HP ZR30w Bezel-less Surround Setup

[Callsign.Vega]

I have included some photo's of my 3x ZR30w Surround setup. I have removed the bezel's on the monitors and have gotten the bezel width down to 16 millimeters.

 

 

Can anyone guess what the desktop wallpaper is an image of? It is almost impossible to find 4800x2560 wallpaper's at 12.3 mega-pixels. I had to download super-high resolution space images to get a decent wall-paper. ;)

 

 

 

 

Some photo's of the back with the bezel's/cases removed. I've used the original stands. To get the monitors in portrait all you do is rotate the Vesa 100mm plate 90 degrees. That long arm that you see in the back allows a 120Hz monitor to swing above and in front of the big boy's for when I play first person shooter. If anyone is interested in such an item, they run about $800.

 

 

 

 

 

Various flight simulator shot's. In the DCS: Blackshark screenshot, you can see the size of the cockpit against the can of Coke in the bottom right of the picture. Incredibly immersive experience! The cockpit screen in the center bottom I think is displayed larger here than in the real aircraft. ;)

 

 

 

Age of Conan, everything is so large and detailed. Definitely makes you feel like your in the world.

 

So why did I go portrait over landscape you might ask? I first tried landscape, but the width was just too ridiculous. (That's what she said). It was nice having a large horizontal view of the game worlds, but turning your head constantly stinks. After about half the way going outwards on the side screens, it turned into a waste. That's about 4 mega-pixels I didn't even use.

 

A ton of games also have fish-eye problems going that wide, even with their field of view settings turned up to max. Portrait gives an awesome nearly 2:1 aspect ratio with bezel correction. This is a great field of view as virtually your entire vision area is filled, and filled with pixels you can actually see with very little head movement.

 

In my flight sim's the cockpit are so large and detailed it's almost like full size. I can spot enemy aircraft etc at much great distances with such high detail.

 

There are some issues running 3x 30" though, and some in portrait mode in particular. They obviously use a lot of power. Total is 450~500 watts. The heat put off is not insignificant! Good in the winter, bad in the summer. Since these monitors, and virtually every monitor built today, has vertical pixels, cleartype text doesn't work in portrait mode.

 

The pixels go from vertical to horizontal. I don't know why Microsoft never got off their ass'es to make horizontal pixel cleartype. Cleartype must be turned off, and the font size increased but then it's decent.

 

The bezel's are surprisingly easy to remove (if you know how). I used black-electrical tape on the edges to cover up the grey aluminum borders. I am definitely pleased on how it turned out. I've always hated bezel's between screens but I think I got it down to a manageable level in which it doesn't drive me crazy.

 

Anyways, let me know if you have any questions.

[hassata]

Awesome!

[sungsam]

Really superb work mate ! :doh:

 

Have you tried to overlap the monitor borders, just to further reduce bezel size or it will become to annoying ?

Edited September 30, 2010 by sungsam

[Postal2]

outch extrême !!!

[power5]

Absolutely stunning. What are your computer specs. Do you have any pictures of removing the beszels?

[PoleCat]

Incredible! Very very nice.

 

Out

[Callsign.Vega]

Really superb work mate ! :doh:

 

Have you tried to overlap the monitor borders, just to further reduce bezel size or it will become to annoying ?

 

They are overlapped currently. With the bezels removed, it get each side of each monitor down to 16mm. So with the overlap all I "view" is 16mm of black space between screens which is fairly small for multi-monitor setups. Especially of this size.

 

Absolutely stunning. What are your computer specs. Do you have any pictures of removing the beszels?

 

I run an i7 @ 4.2Ghz with GTX480-SLI. No pictures of removing the bezels, but it is super easy to do. I can do the step by step if anyone is seriously interested.

 

I forgot to mention that at this resolution, DCS: BS runs fairly well. It actually maxes out my GPU's with AA turned on but I get around 30-40 frames per second. Can't wait for A-10C!

[power5]

I would be interested to know the step by step. I will probably not be able to afford 2 monitors, and surely not that large. Wonder how 3 1080p monitors would work out in portrait.

 

Of course your PC makes mine look like my old old old apple IIgs. :cry:

[hassata]

does sli help with fps, or is it just for high res aa?

[PeterP]

Just curious:

Why it was necessary to remove the bezels from all three monitors ?

Didn't it works the same if the middle/front monitor has the bezel removed.

Edited September 30, 2010 by PeterP

[Pilotasso]

 

Can anyone guess what the desktop wallpaper is an image of? It is almost impossible to find 4800x2560 wallpaper's at 12.3 mega-pixels. I had to download super-high resolution space images to get a decent wall-paper. ;)

 

 

Venus?

 

I have an ETA CARINAE picture weighting 198MB at res of 29556X14321. Bet that would fill up your desktop! :D

 

I have downloaded this and others from here:

http://94.188.33.55/files/Spase/

 

but mind this server is not always up. Keep trying.

