The resolution is shitty though.
12600 x 3150??
Nah, I'd pass

yoshinatsu

@damatman: Well I'm saying if their electricity bill is $15,000 more next month than it usually is. Anything below that they don't even bother looking into how the expense got there.

KingBroly

This is the new WOPR.
Global thermonuclear is imminent

sander_dutch

I can't believe that no one has noticed the blindingly obvious yet. He didn't "play" the games on this amazing monitor. He made a screenshot and placed it on the giant monitor for this shot. Look in the lower right of the image for the composite he used for the wallpaper. So, as they say... FAKE!

Sarlac

Looks hideous.

It's very out of proportion that it's not even good to look at.

xCruciaLx

Yeah, email this guy back and have him run DEFCON. Bonus points for including confused government employees in the picture.

ConstyXIV

It's big, sure, but it's also ridiculously stretched out, so it looks horrible.

brianewing

Nice 1. Every gamers dream. (Not the WoW, but playing on those screens)

Acseru

I'm still using a 28" TV most of the time. My girlfriend has a 40"+ momma and I have to squint to play Brawl whenever I come home.

CatfishMaw

Requote of above..

Defcon whould have been extremely fit for a Goverment place. Imagine someone coming in and going..

What... did... you... do?

Cosmitz

Bioshock I can understand, but WoW? Lackluster graphics at best. He should have tried running Crysis on it ;)

scumm_boy

"YOU WISH"
Damn username -_-.

Xavior

Just noticed the "You Wish". Nice.

DigiMish

WoW? Pffft. Beat a full screen of minesweeper using that, then I'll be impressed.

penty85

Oh man, I bet EVE Online would look sublime on that...

midnightz

I'd like to know what card he used, what settings they were on AND what his framerate was.

Ryumeka

goodbye framerate.

Quest

Mmmm, taxpayers money. I'm gonna take a leap and assume this is US Gov't. I hope you guys enjoy forking over all that cash so that some public servant gets to spend his/her day spanking out hours of "overtime" on WoW.

If this is a UK thing. Consider me terribly vexed at this.

ThursdayNext

it must've been one of the top moments in his life thus far. i would kill (well maybe not kill) to play something on that

pandafresh

I CAME

LlamaNL

Damn, he should have played DEFCON on that rig.

Kotakufan777

I just ejaculated tears.

sits

@cqdemal: Chernobyl. Kaboom.

HenryHSH

*Cries manly tears of happy*

FeatherNET

@KingBroly: What's the chance that the government look at Kotaku. They have no life.
Unlike us who constantly press F5 for an update, not realising that we get one every 30 minutes anyway :P

damatman

ohh shiit how cool

Syrish

Would you like to play a game?

Paul Soth

That guy's definitely smart. The Government won't realize someone played WoW on their top secret monitors NOW.

KingBroly

What do you think will happen if someone tries to 'play' Crysis at that resolution?

cqdemal

Sweet Jesus!!! Imagine seeing a 15 foot Big Daddy...thats TOO real!

Killer_WaLrUs

More pictures or anything really would be sweet, Luke.

DigiMish

...Daymn

Starpip

The Feds are probably using it to play HD Pong.

MentalNote

@Paul Soth:
Holy shit!! Too funny!

MisterE456

Does it come with a truckload of aspirin? (And I do mean an actual truck full of aspirin.)

Antiterra

twenty-seven 67" HD monitors

Sounds like the government and money well spent. Why save funds by using projectors instead of monitors?

placebofud

I wonder what they're using to control all those screens.

A vista systems Spyder rig perhaps?

ncsbert

Or instead of going to the trouble of mounting 27 panels on a wall, and having one of the middle ones go out (which would then be a pain to disconnect), you could just talk to your friend who runs a theater and hook it up to one of their HD projectors on an even bigger screen. Problem solved.

NumberFiveIsAlive

Yeah, I'm a bit confused as how you could play anything on something that big. You'd get tennis head just looking to your health bars.

