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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
It would seem as though he did not perform a google search prior to writing in?
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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.
You're asking a bunch of dorks about a technical question concerning the opposite sex?
head explodes
A tip for both you and the submitter: fiance is the groom, fiancee is the bride.
There's also an accent on the first e, but I'm not going to attempt it because Slashdot eats my unicode for breakfast.
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.
A) Just have her remote desktop into your computer, log in as another user, and play that way
B) fiance... fiance.... SPEND TIME WITH HER
A) Last time I checked, RDP has trouble with accelerated video. Has this changed?
[...and why is it always about "her" wants? Get a two way relationship for heaven's sake.]
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
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?!
Parentheses, man! Learn to use them (or if you don't want to learn how to use them, just avoid using them (unless you are just trying to be hopelessly recursive (which is not always a bad thing))).
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.
Gamer with a fiancee? I can't believe you guys fell for this obvious troll attempt.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Here LMGTFY, found some interesting links, here's a standout Multiseat Linux - One computer, multiple monitors, mice, and keyboards Probably lots of other ways to do it as well.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of cats. MEOW!!
My wife went through a passing phase a while back ago, so I got her a quad-core P4 w/4gb/500Mb, Radeon 1950 x 2 in crossfire, 41" monitor, Wireless mouse, Keyboard, joysticks, gamepads. Basically everything I wanted in a game machine, while I only had a small netbook (although I could play Farcry on my netbook so it wasn't that bad...)
I thought it was a GREAT idea... She would get tired of it and I get a new gaming machine that she would never let me buy.
Unfortunately, she loved it so much she kept it and I didn't get to "inherit" it all after the passing phase.
But at least she didn't give me any grief over getting (more recently) a much better spec machine, because it cost me a lot less than hers did at the time.
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
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"
Can we collectively as a community agree to stop answering these with things like "here's a solution: don't do what you're trying to do"?
If you don't know the answer that's fine, but don't cloak it by telling people to go outside. If I wanted to go outside I wouldn't read Slashdot!
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"she has a cute little notebook.... what amounts to a passing phase."
Are this condescending to your fiance directly, or just when she is not around?
i Remote desktop 4 windows 2003 servers atm, trust me no way in hell you are gonna play games over that its just way to slow to support such an operation.
Dude, wtf? You aren't going to be married long with this line of thinking. Get off of it and buy your woman a fantastic gaming machine and forget this crap. It shows you care. Priorities, man. She IS paying attention to your choices.
Seriously. WTH.
RDP is NOT designed for 3D Games :-)
Really, the best option will be a second computer. You can buy great video cards just shy of $100, throw it in any computer with a PCI-Express slot, and be able to play CoH on pretty high settings.
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Its not worth it. She'll gain 20 pounds, lose her job, and end up blowing her 19 year old guild leader when she takes a trip to go "see her parents" so she can get some extra dkp.
I'm not bitter.
No. If they are trying to do something stupid or pointless the deserve to be told so. Also people should read this before asking questions.
Specifically this poster should have read this and done number 5.
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
Desktop environments - especially WINDOWS desktop environments - will not allow two people to log onto the same hardware at the same time.
Oddly enough, most Linux distros come with an X-server installed. Just create an account for her, she can log in, then direct the video output to her own netbook, or to a second monitor, or whatever.
To do anything similar on Windows, you MUST install a Windows Server, whether it be Win2K, Win2003, or Win2008. You CANNOT log multiple people on at the same time with Win9x, ME, XP, or Vista or Win7. Microsoft won't allow it, you ain't doing it without some SERIOUS hacking.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Sure. Is it worth it? No.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Multisteating Windows is crap. But heres an idea of how it could be done with Windows. This idea does not involve Virtual Machines (not suitable for games) or RDP (also NOT SUITABLE FOR GAMES FOR THE LAST BLOODY TIME!).
He could use the BeTwin software which appears to give direct graphics access (good for games) - and then to deal with the fact that a lot of games (Like WoW) don't like to run two different sessions at once (unless you are on Wine) you can also do some Application Virtualization using Sandboxie (or Novell Zenworks Application Virtualization) to keep the two games somewhat separate. To fully separate the games you might need separate NICs, but they are a dime a dozen and you could probably get one for free.
Else you could buy a computer that could handle it for $300.
Well that's my two cents.
