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Tom's Hardware Reviews Multi-Display Gaming
MikShapi writes "Most gamers out there today own a dual-head graphics card (most of us completely neglecting the second port), and games such as X2 are offering support for this already (at least on nVidia cards, due to the "span" driver feature). Tom's Hardware did a nice rundown on the technology, complete with screenshots and benchmarks."
You can't beat the "3-headed" Doom play if you had three networked machines. That was fun.
I run duel monitors, one 19" crt and one 15" lcd, and it's great, but not for games, for the desktop. I have movie/tv/whatever running on the 15" and web browsing/chattin/programming/whatever on the 19"
:P
it's sooo wonderful, I want to get another vid card and do a third on the left
This would work great for a game if you had a touch screen on one of the monitors.
Think MMORPG
One screen is first person view
The other is your inventory and chat screen
It's too hard to actively use 2 screens with one mouse.
I've always hated how my second monitor becomes unusable during gameplay. I'd like nothing more than to be able to throw my TV app up on the second monitor so I could watch TV while waiting to respawn in Wolf: ET.
I like the idea he presents in the article, but I'd rather have FPS games have the action in a middle window and have auxilliary information on the sides. Of course, the problem there is that two screens would divide the picture and three screens get you head swiveling even more than the original layout.
Multi-display gaming will require a lot of these kinds of ergonomic decisions if they are to succeed.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
My biggest issues with this is that I need a monitor that allows me to place 2 more monitors on the left and right seemlessly. Such as, I want to extend the screen forward in the form of a lens and then slide the left and right monitors behind it hiding the plastic along the edge of the glass display. I can't have the 2 inches of break in my display when playing FPS games. Put it on both sides and it is twice as annoying. Remove the frame of the monitor and we have this working for games. Otherwise this is going to only slow me down. My desk has a 19 inch CRT, 14 Inch CRT, 17 inch CRT, and 2 laptops. Nothing new, but technology just isn't right.
Some games I think a dual monitor setup would be awesome. Think any RTS game where the play field is shrunk because of the "instrumentation" or the like, with dual monitors, a lot of this could go to the second monitor. I think it'd be even cooler if you could decide what components went over to the second screen, and only keep those items most important to you on the play field screen. Or, have both the current and a completely non-instrumented view in the second.
I don't think that just spanning the entire screen shot across 2 monitors would be helpful in any way though. Even with LCDs, the break caused by the frames would be somewhat irritating, to me at least. Then again, even the mesh lines on Trinitron monitors are annoying to me, so I may be just a bit more sensitive to those types of things.
As for dual monitors in general, initially I thought why have duals? Just get one bigger better monitor. Now having worked with duals for about 2 years, I love this setup, and would rather have 2 slightly less capable monitors instead of one slightly bigger monitor. Being able to see a full web page and do something else in another screen related to it is way more helpful than switching between two window frames. There are many other instances where dual monitors are useful as well, and I even span both sometimes, although the application I use when doing that is amenable to doing that (eclipse).
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
What I want is two camera views one for each monitor. I would like to have an overhead camera and a front view camera when playing NeverWinter Nights. This way I can see the excellent fights and creatures and still have a tactical overview of the situation.
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
I'm quite surprised to read that trimonitor/trihead is difficult because I find it's actually quite easy - I've got a dualhead Matrox G550 card, and a TNT2 PCI card with 3 monitors and am able to have 3 desktops, and even tried a 3rd TNT2 card to get 4 screens, but the computer kept crashing which I suspect due to the excessive power usage of the 3 graphic cards.
I used to have a Geforce 3 and 2 TNT2 cards but as I said, the computer kept crashing after 5 to 15 mins of trimonitor usage.
Talking about 3 monitors - I can't really find anywhere how to set up games such as Quake 3 et al on trimonitors - I've seen pictures of Quake3 being played on 3 montiors - but how?