Slatz_Grobnik

"Joshua called me..."

"Ehrich Blackhound"

It's stretched

Bigger isn't always better either, I had a very un-enjoyable time playing video games on my 100 inch home theater.

ShadowFFVI

Meh, i've played on bigger.

Not really. I just REALLY wanted to be "that guy" for once. :(

WildWon

I have seen the top of the mountain. And it is good.

WittyUserName

@Sarlac: maybe nobody cares?

not_tom_brokaw

@ToTTenTranz: so there were some black bars on the side. Not like that would RUIN IT.

Luke Plunkett

I'd really like to see some Bioshock screens.

Strangelove

So here's the geek commentary:

There's no hardware available that would allow him to play Bioshock at 12600 x 3150. Maybe WoW, but not Bioshock.

ToTTenTranz

Photoshop.

Stirdy

If this catches on @ Digg this dude is getting in some serious trouble.

MyLittlePwny

@Sarlac:

Hmm I'm not entirely convinced that's the case. It may just be the software that controls each of the screens. I'm sure with that many screens you'd need seperate software to control and monitors that many, well, montiors.

ElMuerte

that is un-freaking-believable.

ps why did you play WoW when you could play CivIV bond-villain stylee......I've been stockpiling nuclear warheads for 250 years - yes I will open my borders to you.

elronathon

no, i want to play thermo-nuclear warfare.

ajay42

You can always count on government offices to redefine waste

BenignMuffin

Dramamine FTW!

SigmundTheSeaMonster

he is so fired :)

dude163

@Paul Soth: good one!

@ShadowFFVI: Bigger is better. I prefer playing my games on my 73". I can't imagine playing on a smaller screen again (PSP excluded of course)

@ConstyXIV: is there any other kind of government employee? 8/

Awoken

my hero!!!!

happycodemonkey

Sorry, I don't like my games looking shitty, pixelated, and stretched out.

Captain_Collide

Switching between live Iraqi satellite footage and World of Warcraft? Priceless.

gencid

@placebofud: There's that nagging cost of replacing bulbs in the projectors constantly (which will outpace the cost of the monitors sooner or later, have you seen how much decent projectors and bulbs cost?), plus the required extra real estate to get the image that large. It's not effective for an office space.

Norellicus

Oh my! Replied to from Luke. I feel so special.

ElMuerte

I've worked for the government before and they have the internet locked down. Anything even remotely resembling a game is blocked. They even strip all their PCs of minesweeper! I sure hope this guy deleted whatever he put on there...they have ways of finding out who he is.

yeah write

/sigh... *monitors.

There really needs to be a edit post button. Ya hear me mighty Kotaku gods.

ElMuerte

@ElMuerte: There is a controller. The tipster said there was a custom-built, Windows-based controller to handle the display.

As an aside, I used to work for the Fire Brigade in Sydney, and got to check out the Rural Fire Service's "command centre" a few times. It was even bigger than that, but was exactly the same thing: a bunch of monitors linked together and run via a custom controller.

Luke Plunkett

I wouldn't play in that crappy aspect ratio.

Caterwaul

I think it looks awful.

nimagraven

Wow! Talk about big screen TVs! I wonder what the blurred out images are?

Wonder what branch of the government this office is...

excaliburps

that's absolutely sweet, very distorted, but very nice, I would like to know what it cost to build that setup though :)

Track

absurd.

F22

Is that computer really rendering in that resolution? 12600 x 3150? Well you know something brother, I want to know what that computer has under the hood man cause if it is rendering 12600 x 3150 then I want one of those brother.

Hulkamaniac

Wait, that crappy wrinkled poster is the display. OMFG!

Anyways, which machine was able to run that shit!?

gr.mon

Would of liked to see some in-game screens :P

tooji

Still before the storm?

nekoRamen

Still got him beat! ^_^

Remember last september when they had the contest where you could go play Halo 3 on an IMAX screen in NY?

