dual monitors, one for playing one for something other

[sgtsev3n 12]

hello,

a friend of mine want to buy dual monitors. he asked me if its possible to have one monitor for playing and the other monitor shows the desktop or a programm or something else.

is this possible ?

[654wak654 25]

Yes of course, in fact that's how it is by default. That's the only reason for having 2 monitors :P. Windows handles dual monitors beautifully since Windows 7, and as a dual monitor user for almost 2 years, I can say having the game on one screen and whatever else on the other (Skype, Google, A Stream, Por). You get the point.

Thing is, if the game is full screen, it will still act like you alt + tabbed out of it when you click on anything in the second screen. To solve this you just gotta run the games in "fullscreen window", which basically doesn't have any difference, unlike normal windowed mode, full screen window has it's borders outside the screen, so it doesn't act like you alt + tabbed out just as it lost focus.

[sgtsev3n 12]

Yes of course, in fact that's how it is by default. That's the only reason for having 2 monitors :P. Windows handles dual monitors beautifully since Windows 7, and as a dual monitor user for almost 2 years, I can say having the game on one screen and whatever else on the other (Skype, Google, A Stream, Por). You get the point.

Thing is, if the game is full screen, it will still act like you alt + tabbed out of it when you click on anything in the second screen. To solve this you just gotta run the games in "fullscreen window", which basically doesn't have any difference, unlike normal windowed mode, full screen window has it's borders outside the screen, so it doesn't act like you alt + tabbed out just as it lost focus.

thanks you helped me very much

[mr burns 132]

I´m quite sure many programs/games that have problems with alt+tabbing will have the same problems upon losing focus.

Ran dual monitors for a long time .. but when i stopped using photoshop regularly the benefits of it just vanished.

It´s a fun little experiment nontheless :D

[Tankbuster 1747]

To solve this you just gotta run the games in "fullscreen window", which basically doesn't have any difference, unlike normal windowed mode, full screen window has it's borders outside the screen, so it doesn't act like you alt + tabbed out just as it lost focus.

Oh, that's quite cool! I didn't know about this. It's useful to take the mouse to the other monitor without minimizing the game! But I can't position the game window so the borders are outside the visible screen?

[654wak654 25]

Well I don't think I have enough Englishez to explain the difference fully, but in fullscreen window the borders are not just outside the visible screen, they're outside the clickable screen too. I'm saying this based off of Java's windows, and ArmA 3 happens to act the same.

To use your first screen, you still gotta alt tab and put the arma window down, because you have no control over the un-resizable un-reachable window. With another sentence: The game acts the same on the monitor it's running, still gotta alt + tab to get to tour desktop or whatever is behind the game window, but at least you can fully use the second monitor while having the game up. I'd also like to hear from someone with a wide 3 monitor setup about this stuff.

Interesting thing I noticed btw, the game pauses when it loses focus on the main menu (Still talking about fullscreen windows). This only happens in the main menu, since Single player always pauses anyway, and multiplayer never pauses. The launch parameter "-noPause" gets rid of this (Duh!).

[Tankbuster 1747]

You've explained it perfectly. Thank you.

[jblackrupert 14]

Battlefield 4 takes advantage of 2 or more monitors allowing you to show the map on a second monitor.

Not sure if there are other games that do anything like that.

Handy for Battlelog also.

Battlescreen.

[654wak654 25]

I see your battlefield, and I raise you my ArmA 2: http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=16868

[jblackrupert 14]

I see your battlefield, and I raise you my ArmA 2: http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=16868

That's an addon though, and it has issues even working.