Though I do realise the TNT2 card is woefully inadequate for decent 3D gaming - though it is possible to get fairly decent PCI graphics cards and use that for the 2 side monitors, and the good graphics card for the middle monitor. But of course, that needs a wedge of cash to do so.
I've been eyeing this 3 panel LCD display for a while. I would buy it, but i'm a gamer at heart and I just can't give up my 9800 pro just to have 3 monitors. I'm hoping that when PCI-express comes out that matrox will step up the the plate and put out a good quality 3d card that handles dx9 and opengl. Then I wont want more then 2 seconds to place that order for the 3 panel lcd.
...is here
When I was a developer I used to use 3.
Left was API / Help
Centre was IDE
Right was Output (+ Winamp, trillian etc)
Nowadays I keep my email on my secod monitor and my work on my main.
A second PCI video card can be had for nothing - and you can pick up small CRTs for beer money. For cost effective multitasking, go multimonitor.
If a square is really a rhombus, why aren't all triangles purple?
Let me ask you one thing: What did you do to help the rest of the world? (Donating your change or complaining on others doesn't count)
Not to mention that extra monitors are quite pricey.
Actually, they're quite cheap, if you had the space.
I have a triple-display setup at home. Three 17" CRTs. CRT monitors aren't very expensive these days. As for the video cards, I have one AGP Geforce2 on the center monitor, and I have two PCI Matrox Millenium II cards on the side displays. The Millenium IIs are $20/each on Ebay.
Now of course, given the hardware on the side displays they aren't very useful for running games, however this setup is incredibly useful for many other things (programming, web stuff). Also, I can have a game running fullscreen/accelerated on the center GeForce2 and have IRC or AIM or a web page or something running on the side displays.
I was suprised to find that Multiple monitors actually distracted from gameplay. As a previous poster mentioned, The time spent turning your head & refocusing on another screen was often long enough for your oponent to get a shot off. More significant, by adjusting the view to match the realestate of the display, I lost considerable vertical field of view. Leaving me prone to attacks from above & below. I used the Multi-heads for a month, making adjustments. But eventually reverted back to a single monitor and saw my frags increase imeadiatly.
And a couple of more quick points.
... but I could not get them to work with SuSE or Mandrake (which are, of course, also RPM based distros.) YMMV. And the Linux drivers ONLY work with the analog VGA out signal, no DVI. That alone is reason enough NOT to buy it (if you're a Linux user). And on that same note, if you are a Windows user and you are using triple head, the 2nd and 3rd display are analog only. You can't get DVI on all 3 displays.
The Matrox Parhelia SUCKS if you are a Linux user. For the last several months I've been using Linux 100% of the time but I guess technically I am a dual booter. (There are a couple of games in Windows that I enjoy enough to keep Windows around.) Anyway - the Linux drivers that are available for the Parhelia are non accelerated. (There is a note on the website that says you can e-mail them and request some kind of accelerated development only driver. I requested them and never got them though.)
The drivers also address your Desktop as one big Desktop (not Xinerama). So when you maximize a window, it maximizes across all 3 monitors. (It's the same in Windows actually but in Windows there is a Matrox service that runs in the background that will make it so Windows will maximize only within the pixel border of it's respective monitor.)
And finally, the drivers come in the form of an RPM for RedHat 9 only. (No source RPM or tar.gz is available of course.) I was able to make them work with Fedora Core 1
I ended up selling the Parhelia card due to it's overall suckyness and lack of Linux greatness (since I use Linux for everything but a couple of games) and replaced it with an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. Though now I'm starting to thing I should sell that (the ATI card that is) and buy an NVidia card since NVidia seems to have better Linux support.
I currently run 2 monitors not for gaming but for webdesign and programming. One is a 19inch monitor the other is a 15 inch. I run the 19 at 1600x1200 and the 15 at 1024x768. No good for gaming but I can check how well a website works at different resolutions and program on the big screen then check out render on the 15. I'll never go back to a single monitor.
