Dual Monitor Question
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/Dual Monitor Question
| ||
| Is it possible to create a game in blitz3d in which I have the game interface on one monitor and the game view on the other? |
| ||
| You can do dual monitors by simply setting the graphics dimensions to twice the width of a single monitor (so like Graphics3D 2048,768,32,2.) I think this only works windowed though, not fullscreen. Windows (I mean the OS) will stretch the window across both monitors. |
| ||
| I see. So blitz3d would work in a similar way is say MS Flight Simulator where you can put all of your gauges on one monitor and just have the main view on the other if you are using windowed mode. |
| ||
| I think it may depend on your machine - I am unable to have a 3d viewport that stretches across both screens however in blitzplus I can have a canvas which does this. You may find that blitz3d runs really slow on one of your screens - for instance try moving the window in windowed mode from one screen to the other. |
| ||
| I've experienced that too Matty. Programs seems to run perfectly on the primary screen, but choppy on the secondary screen. That the case here anyway. Weird. I wonder why... |
| ||
| Its possible... but... Multi monitor driver support is pretty flaky in general - a lot of drivers will blank the secondry monitor while rendering 3D to the primary... a lot of nVidia users will turn OFF multi display acceleration as it causes substantial slowdowns... some drivers even with only single display acceleration will still rendering 3D so the second display while doing 3D on the primary - but at a huge performance hit - possibly they are doing software 3D rendering on the second display? Assuming the driver being used doesn't blank the secondry display when the primary is running 3D you could put a second 2D image on the second monitor with guages, stats or whatever. |
| ||
| I have one machine that does this just fine with a Geforce quadro fx 4something. It stretches the entire dektop across both screens one monitor. IE the start menu at the bottom goes across both screens. However with my Ati Radeon 9700pro it uses a primary and a secondary monitor through windows control. IE start menu only spans across the primary screen. On the geforce I can stretch a blitz window and it runs great and quickly. On the ATI however any blitz window on the secondary monitor just creeps to a hault. So Im guessing its dependent on what your graphics card/driver consider to be multiple monitors. If the driver handles it as one screen then youre golden for doing dual monitor spanning. Just my little take on things. |
| ||
| making 2 diferent programs... connectin by lan, like server and client in the same pc.. in the main monitor, you have your 3D game... playing and sending information to the client... when you connect the client, runing the secundary program... 2D, in the secundary monitor, recive data fron server.... and draws or show information in the way you want... |
| ||
| One problem with stretching a screen over 2 monitors is that the resolutions might differ. I have my laptop linked up to my LCD TV, both do 1680x1050 res but when I link my other laptop up, the laptop does 1920x1200 |
| ||
| on ati you must install hydravision for multi monitor hardware acceleration. give you have a card capable of doing it(600series upwards of Xxxx and newer) |
| ||
| The suggestion given by Latatoy is the only realistic way to do this - theres far too many driver, hardware and OS configuration issues to have any chance of this working across a range of hardware... and even developing for a target platform the options can change between driver updates. |
| ||
| does anyone have an example of using 2 x exe's running and communicating this way? |
| ||
| Weird. I wonder why... Many video adapters only support hardware 3D acceleration on one screen, and the other one ends up using microsoft's software rendering. You can find out if your videocard is one of them by switching to windowed mode, and dragging the window partially from one screen to the other -- on my old computer I'd see a *massive* drop in framerate if the window was as much as a couple of pixels on the secondary screen. |
| ||
| I 2nd Rroffs take on Latatoy's suggestion. |
| ||
| Just tried a DualHead2Go from Matrox now using 1024x768 on two monitors fully hardware accelerated. They were very expensive £250+ now you can pick them up from £88 |
   |