affect the others. I'm not even sure how to describe it but I will try. The FOV seems extremely limited as I can't even see the grav gun. It seems cocked by 15-25 degrees or so. And when I press "w" to walk forward I seem to sidestep right much more than going forward.

In Portal 2 I can kick all the advanced option all the way up except for shader detail. It is fine on medium and low but if I set it to high the image gets all screwed up.

Some screenshots to show what I am seeing.
http://damad101.cloud.onlysavvy.com/public.php?service=files&t=0b66d9d58084346762259d1e134a7930

System Specs:
Linux version 3.15.8-1-ARCH (nobody@var-lib-archbuild-testing-x86_64-tobias) (gcc version 4.9.1 (GCC) ) #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri Aug 1 08:51:42 CEST 2014

Arch is up2date
Nvidia driver 343.13
Asus Sabertooth 990fx r2
AMD FX-8350
8gb kingston HyperX
Samsung 840 EVO 250gb ssd
2x EVGA GTX 580
3x AOC i2757fh - DVI(gpu)->HDMI(monitors)

[DaMadOne]

Just want to add that I tried to play DOTA2 a week or 2 ago and it acted EXACTLY like portal 2 did with the shader settings set above medium. Also CS:GO suffers from the horrible looking image (blurry, low res looking) problems the other games do.

[DaMadOne]

For HL2, EP1 and Lost Coast if I disable motion blur it "fixes" the problem and the image is no longer blurry with all other options maxed out. Steady 60fps with vsync enabled. I still have not figured out how to fix the odd distorted image in EP2 though. (Edit* fix in next comment)

For Portal 2 disabling post processing via "mat_postprocess_enable 0" fixes the blurry image! With shaders set to high/very high it must enable motion blur which causes the distorted image (it does in CS:GO as well) shown in the screen shots. So I've added "+mat_postprocess_enable 0 +mat_motion_blur_enabled 0" to my launch options which allows me to set shaders to very high and not get the distorted image and its not blurry anymore either.

[DaMadOne]

The odd distorted image in EP2 can be resolved by turning off color correction. That one makes no sense to me but whatever =P Everything else is maxed with motion blur disabled to fix the blurriness and color correction turned off and it's working fine now, well.. minus color correction of course so that would be nice to see fixed. I'm not the biggest fan of motion blur so I really couldn't care less about it, but should probably still be looked into I suppose.

As for DOTA 2, I now realize the game is just not really meant to be played on multi monitors so issues or not it doesn't matter, it works fine @ 1920x1080

[887]

The distorted image problem exists in L4D2 as well. Thanks for pointing out the fix. :)
EDIT: "+mat_postprocess_enable 0 +mat_motion_blur_enabled 0" or just mat_postprocess_enable 0 does not fix the Problems with L4D2

[DaMadOne]

that's funny, im trying to get L4D2 working right now, so glad to have helped ya. quick question though are you taking about disabling motion blur? I can turn off post processing and it gets rid of the blurry image but I cannot seem to find a command to disable motion blur in L4D2 so the whole screen is all distorted

I just text searched and scrolled through all 3087 L4D2 console commands at http://www.gamerconfig.eu/commands/left-4-dead-2/ and unlike the rest of the source games I've tried there is no command to disable only motion blur so for now I have no choice but to run with shaders set to medium as motion blur is enabled above that. And disabling post processing is conisdered a cheat so I cant get rid of the blur. So which problem were you having?

[887]

I had the distorted image problem. Reducing the shader to "Medium" fixes it for now. I have not found any settings to make it work with the "high" or "very high" shader setting.