Have you tried using HMD? I've tried the Sony iGlass displays and it made my eyes hurt after only a a minute or so. It's like trying to read with your nose pressed into a book (literally).
Besides HMDs pretty much suck as far as resolution goes. And don't believe the: Like a 50" screen 5 meters away, it's a lie. Maybe if you have a 50" screen running in 320x240 while you are jabbing glowing hot needles in your eyes.
Oops, did I cause that site to be /.-ed now?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
In your case, you're not giving a fair argument. Just by clicking the link to your Hitachi 17" flat panels and looking at the bottom would scare away most users.
The cheapest price for a Hitachi CML174SXW 17" flat panel? Roughly $450 USD. And you bought THREE of them? Even if you got a discount and rebate, thats over $1000 right there. I could build/buy a budget PC with that kind of money and maybe even get a monitor with it.
This reminds me of the expensive Battletech simulator that existed ~10+ years ago in a mall in Chicago. It had multiple monitors (one showing front view and one showing a radar). IIRC, each monitor was hooked up to a different computer, a PC for the front view and an Amiga displaying the radar. That was a cool game. Too bad it cost so much (like $5/per person/session). Eventually, they disappeared, although I saw a similar game in LA about 5 years ago (which has also disappeared since).
My mind works like lightning. One brilliant flash and it is gone.
...things I've ever done with my computer. (Rating up there with buying a cdburner, and then advd burner).
I have 3 hooked up, and a television, altho I only use the tv when I'm watching a movie or something. Two monitors and a tv are hooked up to a GF4 ti4200, and the other one to an old Voodoo Banshee PCI card.
I use at least one other monitor during game play for things like game faqs, maps, forums, etc... just displaying information I might need in the game.
It's much nicer then switching back and forth with one screen, but it does have the downfall of whenever I play a game that is fullscreen (read: most games) it moves the information over to the right for some reason. I just compensate for this by placing the windows further left before starting a game.
Multiple monitors are also great for other things.... photoshop palettes, directory views, chat windows, downloads... etc... all without blocking out your main window... so say if you're web browsing... a quick glance tells me if what I am downloaded is done, and if someone replied to my message.
My main monitor is a 19", and the secondaries are 17" and 14" (yes 14). The 14" only does 640x480 so I use it mainly for things like directoy (folder) stuff in explorer or konquerer... depending on which OS I am in.
If I can't smoke and swear I'm fucked.
Enter multiple monitors. This is a good solution, but gamers will likely find that the solution may be unwieldy and expensive. Furthermore, it will still lack the depth that they seek to immerse themselves into the game. Lastly, the edges of the monitors will ultimately get in the way, though this is a minor problem compared to the expense and the need for a large desk.
One thing that is rarely discussed or seen is how to get better depth from a single (or multi) monitor setup. The way to do it, which the simulator industry has done for years, is by using a collimated display. These displays work by taking the light output of a monitor, and forcing it to be more parallel, resulting in an increase of depth and immersion. However, these displays are typically expensive, due to the specialized optics (and niche market, of course). How can a home user do this themselves?
Enter the fresnel lens - using such a lens (page magnifier), obtained from just about anywhere (or, alternatively, if you are willing to spend the money, buy a good one from Edmund Scientific Optics). Flashback on the "100 inch" TV projector projects (some would say scams), then flashback further to the AcidWarp projector box from DOS days, and even further back to the large fresnel lens TV magnifiers - you start to get the idea. Then, go to this page, and read it. Get immersed!
