I have a nice 20" LCD and was thinking about getting two smaller LCDs that I could set up to the right and left of it. I'd have to look into what kind of video card setup I could use. I like FPS games so the end goal is to kind of get some extended peripherial vision. Would that work with many games? Anybody tried this?
Do many newer games support multiple monitors?
- Thread starter BaDaBooM
- Start date
From what I have read there are not many games that support this.
I think maybe Quake 3 does... not much else.
Do so googling and tell us what you find!
I think maybe Quake 3 does... not much else.
Do so googling and tell us what you find!
I know that the flight simulators support it but sadly not much else.
I have three multimonitor systems.
I have three multimonitor systems.
What do you use for video card(s)? PCIe may provide a better solution, but did you just have to compromise with lower quality PCI or did you find a 3 monitor video card?
I agree... theres not much that does but really should be supported more.... Almost every game could benefit from more screen space.
I remember people asking about this a few years ago. I was hoping that maybe more support had grown for it since then, but I guess not. I guess we need to start emailing game companies.
The only setup that will do this is the Matrox G450 (I think), which you can plug three monitors into. Their drivers will trick the OS into thinking it's running on one big monitor (a "spanned" video mode), and as long as a game can handle custom resolutions with odd aspect ratios (ones like 3072x768), it will work. Games based on the Quake3 engine can do this; a lot of others cannot.
A few flight simulators offer 'native' support for multiple monitors; these would work with any sort of video card/cards (in theory), but I don't have much experience there.
The problem with most games will be that applications have to jump through a lot of hoops to get hardware 3D output on monitors that are not the 'primary display', and it may not even be possible in some cases. The game engine would have to deal with multiple D3D or OGL rendering contexts (at the very least), which is a huge PITA.
A few flight simulators offer 'native' support for multiple monitors; these would work with any sort of video card/cards (in theory), but I don't have much experience there.
The problem with most games will be that applications have to jump through a lot of hoops to get hardware 3D output on monitors that are not the 'primary display', and it may not even be possible in some cases. The game engine would have to deal with multiple D3D or OGL rendering contexts (at the very least), which is a huge PITA.
that is most likely true but still with all the game advancements you would think dual mon support would be worked on by the "big name" companies.... alot of games would really lend well to extra wide field of view (pretty much any fps).... or in the case of rts a bigger view of the map. (I know this can be sometimes done by higher rez but still dual mon would be much much better)
Not many games really support multiple monitors, and the problem with the Matrox setup that lets you treat it as one big screen is that it just looks funny because of the slight gap between the monitors. In a FPS game, you would actually want the 3 monitors to be slightly angled to wrap around you, and show the appropriate view based on where the monitor is placed.
Regardless, if you want to have 3 monitors, the most practical thing I've come up with is using one of Jaton's PCI dual-head GeForce cards. I've got the GeForce4 MX 440 8X, but now all I can find is the FX5200 version that has slower memory.
The nice thing about having the PCI card for your secondary monitors is that you can upgrade your primary card without having to worry about getting a more expensive dual or triple-head card. Also, NVidia cards can now rotate the display in your drivers, which is really cool.
For example, you have a 20" LCD (16" wide x 12" tall). You could get two cheap 15" LCD's (12" wide x 9" tall) to put on either side, and if you rotate the 15" screens to a portrait orientation, you have a very nice looking setup because the width of the 15" screens matches the height of the 20" screen.
This is how I setup my main system several years ago (except it's a 22" NEC with 20" viewable and two 15" LCD's rotated), and it was an unbelievable pain in the ass (I had to use this buggy WinPortrait Pivot software), but now that NVidia has rotation built into the drivers, my system works great.
http://home.woh.rr.com/brettland/rad5/0720_desktop.jpg
Anyway, having 3 monitors is really cool depending on what you do, and if you have a lot of documents open having portrait displays is great, but if your primary motivation is playing FPS games, you're pretty much out of luck.
Regardless, if you want to have 3 monitors, the most practical thing I've come up with is using one of Jaton's PCI dual-head GeForce cards. I've got the GeForce4 MX 440 8X, but now all I can find is the FX5200 version that has slower memory.
The nice thing about having the PCI card for your secondary monitors is that you can upgrade your primary card without having to worry about getting a more expensive dual or triple-head card. Also, NVidia cards can now rotate the display in your drivers, which is really cool.
For example, you have a 20" LCD (16" wide x 12" tall). You could get two cheap 15" LCD's (12" wide x 9" tall) to put on either side, and if you rotate the 15" screens to a portrait orientation, you have a very nice looking setup because the width of the 15" screens matches the height of the 20" screen.
This is how I setup my main system several years ago (except it's a 22" NEC with 20" viewable and two 15" LCD's rotated), and it was an unbelievable pain in the ass (I had to use this buggy WinPortrait Pivot software), but now that NVidia has rotation built into the drivers, my system works great.
http://home.woh.rr.com/brettland/rad5/0720_desktop.jpg
Anyway, having 3 monitors is really cool depending on what you do, and if you have a lot of documents open having portrait displays is great, but if your primary motivation is playing FPS games, you're pretty much out of luck.
Originally posted by: Xatrix
From what I have read there are not many games that support this.
I think maybe Quake 3 does... not much else.
Do so googling and tell us what you find!
Just get the game that does and forget the rest!!!!!!
Although its just speculation, shouldn't the new PCI-e SLI nvidias be good for this? Two cards would give you 4 video out connections.
If you had two cards hooked up to four screens, that wouldn't be SLI. That would be two cards hooked up to four screens.
exactly, i believe that there is a toggle switch to enable SLI between the graphics cards - requires an annoying restart of the computer - and only enables the primary display.
To add a little to my earlier post, Im really suprised that the "lord of the rings: the battle for middle earth" game isnt going to use dual mon sicne the whole premise behind it is to revolutionize the rts genre.... Something like a dual cam system maybe where you can "see" 2 parts of the map at the same time on each moniot, 1 cam/screen at your base and the other following your army. There would be alot of people who would go out and buy a second monitor if there was something like that for all the RTS strat games. Or even have 2 views of the same battle from each side.... theres a ton of possibility with dual cam's
I agree this sort of stuff would be useful (or at least interesting!), and *this* could be done (at least on two monitors hooked into the same card). Working with monitors hooked into separate video cards is (via current APIs) a huge pain, and almost impossible in some cases. Certainly it's something that a game engine would have to be specifically designed around.
From a software development perspective, it's similar to adding support for multiple processors -- if you plan it in from the beginning, it's not that hard -- but it makes *everything* more complex, and there just isn't *that* much demand for it from the user base as a whole. Plus, it's a total waste for an FPS unless you can support a 3-monitor wraparound display -- and until ATI or NVIDIA puts out a high-performance 3D card that can drive three monitors, that can't happen.
Matthias:
I don't know where you came to this conclusion, but using multiple monitors is relatively simple in DirectX. VMR-9 has some stuff that makes it particularly easy.
I don't know where you came to this conclusion, but using multiple monitors is relatively simple in DirectX. VMR-9 has some stuff that makes it particularly easy.
Here is an article about multi-display gaming: http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20040216/
Both the 5950 and 9800XT overheated and broke during their testing.
Both the 5950 and 9800XT overheated and broke during their testing.
Multiple monitors on the same card isn't so bad. I haven't read up on the technical details of running a 3D DirectX app on monitors attached to multiple 3D accelerators (and I know little about VMR9), but I've been lead to believe it's not easy. I may be wrong, though!
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