Since you asked in short, the answer is - Yes.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Have her use remote desktop (rdc / rdp ) to gain a second session on your box.
XP Home doesn't support it.
XP Pro will boot off the console user when a remote user logs in.
Vista is the same set of rules, afaik.
You need windows Server to active support multiple simultaneous interactive sessions.
And that STILL won't let you run a 3d accelerate game 'remotely'.
For the application at hand, it would be simpler to just buy a $300 budget gaming PC and be done with it.
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.
Umm what?
Linux could handle this just fine in 1994, so I think you are confused. Either that or basic functionality has been torn out between now and then, which doesnt seem very likely.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
It might be worth considering that Champions Online is going to be released on the 360. That might be an inexpensive way to allow both of you to access at the same time. Consoles have their own sets of disadvantages and advantages over pcs.
I could imagine you can clamp together some input set per application makeshift but as soon as it comes to 3D acceleration you are boned. Oh yeah, why would you believe a computer powerful enough to run one instance of the game would be less expensive than two stock gaming machines...?
Well, unlike what virgins living in their mom's basement may imagine, sex is only a small part of the time spent together in a relationship.
For a start, you can't keep it up all weekend. (Cue the willy-wavers to come swear they keep it up 24/7;)
Second, a woman tends to get unflattering ideas if your interest in her starts and ends at sex.
Third, humans generally, that is, including men, have more needs than sex. Look at Maslow's pyramid sometime. There's stuff in there like safety, confidence, respect, self-esteem, etc, which are actually antithetical to the role of being just a pussy on legs. You can't get much of a feeling of security of the family if, for all you know, you're just a perfectly fungible sex object in that family.
Basically I dare say that if your wife's interest in you started and ended at sex, you too would probably get insecure and unsatisfied eventually. I mean, what hint would you have that you're not just there until she finds someone with a bigger tool or more stamina?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Seriously, stop being sensible on Slashdot, you're spoiling it for the rest of us..
> 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.
step 1: buy lots of old computers
step 2: buy some serial cables
step 3: beowulf the computers
step 4: use the rs232 cables with appropriate mices.
step 5: make sure you are using linux
step 6: direct the serial signals appropriately
step 7: either use a vm xp or linux to play the game
step *: never give up trying to make it work, remember, your time is infinite - spending $300 for a dell vostro is like spelling the word "DEFEAT" in a snowbank with dead penguin bodies.
Well they say sex is like air, is a much bigger deal to people deprived of it :-)
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Believe me, if you want to keep your relationship out of fights for a computer, get a new one. I say it by experience. You *do not want* yet another reason to go to bed mad at her, or she mad at you :P
This is just wrong. Yes, it will let you connect multiple people to the same computer. However, you'll need another computer with which to connect from, completely defeating the purpose.
On top of this, it doesn't allow any sort of 3d acceleration, and if you somehow get it to work it would be a slideshow. Your grown folks business of hacking DLL files is dated, lame, and childish.
The posters only option is in Linux with multiple GPUs. MPX will allow it on a single screen, otherwise it's separate X servers.
There is no way you can run two 3D demanding games on the same PC. Maybe Vista has some advanced 3D engine to host 2 user, but I doubt it.
VM still lacks support for GPU, so it won't work either.
The cheapest solution would be a cheap overclocked system. Buy a reliable motherboard from Asus and overclock an Intel Dual-core CPU.
I bought an Intel dual-core E4300, 1.8 GHZ almost 2 years ago and at 3.2GHz is still able to give me 60FPS in almost any new game.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
"... does anyone have any experience with setups like this?" Oh yeah, mainframes were in most every large company a few decades ago. Perhaps you should get yourself a 360. (ummm... not talkin about Xbox either)
If I didn't have absolutely NOTHING to do, I wouldn't be here.
[quote]Well, unlike what virgins living in their mom's basement may imagine, sex is only a small part of the time spent together in a relationship.[/quote]
:)
And by that you mean, like, 30 seconds a week, right?
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!!!
a reasonably modern graphics card can do 3D acc on two monitors (I use a nVidia GT9500 to play flight sim on two screens) but trying to play two different games like this is unlikely.
Blazing Spiders
I am reticent to buy a new gaming computer simply for what amounts to a passing phase.
It works like this: She gets your current gaming computer, you then reluctantly get to go out and buy a quad core with 8 gig of RAM and a gig video card. This is the way of the geek relationship.
