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Displays Entertainment Games

State of Multi-Monitor Gaming? 180

Posted by Cliff from the more-heads-are-always-welcome dept.
xtal asks: "What's the current state of multi-monitor gaming? LCD panels are really dropping in price - I've seen a 17" panels for under $400cdn, bringing it into the ballpark where purchasing three of them for a much wider field of view becomes possible. The hardware to drive these displays in a LAN configuration (3 machines, 3 monitors) is also inexpensive, or at least attainable - so when I look around for the state of multi monitor simulation, I don't see much. The best candidates are flight sims, but my interest lies in racing. Are there any suggestions or sites I'm missing?" What games have you played that could have really benefited from a second (or even a third) monitor? Do you think that the games you normally play will be significantly enhanced by the use of multiple monitors, or is one enough?
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State of Multi-Monitor Gaming? More

State of Multi-Monitor Gaming?

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  • My thoughts... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by brokencomputer ( 695672 ) * on Thursday February 02, 2006 @07:46PM (#14631002) Homepage Journal
    I think games need to be designed with large monitors in mind for this to improve the gaming experience drastically.

    I don't think that driving the displays in a LAN configuration would be good for the refresh rate, but I may be wrong.

    Something I really want is a G5 [apple.com] with dual 30 inch Cinema displays. That's probably the best configuration as each of those two monitors supports the resolution of about 3 of your cheap 17" LCDs. We may have to wait for Intel Duo powermacs to get your windows games to work, however.

    By the way, Wolfenstein Enemy Territory is fun on Dual displays and it is free for Linux, Windows, AND Mac, so that'd be a good option.

    --
    tvWiki.tv [tvwiki.tv] - The Television Wiki
    • Nice screens, but I don't think 2 would cut it. The frames of the monitors being right in the middle of the screen would make an odd number of screens best.

    • Re:My thoughts... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by inter alias ( 947885 )
      Yes, multiple monitors may be appropriate to distinguish between different tasks or parts of tasks (multi-window apps), but gaming is one one-window task and therefore a huge monitor is the appropriate solution. Even better if it was flexible or produced 120 degrees concave or so.

      But yes, until we get curved displays 3 monitor gaming is a workable solution for peripheral vision. But I'd still go with a 30" cinema display.

      • Re:My thoughts... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 )
        I think the difference is that two smaller displays is generally cheaper per pixel than a single larger display.

        Besides, I'm not sure if there are many games that even operate at the resolution of the 30" computer monitors from Apple and Dell.

      • Re:My thoughts... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by TheSkyIsPurple ( 901118 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @09:43PM (#14631681)
        I remember playing a flight sim/attack game many years ago on my Quadra 650 w/ 3 screens. It was great. The main screen showed the front view. The left screen showed the left view, and I think you can work out what the right screen showed =-) Now... apply that to FPS (and give me the motion sensors like in Marathon), and I might get interested in that genre again.

      • Re:My thoughts... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by TXG1112 ( 456055 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @10:55PM (#14632076) Homepage Journal
        I've always wanted an RTS that supported multiple monitors, and it would only require two. Game area on one screen, and map, unit descriptions, menu items, etc. on the other.

        • Thank God! I'm not completel insane. I thought I was the only one who had thought of this. I even tried emailing id and Epic about it for their respective games. Dunno if it will ever happen.
      • On a slightly offtopic comment on gaming I do not know why games have not used holophonic sound [itotd.com] available. Granted it is useful only with headphones but it could be nice for protable games (DS, PSP, etc) and an alternative to the 5.1 sound in homes.

        Is it very difficult to do this kind of sound in games?, it will surely need real time processing of sound (sound sources being calculated etc) but that could be a good use for this next generation consoles multiple processors.
      • Games are a one window task? MMORPGs are about the only thing I play, and for them it would definately be nice to have more than one display. I could move all the HUD off of the main viewport. Chat windows, toolbars, inventory. Take WoW for instance, about all I want on the main window is the mini map and the small character/monster health frames. Games that ran well windowed would be nice too, so I could use an extra display for IM, email or WWW. I have plenty of machines, I could run non-game apps on a
    • The Apple 30" panel and for that matter the Dell 30" panel need a dual link DVI port. The ATI Radeon X1900 series, the ATI Radeon X1800 series, and those ATI X1600 series cards with two DVI ports can each drive two 30" panels. I would only think though that 3D gaming would be possible only on an X1800 or an X1900, you might even want to consider a Crossfire setup, then you could run three 30" panels. I have not seen any benchmarks on 30" panels with any card, which would be interesting to see. There is
      • HDMI is just DVI-video and digital audio combined on one cable, any video card with a DVI port can use it with an adapter (and a separate audio cable). Also, 1080p is just 1920x1080 resolution, which any video card made in the last few years can display (playing 3D games at that resolution is another story).