Well, I did just that! (only 1 out of the 8 in your match could play on there and I was lucky enough to be the one on that screen)

Fun times, fun times

Mikey

Isn't that just a screenshot of WoW? sure looks like he's just viewing it in the windows picture viewer.

ProsaCC

@MyLittlePwny: I'm pretty sure that part of the job of installing monitors is to make sure they function properly. With that being said, I'm sure there were other tests run, such as benchmarking software, but why not toss up some WoW and BioShock? :)

Omnimon

that shits like Golden eye Lucky Bastard

Go Team Venture

The sad thing is, I could bash this, but that would only be to conceal my disappointment that I don't own this.

AndrewG009

video game and porn addict wet dream.

thenk83

what the hell kind of graphics card would you need for a setup like that, anyway?

man in gauze is king ramses II, silly.

He should sort out the aspect ratio. It looks stretched out and weird.

Rubezh

In the foreground, the top of that water bottle is blurred. GASP! IT MUST BE...SECRET JUICE!

(yes, I realize it's the monitors being blurred, and I wonder what's on them too, naturally)

man in gauze is king ramses II, silly.

What a shit game.

EmilioBuono

SNES streetfighter 2 would be amazing on that one. Imagine, being able to count every pixel Ryu is made of!

Shiryu

They can't have projectors in an office, the employees would have to work in dim lighting conditions. Every time someone walked in front of the projector the image would be blocked. Also, the computer is just splitting the image between the screens like in the wall of televisions displays at Best Buy. There's no supercomputer running at 12600 resolution, you sillies.

GOLD5

That's nice looking, but too stretched for my liking. Like many pointed out, if he were to fix the aspect ratio, that would be hot. I do imagine what his FR is...

I still play on miserable 20' monitors, with a resolution of 1280x1024, since that's all these two monitors will support. Stretching the game between two monitors throws me off, since they're not flat screens (they're CRTs) and the plastic sides of the monitors get in the way.

But I'll tell you what - if I could play on those screens, S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Chernobyl would be the first game I would have played! (After adjusting the aspect ratio and such, first!) Followed by Crysis. Heh.

jParadox

I want to know the system's specs please. I wonder how many CPUs are needed to run something at OVER 9000 resolution

harshakamikaze

Do want...

Koontz

Plenty of NOCs have screens like this - I'll be there are more late-night big screen gaming sessions than people let on.

Judging from the lack of real furniture (cheap desks with no storage) I'd say this is probably a temporary or non-imperative staffed arrangement likely for media monitoring related to the upcoming election. It might be staffed 24x7 but it doesn't look that permanent to me.

mariospants

Oh, so that's what NASA Command do on their spare time...

It's amazing and all, but let's see Japan beat that by hooking up an ero PC game on that 2,651-inch wide Mitsubishi screen at the Tokyo Racecourse. :P
[www.pinktentacle.com]

Mikolai

WIIIIIIDESCREEEEEEEN!!!
LEFT SIDE: MWOOOOOOOWN
RIGHT SIDE: MWOOOOOOWN!

Crawl to China

12600 x 3150 is just the combined resolution of the Array.

the SINGLE computer playing WOW/Bioshock is still pushing a normal resolution (probably 1400x900).

rainofwalrus

@Omnimon:

Im talking more about, taking pictures of the place and putting them online, that seems like a breach of contract kind of thing.

MyLittlePwny

I'm not really impressed, I just wonder how long it takes to hook up and how many errors they got trying to use the monitors.

Also, I'd love to see the electric bill after using the monitors for many hours.

Shaoko

Glad to see the new USAF Cyber Command dollars not going to waste.

Wolfgeist

Forget WoW and Bioshock.

Forget Crysis.

I want to see this run Mirrors Edge. Think of the motion sickness.

Eltigro

I once played Goldeneye Multi-player on a Movie Theatre screen back in the day. Now that was awesome, and it dwarfs this tiny thing.

