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Using 1 Gaming Computer For 2 People?
True Vox writes "My fiance and I have recently taken interest in City of Heroes (she's currently got a character on my account). She's got a cute little netbook, but nothing nearly powerful enough for a 5-year-old MMORPG, let alone if we take interest in Champions Online! I am reticent to buy a new gaming computer simply for what amounts to a passing phase. Has anyone had any experience using one computer to control two monitors with two sets of input devices (e.g. two keyboards and two mice, or one keyboard, one mouse, and a 360 gamepad, perhaps)? I have seen one solution that might work, but not much information from users that I can find. In short, does anyone have any experience with setups like this?"
Check out some of the refurbished systems available online and from places like Frys. You can get some raging deals on a solid mid-range box. Thin Client is absolutely abysmal as a gaming solution. This way you two can share a hobby and not drive each other nuts.
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
Sounds like you're complicating things a bit.
What you're not saying here is if you want to run multiple instances of the game at the same time. What kind of PC are you using now? It had better have a LOT of horsepower. 9/10 times, the simpler solution (a second gaming PC) is the smarter answer.
Keep in mind, Windows was not designed as a 'time sharing' system - at least not in the way you're thinking.
http://www.bistolas.net
Cant do that without Windows Server. You've never been able to do that (well, it was in a beta of XP and I think in a beta of a SP once, but it got removed) on a desktop edition of Windows.
Honestly, a 5 year old game could most likely run on the cheapest of cheap systems at best buy. Go spend the 2-300$ (yes, they have them that cheap) and fish around your local recycling center/craigslist for a monitor. When you're done with the phase, sell it on craigslist for a hundred bucks as a set, or keep it as a media pc. You're on a geek website bro, there's always a use for another PC. Always.
It's called multiseat. It's a feature that's targetted for the next version of Fedora Linux . I'm not sure if there's any way to do it under windows but vmware or virtualbox might help when Fedora 12 comes out.
Just get the cheapest inspiron from dell and dump the integrated graphics for...anything that's not integrated. Then you won't have to worry about virtual machines with direct graphics access or any other time sucking rough spots.
Also, if you can wait a few weeks, keep checking the best buy circular for the coupon code for the extra-discounted cheap dell machine.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Or just use a modified termsrv.dll
Now run along kiddo, this is grown folks business.
aEN
It can't be done with Windows (at least not to my knowledge), but multiseat on Linux these days is a cinch. Google has tons of resources on the topic -- basically it involves a bit of xorg.conf hacking, and then Bob's your uncle.
I myself have done it before on an amd64 dual-core 2.2GHz system with two video cards, a GeForce 7600GT on PCI-e, and a GeForce 6200 on plain PCI. Worked beautifully. I could multiplayer FlightGear by running one instance on each seat. Each user can log on and off independently with their own keyboard and mouse.
This is a (blurry and fuzzy) picture of my setup (1280x1024 JPG). You can see glxgears running on each screen -- handled by the same computer. Cool thing about using two video cards is that each user gets his own GPU -- running two FPSes simultaneously (I tested Nexuiz) had absolutely zero slowdown.
It had better have a LOT of horsepower.
Meh, it isn't that difficult. I had a friend get into 5 boxing on WoW. He got a beefy system a couple of years ago, and could run 4 or 5 instances of WoW simultaneously without any real problem.
Two things to think about:
Does the game you want to play with her allow multiple instances to be run on a single computer? WoW does, but you have to have multiple WoW directories. It is possible to program a game to force full screen mode or to terminate if an existing instance is already running. Do some research on the software before buying the hardware. Find out about any tricks you need to use to get it to work.
Find out about the game controls and UI. Chances are, while it might be possible to play multiple instances on one box, it might be a PITA because of the complexity of the game to share a mouse/keyboard. Multi-boxing works in WoW because one person drives multiple characters. Two people using a single keyboard and mouse would not work very well for that game. Other games might be different.
Search google for 'Multi-boxing' + '(your game name)'. Chances are someone has already tried what you are wanting to do.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Well, aside from the fact that the software you pointed to requires a second video card, which for gaming, should be the most expensive part of the computer, you will also have the issue of game license issues due to only having one computer, running 2 instances of the same game at the same time will be very difficult if not impossible for many games. Most will check to see if multiple license keys are in use at the same time with online play, and to my knowledge, installing 2 copies of the same game on the same computer using different keys is not something that will work either since that is a use that was never designed into the games and they will usually check to se if it is already installed and basically say that it is already installed on the computer. And for most MMORPGs you are not allowed to connect two sessions/characters online at the same time, so that will be something you need to look at as well.
It is probably just better to build a cheap game rig. Simply do a budget gaming PC:
Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200 Wolfdale ~$70
Asus P5QL Motherboard ~$90
4GB DDR2 RAM ~$20
320GB hard drive ~$45
DVD+/-RW ~$25
SIGMA La Vie LBYWBP computer case with 500W power supply ~45 after rebate
ATI HD4770 video card ~$100
Total: ~$395
If you need an extra copy of XP or Vista, well that will be another ~$100, and if you need a monitor, another $100-150.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Found it.
I was remembering a dongle, but this seems to fit functionality. Does CoH run on Win98?
http://www.dansdata.com/easyclone.htm
It was me, I did it, I moved your cheese
We can collectively stop answering these things with "don't" when people stop asking questions where it is the most appropriate response.
The answer to this question is definitely "don't".
There are ways to do it, but pretty much all of them involve far more money and/or time than just buying a reasonable PC for his fiancee. Hardware isn't all that expensive and solving a problem like this isn't easy, cheap, or particularly effective.
Slashdot gets a lot of these sorts of questions because for things where the answer is "don't" you generally don't find a lot of useful information from a google search and so people ask here instead. We tell them, don't, which is the best advice they can get.
> because Slashdot eats my unicode for breakfast.
In theory, the accent should get mapped to ISO8859-1 - no need for unicode. Let' see: é.
And for the OP: forget it. It is possible with certain OS if you have low demands, but I think 3D acceleration never works on both monitors. Getting a slightly oldish PC and adding a cheap mid range graphics card would be a better approach.
As someone who actually does this - I have one system with 3 monitors, another with 2 - it's possible. Is it easy? No.
First of all, all I know is linux. I have no clue about Windows.
If you have a separate GPU per monitor, you can get full acceleration. There's some voodoo you have to pull off to separate the GPUs in xorg, but the info is out there.
If you have a dual-dvi card with a single GPU, you won't get acceleration on either one as you have to run Xephyr on top of your X server.
If it's just a "passing phase", I'd go down to your local computer recycler, buy a relatively recent box for $100, and be done with it.
Right now Xorg is in a state of flux and maybe in 6 months or a year true multiuser will arrive with the rootless X server, but I'm not holding my breath. The xorg devs are doing a fantastic job, but it's a big job....