Multiple monitors and games

[Slickone]

I've got a CRT, Visiontek Geforce 4 Ti 4200 128MB, and WinXP, and would like to get 2 LCD's and use all three for flight sims. Does a game have to support multiple monitors to be able to show different things (gauges, views, maps/charts) on different monitors? If so, do most sims support this? What about to expand the same display across 2 or 3 monitors? Do you have to have more than 1 video card for 3 displays?

Can this be a headache?

 

[Matthias99]

Depends; there are two ways to run a multi-monitor setup, depending on what video card you have and how it supports it. One mode is that it treats each display as its own desktop. Most games will not use the second (or third) display in this mode unless they are specifically coded for it (which some flight sims are; check the game's documentation). The second mode is to turn the 2/3 monitors into one giant desktop (at like 3100x768 or something like that), and if the game can support rendering at weird aspect ratios (which most recent games should), it will work properly. I believe NVIDIA and Matrox's software can do this, but I'm not sure about ATI's more recent drivers -- they didn't like a year ago, but they may have changed it since then.

You will need at least two video cards to run multiple monitors -- usually you'd get a dual head AGP card for two, and then add a PCI card for the third (you could also get an AGP card and two PCI cards, or even 3 PCI cards). Matrox *does* make a triple-headed AGP card, but its 3D performance leaves something to be desired (though it might be ok for flight sims). You also want them to be about the same performance-wise, as otherwise the last display won't be able to keep up.

Yes, it can be a big headache. Two's not so bad (but of course it useless for gaming), but 3 is real pain sometimes.

 

[Slickone]

Thanks. As I stated, I've got a GF4 Ti 4200. I don't think 2 displays would be useless, if more than that is a pain. And I already mentioned the two different methods of displaying on those, but was mainly wondering how many (a list somewhere?) games supported which type, and how much trouble it is to get it working. Also what other types of games support either method?

 

[Matthias99]

Sorry, it sounded like you were unsure about the different display types.

Two displays is no good because if you stretch the screen across them, the "middle" of the screen is split between the two monitors.

The only games that I've heard of supporting discrete monitors (as opposed to one giant virtual screen) are flight sims, but as I am not an avid flight sim fan, I couldn't tell you which ones do. Maybe if you tried on a forum more dedicated to gaming (or flight sims in particular), you could get better answers on compatibility. I know that games based on the Quake3 and UT2K3 engines can do stretched screens, and I'm pretty sure LithTech (NOLF2, Tron2.0) can as well, since it supports widescreen monitors. Not sure about Half-Life/CS.