Xerxes 8933A

How bout some porn? :)

Wolf_Dog

eh, playing Halo 3 on an imax screen 2 weeks before retail was much more awesomer to me :D

mcpeepants

@pandafresh: Yes, its wise to watch your wording. We all know Jack Thompson probably browses our comments looking for video game influenced killers.

GcRayden

... my god... i... i am speechless.

pashaveliki

...damn. You could play a game of pong where it would take almost half a minute to get across the screen.

Actually, I"m a little disappointed that he got this huge, super-wide format screen... and he played WoW and Bioshock on it. There has to be a different game that is more deserving of such an honor...

Edge of Blade

lol well this is what happens when you make billions off 1 game.

Majpain007

:0

SolidSnake1118

*COUGH-FAKE-COUGH*

Uh, yeah, I'd have to say this is a fake, guys. Not to burst your dork bubble, but take a quick look-see to the right, spot that large monitor in the front? Okay, now look closer, would you not say that what's on the gigantic monitor is merely a static screenshot that he has open in MS Paint, or Photoshop? Me thinks so...

substance

Submitter and builder here...I have more pictures but it takes me some time to remove all of the potentially sensitive material. I'm really putting my arse on the line for this one, but it's too cool not to share.
For those interested, each of the 27 displays costs approximately $30K and the total cost of the video portion of this contract was over $1M. It is rated for 24/7/365 operation.

soulglow

i need to go change my clothes now... kinda sad thats for the government though, i wonder what dept would need that

BeneG

@cqdemal: it would be the apocolypse....
@Eltigro: i like the way you think

bobdisgea

Pfffft... that's nothing. Had a buddy, back in the day, who was the manager for the local IMAX theater. We used to hang out after hours to watch DVDs and play PS2/Dreamcast on the IMAX.

40' Sonic the Hedgehog?
Life-size Hydro Thunder?
Chu-Chu rocket on the scale of a city block?
with 20,000 watts of surround sound?

Yeah. Nice try though. Fix the aspect ratio and try again.

Shadowstitch

@Kotakufan777: When we get our new video wall equipment set up, I will take your request under consideration when we do the initial testing.

Maybe half DEFCON, half Uplink. :)

(Note: I am not the person from the above story, but I do work someplace that has a similar setup)

Jazhuis

@soulglow: Please tell me it's not a Barco.

Jazhuis

@ncsbert: Not quite, but a similar hardware concept, and slightly cheaper than the Spyder. Damn I love those Spyders though.

And no, it's not a screenshot, it's not faked, and I really did play Bioshock at an occasionally jumpy, but very sexy 30FPS.

soulglow

So damn awesome.....any word on the specs of the individual displays? Consumer line? Custom for the good ol US gummint' ??

eduardjm

Man... I remember watching the trailer for Orange Box at a theater and thinking... jesus... if only...

I wish he would have played Portal on that.

sir_carrot

@HanSolomente: Yeah, I've played FPS on projectors, and while fun, on something this large a space sim or racing game would seem to be more appropriate and more immersive. Since in reality a big daddy wouldn't be 15 feet tall.

Ehardergardens

On a screen that big I'd love to play a racing game on it probably more than a shooter. Or maybe a flight sim. Burnout would be pretty cool.

HanSolomente

Looks kinda like my livingroom. :O

Though I've only got a nice projector and a 144x120 inch wall, not 27 HD monitors ;<

My workstation, one of a few in the room, is still pretty awesome though. ;3

I'd like to know what the deal is with the borderless panels, myself. That's some cool shit.

And yes, he totally should have loaded up Defcon!

TheBakachan

I used to work at a movie theater and we hooked up some consoles to the projectors and played on the big screens. This is nothing to me.

FutureEmperor

Disappointing that given this momentous opportunity he chose to play WoW. Truly disappointing

CockneyKaiser

Seriously, WoW on that screen? Boo-urns. Theres much better stuff to be playing on a monitor of that size.

Ashkihyena

@Edge of Blade:

Barbie's horse adventure gets my vote.

dantemustdie

HD MONITORS? FUCK YEAH WELCOME TO 1991

Roflcopter_Down: Wants you to follow HIM!

