| Eyefinity - Team Fortress 2 |
 Valve has done it again with Team Fortress 2, it generally works great out of the box with ATI Eyefinity but there are a few issues which can be off putting but defiantly aren't a deal breaker. All the menus work great the same as all the other Valve game I have tired with the loading screens centering and all the floaty steam like windows that Valve games use work across all 3 screens. Once in a game there is a few issues with the HUD and server display not aligning correctly to standard 16:10/16:9 aspect ratios, so some overlays can be off centre (fix for this after the bump).  With the few issues that Team Fortress 2 has, it also has an amazing HUD modification courtesy of Delphium from the Widescreen Gaming Forum which will centre all of your vital information to your centre screen. Team Fortress 2 is extremely fast paced so you don't want to be wasting precious milliseconds glancing around your huge screen trying to find how much health your have left or how long left until your Jarate has returned, so it's vital that the HUD is always visible and without this modification TF2 can be stressful to play while using Eyefinity. Here is how to download and install this mod.  Please download one of the following files making sure you are downloading the correct one corresponding to your aspect aspect ratio:
These are the latest version as of 15th October 2010 - Updated with fixes for the current TF2 update. Downloaded the right one? Good stuff! Now you need to extract the rar file and copy both folders to "\Steam\SteamApps\[your user name]\team fortress 2\tf", if prompted choose "Yes" when replacing current folders. Now load up Team Fortress 2 making sure your aspect ratio is setup the same as the file you downloaded and be amazed as the HUD enters your line of sight.  The only other problem I had was to do with the FOV being to great which allowed you to see behind your characters model giving you some weird distorted geometry. I think this may only be an issue for 48:9 resolutions due to the extra wide angle, I haven't found a fix as of yet but it isn't too much of an issue as you only notice these issue during reloading and it's generally isn't seen on the centre screen.  Valve proves again that it is one of the leading PC game developers as it takes advantage of computer specific technologies and tries to broaden the use of more obscure features. Team Fortress 2 does have it's problems when it comes to using high aspect ratio but with then openness to modifications Valve has allowed with it's games has allowed most of these issues to be fixed. The framerate scales well when adding another 2 screens without having to lower any of the graphical settings and still have high performance. If you play Team Fortress 2 and you have a card capable of effectively running Eyefinity then you should defiantly try it out as long as your install the above mentioned HUD fix as the game really does benefit from it. Final Rating - Gold |