Never Even number for Multi-Monitor Bezel Correction

With latest NVidia Surround Vision and AMD Eyefinity advances combined with PCI-Express SLI and CrossFire facilities, multi-monitor setups at home and small firms have become a breeze (Couple of videos on YouTube demonstrate Multi-Monitor setups upto 24 monitors !!)

However, before some delightful view can be achieved with these, few points are worth noting. Especially, about Bezel correction. Many people have the question: What is the right way of doing Bezel Correction?

While people have their own preferences for Bezel Correction, the question is - theoritically what is the purpose of Bezel Correction and how to set it up right? Well, the goal of Bezel Correction is to "Achieve Realism" in immersed visualization. For example, Consider the word: "Text"; If you have setup Bezel Correction right, then when the word spawns across multiple horizontally arranged monitors - some of the characters in it should be "lost" behind the Bezel (the plastic/Fiber border that surrounds the Monitors). That is, at the first monitor screen end you should see "Te" and at the second monitor screen start you should see "t" (with x lost); Or at the first monitor screen end you should see "T" and on the second monitor screen beginning you should see "t" (with "ex" lost) - depending on the width of your monitor bezel.

In other words, if you open an excel sheet that spawns multiple monitors (arranged horizontally), you should be missing a column or two in between the monitor display gaps. Similarly for vertially arranged monitors, some of the rows of your sheet (that happen to fall in the area in between the monitors) should not be visible on the screen.

But...wait...why on earth any one want to setup their monitors to "loose" the information like this??? How can this be the "right way" of setting up the Bezel Correction? Are we not supposed to "correct" something???

Well...the answer lies in the fact that Bezel correction is not really for desktop applications like excel or notepad or some such thing that has a window. Theoritically multi-monitor support existed even before the concept of "Bezel correction" is practically made available, in the form of dual-monitors on simple VGA cards. The default and natural way (without setting up any bezel correction) is to spread the display screen "continuously" between the monitors. That is, the words "text" appears "te" on the first monitor end and "xt" on the second monitor start, without any character or even a pixel lost in between. And in fact this is the right way for displaying the content for almost all desktop applications - and thus facilitates the monitors to be displaced as much apart as needed without loosing any information

But enter the "Immersive Graphics" applications (games, 3d movies...) that run in full-screen mode - here you certainly dont want a human face to be stretched between the monitor gaps (making them look as wider as the gap between the monitors) !!! That just kills the "realism". Hence the need for "Bezel Correction", where you keep the monitors as close as possible side-by-side and make the "bezel" between the monitors look like some kind of unavoidable obstruction between the viewer and the actual displayed content (just like the pillars of the car that create blindspot for the driver). This gives the content more realistic look because, human faces or any other objects in the displayed content are no more "elongated" between the monitor gaps - they just get disappeared behind bezels. And if you really need to look at the missing content, you should move your camera (if you are playing a game), just like you would move your head in real world to see the obstructed view.

So, the bottom line is, Enable Bezel Correction for immersive content (so that conent looks realistic), and disable it for desktop content (so that all information is preserved on the display, without any loss). The correction refers to the amount of information that should be lost in the gap between the monitors. For monitors that has wider bezel, you should be setting up the correction to loose more information, where as for thin monitor bezels, the correction enables loosing less information.

Having said that there are some most inconvenient ways of setting up multi-minotors when Bezel correction is enabled. When you are setting up multiple monitors in Columns x Rows arrangement, (the most popular being 3 x 1 with 3 monitors in 1 row), never ever use an even number of monitors for a row or column. For example, consider 3x1, 5x3 or 5x7 or some such odd numbered configurations - but never something like 6x4 or 4x5 or even 2x1.

Given the fact that "bezel correction" makes you "loose" information on the display (by hiding it behind the bezels between the monitors) - its easy to imagine why even numbered monitors are never a right choice for immersive content such as games. In case you do not get why not, try to check the video here ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6Vf8R_gOec ) that demonstrates the 6x4, 24 monitor setup and imagine how it would have been if only it were setup on 5x3 or 7x5. (Tip: Check where the flight is).