For a start, you can't keep it up all weekend. (Cue the willy-wavers to come swear they keep it up 24/7;)"
Going with the assumption that this is a young couple, not even married yet, if they were more towards the norm, sex WOULD be one of the primary items on the agenda. I mean, that is normal early in the relationship. Think about dating, you're primarily there to try to get in her pants. And usually...good sex leads the guy to thinking marriage might not be bad 'cause he'd like to keep that to himself on a perm. basis. The deep relationship that you're talking about, that comes along later after you are 'trapped' so to speak in marriage and are stuck together. If it doesnt' develop, the marriage isn't gonna work.
Even with that last part being said...sex in a marriage is STILL a very important part of the relationship. And besides, if you go with most guys side of things anecdotally, you'd better get all the fucking you can before the numptials, 'cause that wedding cake generally cuts her sexual appetite WAY back.
"Third, humans generally, that is, including men, have more needs than sex."
True, but, for heterosexual men, they can satisfy 99% of those needs on their own, but, for sex they need the woman there. Self satisfaction jokes aside. Face it, the old joke of "Why did God give women breasts? So men would talk to them" holds a lot of merit.
If a guy didn't want women for sex, he'd not likely give them much attention otherwise...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I'll have you know that thanks to my many years of tantric training, I am capable of...
Oh shit, I forgot my wife reads Slashdot. Excuse me, I have something on the stove.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Going with the assumption that this is a young couple, not even married yet, if they were more towards the norm, sex WOULD be one of the primary items on the agenda. I mean, that is normal early in the relationship. Think about dating, you're primarily there to try to get in her pants. And usually...good sex leads the guy to thinking marriage might not be bad 'cause he'd like to keep that to himself on a perm. basis. The deep relationship that you're talking about, that comes along later after you are 'trapped' so to speak in marriage and are stuck together. If it doesnt' develop, the marriage isn't gonna work.
Good graciousness! Absolutely everything about this is backwards! Honestly, this is at the root of everything that's wrong in the world now. And it's not just the obtuseness of how to go about interacting with women, lest you misunderstand me. It's the complete abdication of anything resembling acting like an adult, and taking a long-term, responsible view of the future.
You DATE to find out if it will work. The SEX is just a side benefit. Try thinking with your BRAIN for a change. If the sex is good, you'll think ANY woman would be a good wife, and that's just STUPID. I know. Been there. Done that.
(Full disclosure: Happily married to the perfect wife and mother for 15 years. 3 kids. Deliriously sated with what happens behind closed doors. Did nothing but smooch until we were married.)
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
And you only get that much after you're married.
Fixed.
Safety: condom
Confidence: 40+ minutes
Respect: Waiting for her
Self-esteem: 14+ cm
By your own definition, everything humans need can be attained through sex.
I can tell you all that as a girl (check real quick...yeah okay, I am in fact a girl) I would prefer to have sex. I tried to play NWN with my programmer boyfriend only to realize that though we were in the same room together, on the same designated server.....I still needed an upload of something else.
Sex is a HUGE part of EVERYTHING! Girls do want it, trust me. Monogamy, though unnatural (I am a biologist), does not ruin sex. I try on a regular basis to get the goods from my geek, only to be ignored for the computer. When we are together, I know he is thinking about coding on that bitch in the computer room.
Gaming is nice, don't get me wrong. I love my emulator that lets me play FF7 whenever I feel nostalgic, but unplug for a bit and see if you can find someplace more fun to plug that dongle in ;) 3
"Don't Panic"
Good graciousness! Absolutely everything about this is backwards!
Has it occurred to you that different people might have different needs and interests in a relationship?
I picked up a scratch & dent computer, dual core 2.6, 3 GB of RAM, 320GB hard drive for $220 from the dell outlet.
http://www.dell.com/outlet
Considering it came with a licensed OS, it was cheaper than me building one.
just keep an eye on there, because they go quick. if it turns out that you can buy a better computer than what you have, just keep the new one and give her the old one...win-win?
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....
This company offers software that allows you to run multiple sessions off of one computer, with separate monitors and inputs.
Their software is open source, and the larger part of their customer base are in developing nations, allowing institutions to provide more terminals at lower cost (Only needing to purchase one machine to serve, for example, 5 or more people.)