        Cards that have dual-link DVI are not common, but they aren't that hard to find, either.

      • Makes you wonder what nVidia is going to come out with in this continual game of one-up-manship. :)

    • By the way, Wolfenstein Enemy Territory is fun on Dual displays and it is free for Linux, Windows, AND Mac, so that'd be a good option.

      How the heck are you getting Enemy Territory to run in dual display mode? I see no reference to such support from some quick searches, and in fact it crashes often when I have a second monitor just plugged in, though that may be a hardware problem on my end.

  • DS (Score:5, Funny)

    by tepples ( 727027 ) <tepplesNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday February 02, 2006 @07:47PM (#14631009) Homepage Journal

    Do you think that the games you normally play will be significantly enhanced by the use of multiple monitors, or is one enough?

    Just ask any Nintendo DS fanboy ;-)

  • games list (Score:5, Informative)

    by uzusan ( 951058 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @07:52PM (#14631035) Homepage
    matrox has a list of games that support mutliple monitor modes:

    http://www.matrox.com/mga/3d_gaming/surrgame.cfm [matrox.com]
    • Matrox isn't very good with newer games in terms of performance though.

    • Re:games list (Score:3, Informative)

      by FlamingLaird ( 245347 )
      This is support for multiple monitors via the Matrox Parhelia card. The interesting thing about the Matrox is that it treats multiple monitors as one large monitor. Say you had three 1024x786 native panels plugged into it... the operating system (and games) thought it was one large monitor with 3072x768 resolution. This meant that all a game had to do to support multiple monitors was offer support for large weird resolutions, which is fairly easy to do in a totally 3d game. Unfortunatly the Parhelia is
      • When you plug multiple monitors into a new Nvidia or ATI card (or cards in SLI or Crossfire), they actually show up to the OS as additional monitors. This is actually the perfered behaviour because it lets you use monitors with different resolutions and sizes together and in non-traditional arangements. Unfortunatly, it means that actual multiple monitor support has to be specifically coded into games.

        I think the apparent multiple monitor support is often a useful abstraction - I get the impression that it
      • I believe the X games (or at least X2: The Threat and X3: Reunion, not so sure about the first one but it wasn't that good anyway) had support for multiple monitors, and you could actually have it show different views on different monitors. Not sure, though, as I've only got the one monitor.

        (Also, X3 uses Starforce, so be warned!)
      • X-Plane [x-plane.com] works nicely with multiple monitors.. Not as graphically pretty as the MS offering, but as far as being a 'realistic' simulation of flying a plane, it knocks the pants off the MS sim (I do both, sim and real flying).
      • Perhaps on Windows, but not quite true on Linux. Xinerama support is an option with nVidia TwinView, and if it's turned off, the OS sees one big screen (Which makes playing UT2004 a bitch, actually).

  • Eyes behind my back (Score:4, Insightful)

    by biocute ( 936687 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @07:53PM (#14631039)
    I wouldn't mind having a EBMB feature where a secondary monitor will who/what's behind me.

    I think any game will benefit from such setup, like RPG/Simulation/RTS/FPS won't hurt with dedicated displays for "stats" and "field".
  • I would imagine 3 monitor Quake4 or other FPS games would be good. I remember reading an article where an older version of Doom or Quake would support this.

    Those with SLI/Crossfire/(Matrox tri monitor) support should be able to handle it on a single PC.

    270 degrees of view would be a great advantage in those sort of games.

