Noob NTHUSIM questions?

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Postby Guest » Thu Jan 19, 2017 5:32 pm

I am not certain this is the right forum for these questions. Apologies if it is not.
Questions:
1. When you warp an image, does the post warped image have the same lumens as the pre-warp imaged? Specifically, I am looking to use several projectors to create a long 2.39:1 aspect ratio image. If I use an Optima GT1080 to create a 52 inch high/92 inch wide image with 2,800 lumens AND then warp that image to make it still 52 inches high but only 83 inches wide, will my new smaller image still have the original 2,800 lumens?
2. Can you use Nthusim to watch your subscribed live Cable TV broadcasts? If so, how/what hardware would you need? To be clear, I am not (necessarily) trying to do away with my CableBox. I just want to be able to watch TV on a large seamless screen.
3. How many projectors can be run with Nthusim? Four projectors? Six projectors?
4. Perhaps this should have been my first question... I believe that warping/blending would help me achieve the solution that I want. I am trying to build a 104 inch high/250 inch long 2.39:1 aspect ratio screen to watch movies/TV and play video games. That is a relatively large screen and would need a lot of lumens to light it. I was thinking of up to six Optima GT1080 projectors. From a distance of 3 feet, 10 inches that projector will create a 52 inch high/92 inch wide image. I believe that I could use Nthusim to "warp" that image to the same height but only 83 inches wide (83 inches choose as 83x3=250 inches). Thus by blending 6 different 52 inch high/83 inch wide images I would have a large 104 inch high/250 wide image. What I am wondering: Would anything (games, TV. movies) put up on the 104 inch x 250 inch screen be "scrunched" because it was made by "scrunching" a bunch on 92 inch images to just 83 inches? Or would it (as I hope) create a great looking (and bright) 104 inch x 250 inch movie, etc?
5. What kind of hardware would I need to run Nthusim on six 1080p projectors at the same time? Four projectors? Can this be done? As background, there are times when I would want to use "Skreens" (or another Multi-viewer) to show for example two Playstation games and one TV show on different portions of the large screen at the same time.
Thanks for ANY help with ANY of the questions.
Guest
 

Postby BHawthorne » Fri Jan 20, 2017 9:09 am

Greetings,

1. The projection sets the lumens rating. Whatever the physical lumens rating is of the projection that splashes on the screen is the lumens of the setup. Nthusim doesn't effect anything to do with the native resolution or lumens. It's just calibrating the content to properly fit in the usable screen area. Nthusim has two basic goals -- edge-blend and warp calibration.

2. It depends. I had a Ceton cablecard awhile back that worked fine. The main thing is the player that presents the content within Windows needs to be using a render pipeline that we can inject our warp calibration into. I do not currently have any definitive information on this. It might need a bit of experimentation. My suggestion is to use a Ceton card like I did to validate the idea. YMMV but I've had success in the past when I've experimented.

3. Right now we do up to three in a horizontal span. No vertical span stacking in our design. I'm pushing for an update in Nthusim 4.2 to add capability for up to 5 projectors. That brings things better into line with AMD Eyefinity and Nvidia Surround maximum spanning options.

4. I'm not really a fan of that many moving parts in a single projection calibration. The more projectors you add, the more can go out of alignment. Instead of 6 GT1080, my suggestion would be wait for Optoma to bring the UHD60 to market instead and use one or two of those to achieve your 2.39:1 cinema aspect ratio setup. At issue with using a bunch of projectors it's not a matter of if they'll go out of alignment over time but how chronic the issue will be. Slam a door in the house, bump the wall or the screen and things get out of alignment by 1-2 pixels. That begins to happen over days and gets a bit bothersome. So my suggestion is to use as few projectors as possible to practically cover the usable screen geometry that you're wanting to use. 2017 will begin to be the year of the first affordable 4k projectors. Optoma is blazing the trail with the UHD60 and I expect BenQ and the other usual suspects to follow suit.

5. There is no real right answer. My canned answer is to purchase the best single video card that you can reasonably afford that has AMD Eyefinity or Nvidia Surround capability. If going 4 or 5 projectors a second GPU for CrossFire/SLI is appealing to have the computational power. AMD is coming out with some new goodies in Q1 2017 and I fully expect Nvidia to have the GTX1080ti out to counter those in the same timeframe. My personal preference Q1 2017 is to go with an Nvidia 1080. I personally went that route. Previously I was Nvidia 980ti and before that AMD Radeon 280X. If you're a flight sim fan, I'd stick to Nvidia side. If you're more a generic gamer both AMD and Nvidia are OK.

I know that probably doesn't cover it all, but I wanted to get a prompt answer back to you to help you start working through the questions you have.

-Brad
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