[MTFDarkEagle]

Nice!!

[Callsign.Vega]

does sli help with fps, or is it just for high res aa?

 

It helps with both. SLI actually scales very well. I had a tri-crossfire setup before and I prefer SLI by far.

 

Just curious:

Why it was necessary to remove the bezels from all three monitors ?

Didn't it works the same if the middle/front monitor has the bezel removed.

 

Good observation. One thing that is hard to notice in the screenshot's of the monitor with the bezel's on is that there is a certain thickness to them. If you overlap them, the monitor thickness of the bezels makes the overlap distance greater. If you remove all bezels, you can get the displays tighter for a better image. Plus the bezels being so easy to remove, it works out good.

 

Venus?

 

I have an ETA CARINAE picture weighting 198MB at res of 29556X14321. Bet that would fill up your desktop! :D

 

I have downloaded this and others from here:

http://94.188.33.55/files/Spase/

 

but mind this server is not always up. Keep trying.

 

Ah, Venus, very good! I'll check out that link.

[strikeout]

Minimise Bezel Width

 

Hi,

 

I am impressed with your three-wide screen with the reduced bezel width.

 

However, it seems the bezel width will always be a problem with this kind of setup.

 

For someone who wants to go to extreme measures to minimise this 'problem' there may be a workaround.

 

If the mutiple screens are angled inwards then using two thick glass or plastic windows which are bevelled and mitered at the bezel joint may help. The idea would be to refract the separate screen images around the bezel joint so it effectively 'disappears'. The inside of the mitred face could even be blackened or roughened to reduce crosstalk or double images.

 

Anyway, its something I have been pondering for a while.

 

Thanks.

[Callsign.Vega]

Hi,

 

I am impressed with your three-wide screen with the reduced bezel width.

 

However, it seems the bezel width will always be a problem with this kind of setup.

 

For someone who wants to go to extreme measures to minimise this 'problem' there may be a workaround.

 

If the mutiple screens are angled inwards then using two thick glass or plastic windows which are bevelled and mitered at the bezel joint may help. The idea would be to refract the separate screen images around the bezel joint so it effectively 'disappears'. The inside of the mitred face could even be blackened or roughened to reduce crosstalk or double images.

 

Anyway, its something I have been pondering for a while.

 

Thanks.

 

That sounds interesting. Have you seen such an item as you described before? The only way I've really found to really go bezel'less would be multi-front projectors with special software. That opens up a whole new set of problems/issues though. Not to mention 3x 1080p projectors would only have half the resolution of the 3x 30" setup with nowhere near the brightness/clarity.

[topdog]

The approach most "commonly" (I use the term loosely :D) used seems to be having a specially shaped glass ('fresnel') lens between you and the bank of monitors. It's not just for the bezel area, I'm not sure how well that could be made to work.

 

 

 

Just if you go ahead with this type of idea, might want to make sure it's not in direct sunlight.. :D

 

[Callsign.Vega]

Hmm, interesting. Although it seems like if you move your head it might warp/distort the image. Sounds expensive for 3x 30" in portrait!

[Immermann]

Beautiful! But I can't understand why it's so hard to make thin bezels.

Look at this Philips for example (for digital signage, but nevermind):

 

http://www.philips.co.uk/c/information-display/46-inch-multimedia-hd-ready-bdl4681xu_00/prd/

 

"Bezel thickness: 2.4 mm bottom/right, 4.3 mm top/left"

 

Five of those in portrait would be nice but sadly they're only 1366 x 768.

Oh to be a millionaire... :)

[PlainSight]

Can the same level of immersion be achieved with a projector, or do three separate images give better immersion than one that's equal size?

[Callsign.Vega]

Beautiful! But I can't understand why it's so hard to make thin bezels.

Look at this Philips for example (for digital signage, but nevermind):

 

http://www.philips.co.uk/c/information-display/46-inch-multimedia-hd-ready-bdl4681xu_00/prd/

 

"Bezel thickness: 2.4 mm bottom/right, 4.3 mm top/left"

 

Five of those in portrait would be nice but sadly they're only 1366 x 768.

Oh to be a millionaire... :)

 

Ya, that's a tiny resolution for a 46" screen. The pixels would be huge.

 

Can the same level of immersion be achieved with a projector, or do three separate images give better immersion than one that's equal size?

 

There is more to immersion besides pure image size. It would take (six!) 1080p projectors to get the resolution up to 3x 30" LCD's. 3x 30" is so impressive to me because the image takes up most of your viewable eyesight and is super detailed/clear. Plus projectors use the crappy 16:9 ratio which makes things even worse for multi-display setups versus 16:10.

Edited October 1, 2010 by Callsign.Vega

[Callsign.Vega]

I will add some pictures here of A-10C once I get my Track IR up and running.