Talk about sensory overload. Wonder what it sounds like.

phalanges

Too bad it wasn't vertical-- the Colossi in Shadow of the Colossus would be 1/8 scale!

Squirrelbot3000

*just seeing soulglow's posts*
Holy BALLS! Uhh, where is this place? ;< At $30k a monitor in taxpayer money, I think it's time to muster a pitchfork/torch mob and go 'redistribute the wealth' ;<

And by 'redistribute' I mean, 'take for myself'...incase I wasn't making it perfectly clear o_o

(If you say this is FEMA, I will _kill_ you. Badly.)

TheBakachan

Lol at login name.

Yea, I wish too; but the fiancee would proceed to laugh hysterically at the electric bill.

PsycheE

Awesome, we're paying for the government to have these types of displays, when they only need a large HDTV for their purposes!

Gam3r

Oh man, playing Marvel vs. Capcom 2 would be totally sweet in this. Imagine Fatal Frame in this? Sweeeeet.

shrek187

Can we find out which government office had this thing installed so that we can try to get their funding cut? Most amazing demonstration of pork I have ever seen.

grangerfx

What's with the old login screen? Doesn't he have Burning Crusade?

Dracoster

@Paul Soth: I though the exact same thing.

ArgentAngel

@マンゼクスSythe: put*

マンゼクスSythe

They also but the username as 'YOU WISH' to provoke us. Nice. -_-

マンゼクスSythe

I do wish....

Rutty

Just because the resolution of that jumbo screen is 12600x3150 doesn't mean the games are running at the resolution. I would say the games are running at no higher than the max resolution supported by those games which is far below 12600x3150. Why do you think the game is so stretched out?

Jabberslops

@grangerfx: @Gam3r: You, uh, realize that using this wall as one giant display isn't really what they're made for, right? Generally, they split multiple inputs across them, so you can see lots of things at once.

It's just that making ONE BIG IMAGE is fun, particularly when testing the initial installation. Especially when trying to compare image quality between adjacent monitors.

And no, none of those are places that I work.

Jazhuis

@Jazhuis: I know that wall ;)

1. For those asking, I used vanilla WoW because I happened to have a copy of the trial DVD handy. I don't normally carry my game collection on the road.

2. And no, the game engine itself is not rendering at a bazillion X gazillion pixels. The video wall processor is pretty amazing, but there's usually a game engine limitation to what can be stored in memory. There is some interpolation there, but you'd never see it. I stretched it to cover the whole wall because it looked a lot cooler that way, but I played it in a normal 16:9 aspect ratio. It truly looked amazing.

3. In actual operation, the wall will never be used like this. While it is not strictly necessary, it is a very valuable tool to those that use it. You're glad it's there.

4. For the tinfoil hatters, this is not some secret or covert facility. Yes, they do exist, but this is not one of them -- nor would I post a picture if it was. It just happens to fall under the umbrella of post-9/11 security concerns.

5. Every one ye naysayers would soil your undersized britches if you saw it in action.

To beer and games!

soulglow

Looks decent. just they havent adjusted any of the settings for WoW so its thinking its in 4:3 instead of widescreen...and hell its a 4:1 ratio...anyways, a display that large isnt made for gaming, its for displaying info that perhaps multiple people in the room may need and might not necessarily be able to access on all of their computers. And yes, its put together with multiple display outputs cobbled into one. I work with stations have 6 outputs but can support up to 8.
I almost put a log in my pants not because of how big the screen is but because of it being a "government office" and not only playing a GAME on the display, but taking a picture of said display with other displays on even if they're blurred out. But then I noticed none of the monitors have classification labels (those labels above are probably the workstation and/or user its logged in with), so definitely nothing classified, probably just some confidential or private user data on that one screen.
Gotta love how they're using so many Dell computers too XD
I'd imagine it's somewhere that has 24 hour oprerations, cause it reminds me to a degree of my ops floor.

sirsonik

Looks to me like he's just displaying a jpg on the screen, perhaps the picture on the bottom right monitor...

evilpenguin81

@ajay42: No, Joshua, I want to play Wow.

chesterhybridz

....WoW....literally.