Regarding HMDs - for good immersion you will want one with at least 60 degrees horizontal FOV, ideally with a high resolution. Such HMDs exist, but they are expensive, very expensive. Even lower res (ie, 640x480 or 800x600) will set you back some coin, especially if you buy new. If you want to play with HMDs, it is probably best to buy used (every now and then pro-level HMDs appear on Ebay for a fraction of what they cost new - recently, several Virtuality HMDs went up - I have also purchased a CyberEye CE-200M on Ebay before as well, with 3DOF magnetic head tracker, for around $300.00). You can also go the homebrew route - use small TFT LCD TVs mounted to a hardhat headband, with credit-card size fresnel lenses as magnifiers. Likely your first tries will be abject failures, but subsequent modding will yield a reasonable HMD for little monetary outlay (but lots of invested time). Back in the day, PCVR magazine ran lots of articles on this - information on building homebrew HMDs seems to have faded from the collective memory. You won't get the resolution or the FOV of a high-end HMD, but you can easily approach, and in many-ways exceed, that of low to lower-mid level HMDs, if you only try...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Great posts. I had been thinking about the Parahelia just for flight sim, now that's pretty well nixed.
... if you have your weather setup for rainy on your primary machine, the other machines won't just automatically show rain. So your left/right view would be a clear, sunny day while your primary display is raining. Same problems with air traffic. The weather problem can be overcome with a third party software program that keeps the weather in sync between the machines. I'm not sure if it works with air traffic too or not. (I think it's dumb that Microsoft didn't think to make it so that you could setup some "listen" nodes on your network. Sort of a client/server config for multiple displays.)
I would definitely advise against it unless you know what to expect and are OK with that.
So if you swapped out to ATI, what are you doing to drive your third screen?
Right now I have the 3rd screen on my other computer. I originally planned on buying 2 inexpensive ATI or NVidia PCI cards with DVI out so I could have DVI on all 3 screens. But every configuration I've tried so far under Linux has failed in one way or another. (And perhaps even more frustrating, all the configurations work fine under Windows. sigh.)
Have you set-up the multiple-computer flight sim set-up? How painful is that?
Sort of. I set up a 1 node configuration just to see if I could do it. I wasn't happy with the results. There's enough of a delay in the network response time between the machines that it makes for a weird experience. For example, you bank right, and 1/2 second later the Networked machines bank right. I have a 10/100Mb Network so I don't think it should be an issue of latency or not enough network bandwidth. (Could have been the relatively crummy specs of the spare machine though. My primary machine is pretty decked out though.)
Plus there are issues with the weather and air traffic. Since each machine is running it's own copy of the Flight Simulator
Plus there is the custom configuration that has to be done on each machine. You have to edit the cockpit files for *each* plane on *each* networked machine and tell it what viewing angle you want. -15 degrees on the left, +15 degrees on the right (or whatever).
It's a big pain in the neck in my opinion. You'd have to be a lot more of an enthusiast than I am to want to deal with it.
I really want a three monitor setup - it's just so much more interesting to flightsim when you can see stuff to the left and right of the plane.
Yes definitely. It's just too bad computers don't have 3 AGP slots where you could drive each monitor with a dedicated graphics card. I'm thinking PCI Express will be ideal for a 3 monitor setup.
I'm not terribly excited by flight simming, but it's cheaper to practice instrument approaches in the sim than in the plane. In some respects, I think it's better too. The controls/feedback sucks (Even with a FF joystick) which makes overcontrolling almost unavoidable. But the overcontrolling just forces you to have a really good instrument scan - so it ends up being better for your practice.
I think you can learn a lot from the Flight Simulator. I prefer yoke and pedals myself. I think it's more realistic than a combat stick.
But my interest level falls off rapidly due to the tiny field-of-view. I've had a chance to try two views (excellent Dell 20001FP LCDs) and it was great. Now if only I could add that third display....
My interest waxes and wanes like the phases of the moon. I was really jazzed about it for a while and kind of went "all out" on buying these 3 monitors, the parhelia card, and a yoke and pedals. And it was great fun for a while. But then, it got a little old. I put away my pedals and yoke and haven't touched them in months. My true interest lies in computer technology in general. Networking, playing with Operating Systems, and so on. That never goes away.
If you want both machines running X, you need to use x2x, as vncserver on *nix creates a virtual display.