    I believe FlightSim works quite well in multi-monitor with controls/gauges on one and
    the 3d environment/world on the other.
    • 270 degrees of view would be an unfair advantage.
      • 270 degrees would be more immersive. What's more intuitive for looking to the side: mouse right, or head right? It would be about as unfair as the advantage keyboard+mouse players have over joypad players. The cost of that makes it seem unfair now, but sooner or later it will be cheap enough that everybody has seventeen monitors and a telepathic controller, and they'll give you sideways looks when you say you've only got one screen on your gaming rig.
    • allowed you to do this, with another PC and monitor, drive left & right views...

      not a second monitor on the same pc, but a second pc, networked to the first.. I did it once, used it for about a week with a second pc, and had only a 'left' side view... it was more of a 'i read about it in the switches, I gotta see it' kinda thing..
      • We did this at work in like 1993 with all three PCs - left, front and right. It was like Doom 1.something. Darn cool for that time period. The game started running slower and slower. Then the computer support line (which we were responsible for answering) rang with people unable to work due to the network being bogged down.

        Dang them IPX broadcast packets on 10baseT!
    • When you have SLI of Crossfire modes enabled on those cards you can only have one display active. This is actually one of my big pet peeves about SLI. I have two Dell 2405 LCDs and I have to constantly switch SLI off/on to get the second one to work when not gaming.

  • Multiple Monitors (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ryanmetcalf ( 898126 ) <ryanmetcalf@gm a i l.com> on Thursday February 02, 2006 @07:54PM (#14631051) Homepage
    What if PC's were able to make the use of multiple monitors, like Nintendo DS does? I'd love for an extra screen to keep mini-map, server rank, ammo counts, etc on an always displayed screen. No more bringing it up on your main screen

  • Female gamers. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Onan ( 25162 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @08:01PM (#14631100)
    So have this vague memory of a study done a few years ago. (Far too vague to be able to cite, sorry.) It was examining the "spacial" navigation skills of people in a rendered 3D environment, ala FPS games.

    One of the surprising results was that women tested had much more difficulty learning the layout of complex spaces, and avoiding getting lost--when using a 4:3 display. But when a wider aspect ratio display was used (giving more gestalt context, one assumes), not only did testees of both genders do better, but this disparity disappeared.

    Previous studies have shown that men and women tend to handle navigation differently, so this is not totally implausible. (And no, I'm not referring to men-asking-for-directions jokes. It seems that men tend to rely more on distance and direction, and women tend to rely more on landmarks.)

    So this seems to suggest that not only is a three-across setup a great win for all gamers, but that it might be an interesting tool for narrowing the gender gap.

    • Re:Female gamers. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 02, 2006 @08:21PM (#14631238)
      The study that parent is referring to:

      http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3628 [newscientist.com]
    • Bleh. I've clearly had too little caffeine today, if I can't remember to include a subject in the first sentence, or spell spatial correctly in the third. (Hooray for unintentional irony quotes!)

      However, kudos to the AC to did the research and provided a link to an article on the study [newscientist.com]. (Just repeating that above the default threshold.)

    • teehee!

      you said 'testees'!

    • Re:Female gamers. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ameoba ( 173803 )
      I don't know about male/female gaming but, being a World of Warcraft player (and a male), I find my gaming experience to be much improved by switching to a widescreen monitor. The extra space on the sides of the screen is a great place to store all of the 'incidentals' of the game - quest log, inventory, character display, etc - while leaving the central area of the screen uncluttered and usable for playing the game. It feels like I'm more 'productive' now that I'm not longer required to constantly be ope
      • Agree 100%. WOW was meant to be played in widescreen, I'm conviced - the game looks great on my 2005fpw and it feels so much less "crowded" than it did on my old 1.25:1 LCD.

        It always amuses me when I see my friend's WOW interfaces - all of the add-ons they use add more text and more controls to the interface. In my opinion, the interface has to much text as is - studies with aircraft control design have shown that having fewer controls and less information often enhances the performance of the pilot - how m

  • Desktop for the other monitor (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Spazmania ( 174582 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @08:02PM (#14631105) Homepage
    Hell, I'd settle for a game that lets me keep a desktop live on the other monitor so I can use IM and other apps at the same time without needing a second PC.
    • City of Heroes/Villians does this great. I've got two 19" LCDs, and when in CoH/V, as long as I'm not mouse-looking, zipping over to the other screen for anything is super-easy. The graphics blip for a moment, but if you're paying attention to multiple apps anyway, that should be fine.

      Also, IIRC, every Blizzard game I've played pulls off screen-switching just fine. The caveat is that they basically pause, but continue to use every free cycle while task-switched out.

      Anyway. That's all for now.
      • i wish i could remember, but warcraft and warcraft 2 were either the bee's knee's for mode switching or they were some undiscovered layer that Mr. Dante missed.