Refused

@cqdemal: The world will catch on fire and a giant Shoop Da Woop will shoot a giant laser and everything will blow up, galaxies will explode, universes will fall into infinity, and people will shit they're pants.

Shaverdian

@soulglow:
You were in a government facility, installing a super-large screen, and you didn't even think to pull down the demo for DEFCON. Shame on you. Hand in your nerd card when you leave.

ConstyXIV

"YOU WISH"?

Asshole. D:<

urutapu

Good god! That's like playing using an IMAX screen. If he had a sound system to match that kind of screen...lordy lord.....lordy lord. Gaming Haven!

taikerr

Y'know, as a point of suggestion, fuck fourty feet (ooh, alliteration.. look at me go..).
No seriously, who needs it? They do, but not me.
I'll take, fourteen. It'll take one Chinese television order. Don't believe me? I'm not advertising!

For less than ten grand, you could have half the size of that thing. They sell 60" Sony HDTV's for about seven hundred bones overseas. Check Alibaba!
Take a plastic bezel off and mount'em to a wall.
Video card? A Matrox. They have a splitter that'll do the job. Buy two. Or four?
Some extra long DVI cables and walla (or ouilla for those in Quebec or France)!
Anyhow. Just my fifty cent.
That screen is bad ass all the same.
Imagine playing GT5 with a G25 on a PS3? Or rFactor! Man that would be the shit!

tantoedge

That's pretty wild. I'm not as impressed as most though. I play on a projector at home, and my picture is 100". The thing cost me $380 and it's 720p... I mean, for real... why don't more people do this? It's, how you say, SWEET.

gloveofpower

"Look man, I'm not trying to ghost you but it's kind of hard when you've gotta bring that goddamn thing to the LAN every week and set it up so that nobody can turn away!"

NeoStarr

Nice to see where the taxpayer money realy goes

Crankyhobo

soulglow might need to change his name to assinjail if he gets caught bragging on the internet about loading personal games on a govt computer system, taking pictures of a govt control center (which is probably against the NDA his company signed to do the installation) and then posting on the internet where anyone (including people who work in the said govt control center perhaps) might recognize the place. Not too smart dude!!

govman

*Headache*
*Dies*

superluigi100

hmm.. sure its not a screen shot.. On the screen to the right(the small normal PC screen) it shows a image of whats on the big screen along with a small box over it and around it..

MrGrim

Anyone notice the pizza boxes? lol

ErnestArion

Ayyone notice the pizza boxes? lol

ErnestArion

"i lost my cursor...send the search party"

NonaGauze

@Kotakufan777:

Exactly what i was thinking xD

Acore

i feel like homer when he thinks about beer

Marshal_A

And by Bioshock and WoW, he means porn.

PhilipWPerna

Damn. Only in my dreams apparently.

svenhoek

Just for future reference, it is not a good idea to load unauthorized software on vital government machines, take a picture of it, and especially, post it on the Internet where it can be picked up by Digg and seen by anyone, like people that work there who have. By the way, this facility is NOT funded by taxpayer dollars. In fact the agency who runs it actually puts money back into the Federal budget. Soulglow, I hope you have fun when Homeland Security is knocking on your door.

Randomdude1234

The only way to win is not to play.

sumzeroclone

@sumzeroclone: Rumor has it that the guy who posted this is now in huge trouble, along with the company he works for, for breach of contract. Probably had signed a Non-Disclosure to do work there and I think loading games on Govt computers and posting pictures of secure areas on the web might be against the rules just a bit! Seems he really did put his 'arse' on the line and is going to get it smacked pretty hard!

govman

boy someone is going to have their balls put through a ringer for that one, IF they get caught!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

freespeech2