Describes how multiple computers work together in an nDisplay rendering network.
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Interactive content isn't limited to being displayed on a single screen, or even a single dual-screen device like a VR headset. An increasing number of visualization systems aim to immerse the viewer more effectively in the game environment by rendering real-time content through multiple simultaneous displays. These systems may be made up of multiple adjacent physical screens, such as a Powerwall display; or they may use multiple projectors to project the 3D environment onto physical surfaces like domes, tilted walls, or curved screens, such as in a Cave virtual environment.
The Unreal Engine supports these usage scenarios through a system called nDisplay . This system addresses some of the most important challenges in rendering 3D content simultaneously to multiple displays:
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It eases the process of deploying and launching multiple instances of your Project across different computers in the network, each rendering to one or more display devices.
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It manages all the calculations involved in computing the viewing frustum for each screen at every frame, based on the spatial layout of your display hardware.
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It ensures that the content being shown on the various screens remains exactly in sync, with deterministic content across all instances of the Engine.
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It offers passive and active stereoscopic rendering.
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It can be driven by input from VR tracking systems, so that the viewpoint in the displays accurately follows the point of view of a moving viewer in real life.
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It is flexible enough to support any number of screens in any relative orientation, and can be easily reused across any number of Projects.
For additional background information about nDisplay, a more in-depth look at the real-life applications and display systems it was designed to support, and the future vision for the technology, download the white paper here .
nDisplay was an integral part of the visuals for Childish Gambino's award-winning 2018 Pharos show . See the project spotlight video below!