        There's a couple games out there that you can just keep smashing alt-enter on and the game barely hickups; its simply stunning. Resolution change and everything. Most games take ages to switch.

    • Re:Desktop for the other monitor (Score:5, Informative)

      by Kesch ( 943326 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @08:33PM (#14631322)
      Currently I use a two monitor setup with WoW on one screen and Slashdot on the other. It actually works great that you can set the game to be windowed and maximized so it looks the same as full screen, but you can move your mouse over to the second screen. Of course, I'm guessing you are using linux because I know that the second monitor on linux will black out when playing games like doom. I don't know how to fix that.
      • I know that the second monitor on linux will black out when playing games like doom. I don't know how to fix that.

        no it doesn't, or at least not always. If the game supports windowed mode - there you go - it works. In conjunctin with sawfish it is especially nice, because I can set windowed screen size to 1600x1200, and disable sawfish's window frame. Then the game is exactly fullscreen, but occupies only one screen. That worked for Eternal Lands, and just yesterday I've finished System Shock 2 under ce
      • Currently I use a two monitor setup with WoW on one screen and Slashdot on the other.

        Yeah, the MMORPGs were good for this. I used to play Ultima Online a lot, and I would have the game running on one monitor and UO Automap, a chat client connected to my guild, and other UO-specific utilities running on the other. It may playing much, much easier.

      • Of course, I'm guessing you are using linux because I know that the second monitor on linux will black out when playing games like doom.

        Really? What evidence do you have for this? Because it doesn't black out for me.
    • I've always wished that I could get a full-screen DVD to play back on my second monitor while I played on the first...

      steve
      • AFAIK, there's nothing to it. Depends on your vidoe player, I'd imagine, but DVD Player on the OSX, and VLC do it with no issues whatsoever.

  • XBOX Forza (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jasko ( 684642 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @08:05PM (#14631127)
    If I recall correctly, Forza Motorsport on the original XBOX can be set up in a three-system, three-monitor mode. And I think a trio of XBOXEN and decent TVs will set you back a lot less than high-powered gaming rigs and monitors.

    Supposed to be a good racing game, too.

    • Re:XBOX Forza (Score:3, Informative)

      by Babbster ( 107076 )
      You're right about Forza (it's a hidden option), but I think the price disparity is made up for by the fact that AFAIK Forza is the only Xbox game with that feature and it's very unlikely that there will be another since the Xbox is on its last legs. Oh yeah, and you also need to have three copies of Forza Motorsport in addition to the Xboxes and TVs.

    • Re:XBOX Forza (Score:4, Interesting)

      by wolrahnaes ( 632574 ) <seanNO@SPAMseanharlow.info> on Thursday February 02, 2006 @11:22PM (#14632237) Homepage Journal
      It works with quite a few monitors actually. At a LAN party a while back I hooked up 6 Xboxes on 5 TVs. The front screen had a second machine running rear view in PIP and there were two off to each side. We were trying to get a 7th box in there to run a spectator-cam view, but we ran out of copies of the game (3 legit copies, only 3 modchipped xboxes, so only 6 could run it).
  • I still have fond memories of setting up all three computers in my house to play doom with three monitors. It was an elaborate setup but I loved it. Unfortunatly they phased it out in one of the later patches. I was the envy of all my friends.
  • I think the main problem would be that you would be running a cluster. You'd have to do this because you wouldn't get the required data throughput at a sufficiently low latency to just shunt the video over the ethernet*. The difficulty with running a cluster would be that the game would need to be significantly rewritten - perhaps one of the biggest problems being synchronisation.

    Why not just by a dual-head video card? I'm pretty sure (correct me if I'm wrong) that at lease some of those allow you to create

  • Flight Sim (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ScottyUK ( 824174 )
    I've recently upgraded from two mismatched CRTs (a 12" and a 19") to two widescreen 20" flatpanels. Most single-screen games can be spanned across two monitors with the nvidia drivers, but the one game I use often which natively supports multi-monitor is Flight Simulator. Main views and instrument panels can be placed on one screen, with GPS, radio stacks etc on the secondary screens. FPS games would really need an odd number of screens, otherwise the centre of the view (where the crosshairs will be) is spl
  • i used to work at a company making multimonitor and huge multi projection screen games ;) we had a america's army scenario where you drove a hummer in a convoy and defended it from terrorists ;)

    it was pretty sweet, with 3 huge 8x6 projection screens it felt like i was driving the whole room around, we also have a M249 machine gun moded with lasers so we could pick up where you were aiming, so one guy would drive, and one guy would shoot as you drove thru terrorist infested streets ;) it was really awesome

    th
    • I find it interesting how the US Army (and their political wing, the GOP) refer to soldiers of the opposing forces as "terrorists" these days (specifically Iraq at the moment), even though they are quite clearly in their own country, defending it from an invading army intent on stealing their resources and setting up a permanent outpost presence in their back yard.

      Let me play devil's advocate for a moment and paint a scenario for you:

      Country X invades the US, ostensibly to "spread freedom and topple the rog

  • In the old days... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Admiral Frosty ( 919523 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @08:12PM (#14631179) Homepage
    I remeber reading many years ago about this man who did something similar with Descent. At the time, Descent was a game so 3D that it was nausiating to play for some. This man rigged up a headband with mercury switches and mounted a moniter behind him. So when he turned his head, the screens would switch to the rear view. Talk about sensery intergration!
    • If the monitor was behind him, couldn't he rig it to show whatever was behind him 100% of the time? I mean, it's assumed that if he's looking at it then he has turned his head around.

  • The source (Score:2, Informative)

    by TAiNiUM ( 66843 )
    The definitive source: http://www.realtimesoft.com/multimon/ [realtimesoft.com] There is tons of info there along with a database of proven configurations.

    Personally, I recommend a Matrox Parhelia with three flat screens. UT2004 looks great and runs smoothly across all three screens.
  • When I was in Uni, the research lab had this station with a pretty impressive and expensive setup. It was basically a chair with a small table attached to keep your keyboard and this big plastic hemisphere in front of you that reached to either ends of you table. Under the table was a projector that was displayed whatever onto the hemisphere. So you basically had this image or video spanning either ends of you. It was pretty cool. I've never seen it been used for anything else except research students playi
  • I have been loving the use of 2 screens to play NeverWinter nights. You can almost see around corners with it.

    What I would donate a kidney for is the ability to use 3 screens.
    I have tried using Nvidia PCI & AGP cards in the same box, but I am never able to get past POST (all screens black).

    If anybody has a suggestion I would love to hear it.
  • Simulations like Rollercoaster Tycoon or Sim City. Put the finantial data, guest/peep/sim thoughts, overview maps and other things on one monitor and have the main game window in another window.

    RTS games, put things like construction, resource management and things on one monitor and put the gameplay battlefield on another.

    So, instead of having to go back to your base to build more tanks, you can just go over to the other monitor and do it. Then, when the tanks are ready, go back to your base and send them

  • Problems with games on a dual head system (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jafuser ( 112236 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @09:43PM (#14631679)

    Over the past year or so, I've had a few minor problems playing games on my dual-head setup. My main objective was to have my main monitor be for games, while the second would be for IRC (or occasionally, the Web).

    The problems I can clearly recall encountering are:

    • Fullscreen task switching: For some reason, nearly every game I've tried always minimizes when it loses focus while in fullscreen mode. This is very annoying since I just want to hop over to my IRC window, type something quick, and hop right back to the game. Or maybe I want the game to keep running while I'm chatting, while I wait for something to happen (see next item). Also, usually the minimize/restore process can take a lot of time and doesn't always go smoothly (sometimes the audio volume level is bumped around)
    • Automatic pause on defocus: Some games pause when the game loses focus (ie X3). I guess the idea is that if the game isn't the curretly focused application, then you probably want it auto-paused since you might miss something. With two monitors though, i've still got the game filling one whole screen so this is not always true.
    • Windowed mode problems: Since fullscreen causes a lot of problems, it seems like the best idea is to try to run things in a maximized window if the game allows it. The problem is that some games won't maximize in windowed mode. For example, EVE Online gives me a list of standard resolutions which I can set the window to, but it can't be resized or maximized. And trying to move the window around is a game in itself since the program likes to grab the mouse pointer when i'm trying to move the window to the top to get it to cover most the screen without cutting off anywhere.
    • Glitches on secondary screen: I've often seen games and programs which run fullscreen on my primary monitor will affect the secondary monitor's "bounding box" region for where application windows can be moved to. Usually it causes the left half of the screen to be unusable while the fullscreen game/program is up and running.
    • Slowness: I had one game which gave me a really low framerate unless I first disabled my secondary monitor when I started the game; but once the game was running, i could re-enable the second monitor and my framerate was fine.
    • The Seam: I haven't really had this problem yet, since I always play games on my primary monitor only; but any even-number of monitors is going to wind up with the problem that the center of your game's action is going to be on the seam between the monitors (unless the game explicitly notices this and compensates). It's too bad there aren't any ATI or nVidia cards which support triple-head monitors so people could do a nice setup with the game action centered on the center monitor.

    Generally, I just try to only pick games which will run in windowed mode, and put up with the odd quirks that come up from task switching. I have yet to find a 3D game that runs in windowed mode, properly maximizes, and allows me to task-switch out and back into it without any annoying quirks; or a game which runs fullscreen and doesn't minimize when I task-switch out of it. I just hope as multi-monitor setups become more common, that they will be more thorougly QA-tested in this environment =)

    • Generally, I just try to only pick games which will run in windowed mode, and put up with the odd quirks that come up from task switching. I have yet to find a 3D game that runs in windowed mode, properly maximizes, and allows me to task-switch out and back into it without any annoying quirks; or a game which runs fullscreen and doesn't minimize when I task-switch out of it.

      This is probably one of the reasons that Civ2 is one of the first games I install on any computer I own. It is one of the very few gam
    • I have 2 monitors. First and foremost, if you are gong to downgrade your inches for the multimonitor bit, don't. It is better just to have a 19" to 21" LCD than 15"-17" dual monitors. I've found for 95% of gaming, dual monitors suck due to the issues the parent listed. If you like FPS or flight or driving sims and can afford a 3 monitor setup, go ahead. FPS sucks with dual monitors though. You POV is focused directly at the seam of the 2 monitors. Trust me, you'd rather just have one bigger monitor if you c

  • Monitors? Dual Projector's! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SloppyElvis ( 450156 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @10:15PM (#14631873)
    How about two nice projectors lined up seemlessly side-by-side on my wall... No pesky break in the screen. Say, you could make a regular double-wide monitor without a break but two inputs...
  • The thing is, I've not seen games that support 2048x768. Be nice if a game could detect two monitors and give you options for the other one, yeah.

    I've got a video card that can output to Component so I can plug it into my HDTV... but no games support THAT resolution, either! 1600x1200 looks weird on a widescreen TV...
  • I've states something very obvious (yet utterly ignored) in a former thread on the subject exactly. I'll risk karma-whoring for the chance a game-developer will read it, So I'm re-posting it now:

    The card offers an humongous amount of horsepower, yet the vast majority of people have monitors that can do 1280x1024 (most mid-sized LCDs out there) or 1600x1200 (most CRT's). So most of the power your card can produce above what a mid-range last-generation card (or high-range 2-gen-old card) can produce is largel

  • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Available as single screens, but I don't know what the specifics are of the cards required to run them - probably something "huge". :)

    Pick your poison [go-l.com] - I don't work for Go-L, I just go to their web site and drool occasionally. :)

    Seriously, I think either a two or four screen setup would be good for driving games. Driver sits in front of the right (2), or middle-right (4), screen - or left (2), middle-left (4), depending on which country you want to pretend to be driving in, and if you can get the ga

  • Need ability to change viewport... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jarnis ( 266190 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @03:17AM (#14633169)
    Supporting wide 'oddball' resolutions is easy. Many games do it 'accidentally'. However, gameworld viewport is 99% of the time fixed as 'full screen' (or two or three) - so the 3D view is stretched across the screens, and with even number of screens, center is at the split point of two displays.

    Only games that I know of where you can change the viewport to the gameworld without changing the actual size of the game window are Anarchy Online and World of Warcraft (via UI MOD). I also think some Flight Simulators allow you to do it, but I don't really play those.

    With viewport resize/move options, you can have full 3D screen on your main display, yet drag most of the 'other UI' to the 2nd display (which has just black background, or maybe some 2d graphic). MMOs would really benefit with proper dual display support where you could stick the inventory, map and all the other random windows to secondary display. Currently I'm really annoyed due to the fact that EVE doesn't support this - it would really benefit from it as you could put overview, scanner and map view to secondary monitor, really helping with the 'information overload' in PvP situations.

    What we'd need is a videocard/monitor manufacturer 'alliance' sponsoring game devs to support proper dual monitor setups via specific extra options in the games - it would sell a lot of secondary screens and beefier videocards. It isn't *that* hard to do when you just make 'game desktop' to use whatever oddball resolution multimonitor system gives you, but allow separate definition of the '3D viewport' inside this 'desktop' of a game, and then make UI customizable/movable, and make sure all UI bits can be moved outside the 3D viewport, to the 'game desktop'. Add support to 'side/rear views' in secondary 3D viewports for extra brownie points so you can have 'rearview mirros' or outright 'surround game setup' if you have too much money, displays and too uber videocards.

    • What we'd need is a videocard/monitor manufacturer 'alliance' sponsoring game devs to support proper dual monitor setups

      From the imaginary future review, "Doom 5 plays terribly on ATi's BajillionX900. Across the 5x3 1600x1200 setup we have in the Gamespy offices, it can barely crank out three frames per second."

      It's painful enough for them when people want to switch up from 1024x768 to 1280x1024 to 1600x1200 or turn FSAA up to 16x etc. Imagine if they were getting benchmarked on multiple monitors all tryi
      • I dunno.. 4600+ X2, X1900XT and 2GB ram can happily push out most of my games at 1600x1200 60-120FPS. I could live with 30-60FPS if I could use two 20" screens productively.

        Besides, if the '3D viewport' part would be limited to one 1600x1200 screen, with mostly 2D UI parts on the second screen, it would not really tax the videocard any more than it does with a single screen.

        But in any case - once games look 'good enough' with one screen, the logical way to justify faster 3D hardware would be to properly sup

  • I think for a lot of games, two horizontally aligned screens ain't enough since you can't easily use them to display one "view". Two screens are good for games which can make use of a secondary monitor displaying a map, but for things like racing games, flight sims or first person shooters, you'd want three screens so you could show front, left and right views.

  • One of the greatest things about City of Heroes is that it could be run in windowed mode and used accross dual monitors connected to a single card:

    http://walkiry.no-ip.org/coh/grab_023_2005_01_27. h tml [no-ip.org]

    I tried 3 monitors (I had them already, the third one was connected to a PCI Radeon 9200SE) but didn't quite work, although I later heard in a discussion about this in the CoH forums that triple monitors worked wonderfully in a dual-card SLI configuration. YMMV.

    The gained real state was wonderful. As yo
  • I had a great two monitor on an Nvidia card setup running Debian, the massive desktop was great (I have one big monitor now), but I did try quake and the gap and slight differences in monitors made the display very dizzying.
    I would naturaly concentrate on the center point (the montiors were CRT and different makes and what ever I did there was a gap between the two, plus the surround of each.
    My brain would remove the stationary anommily and then I would get dizzy, followed by a head ache, followed by being
  • I am someone who has run a dual monitor rig for most of the last 7 years. Dating back to the "well, if you upgrade to windows 2000 it will support multi monitors off the bat".

    My genres of choice have been MMORPG's and RTS for the most part with a few flight sims. My current crack is WoW. My real goal would be as mentioned, to have all my inventory, minimaps, guild/area/whatever chat windows and some buttons and controls over on the right monitor, while I have the 3d redering "world view" on the left mon

  • Having played GR for several years now (and still going) I constantly find myself looking to the left and right to see if any of my enemies are around. It would be much faster and easier to just look at my 2nd and 3rd LCD panel to get this information. It would also help with finding sniping targets without having to move, which does actually affect gameplay. Being somewhat colorblind myself, I rely on seeing movement to spot enemy snipers, but being able to see left, forward, and right without having to mo
  • Multiplayer is a consistently overlooked use for extra displays. There's no reason you shouldn't be able to drive multiple displays, audio streams (preferably on headphones), and input devices to run a single game with multiple players on one box. Think of it as a mini LAN party in a box.

    PCI-e makes multiple displays easier, mutliple channel sound is already common, and USB should be able to support extra keyboards and mice (I think).

    All that's lacking is a standard set of multiple I/O protocols and then
    • Not a bad idea, but most don't have the horsepower to do this. If you have two displays, bring up task manager in one and play your game in the other. (Keep in mind that I'm talking about Quake, Nascar, Need for Speed, etc. and not NetHack or Zork) You'll find that with just one player you're probably maxing out the CPU, and cutting into RAM fairly heavily.

      I'm interested, though, and could certainly be wrong. Please keep me posted if your experience differs.

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