Dual monitors

[-SWAF-Stolz 0]

I am using dual monitros on my PC and I would like to play OFP with it but I have no idea if OFP support that or how to set it up. Thanks for suggestions, and sorry if this topic already was here havent found nothing with search

[shinRaiden 0]

Do you have an Nvidia card or a Matrox Parhelia? Then you are all ready to go. If you have an ATI or something else, so sorry, iirc, they don't correctly support the needed video mode.

The key is you need to be in "horizontal-span", where windows thinks you have one mega-wide-screen monitor, instead of two adjacent 'normal' monitors. Like 2560x1024x32b, instead of 2x 1280x1024x32b.

Then once you do that, you need to add an additional switch to your favorite OFP shortcuts. Just like -nomap and -nosplash, you need to add -twomon. Then all the special resolutions magically appear.

Check my posts on pg 240 of the combat photothread.

Enjoy.

[shinRaiden 0]

Um, in all deference, I may have been too hasty. Can someone who has a dual port ATI card and two monitors check to see if the cards and drivers support span mode (ie one mega-wide virtual monitor, not two adjacent screens)? It would be somewhere in the Hydravision component of the Catalyst drivers, I think.

I don't have one, and I'm a total ATI n00b. However, every indication I've seen so far is that ATI card's do not have a span mode, it's all virtually handled by Hydravision.

According to ATI, these cards support Hydravision as listed on the Hydravision page, despite other newer cards like the X800 and 9800 series being listed as having multiple display controllers:

* FireGL 8800

* FireGL 8700

* RADEON 8500 128MB

* ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON 8500DV

* ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON 7500

* RADEON 8500 64MB

* RADEON 8500LE

* RADEON 7500

* RADEON VE/RADEON 7000

* MOBILITY RADEON 7500

* MOBILITY RADEON

* MOBILITY FireGL 7800

I've briefly touched a couple older FireGL's on service calls, but I haven't had the chance yet to fiddle around with them. Also, the hydravision promo's from ATI suggest alternate views in the multiple windows, rather than spanned scenarios.

Ok, this is just a wild guess, but this [having to run in spanned vs multi-mon] may be because DirectX might not know about or how to handle multiple monitors. I have a few older games that flip to cloned mode, or bomb with "unable to get monitor specs" when they get a buffer overrun of monitor(s).

[m16a2m203 0]

If nobody else gets around to it I'll test it tonight.

My only question is if you go with 2 instead of 3 then wouldn't the monitor bezel be right in the middle of you aiming point?

[-SWAF-Stolz 0]

well i am using ATI 9000. I was trying many stuff but nothing yet,

And I wasnt thinking about wide wiev but about maybe map on one monitor game on second and connect 3 monitors is too much....

[shinRaiden 0]

@[sWAF] Sorry, OFP only supports a spanned view, not mixed like you are describing.

@M16 Yeah, which is why I mainly use it for load testing and screenshots. Two projectors would be perfect, two narrow border LCD's oka, but I'm running two CRT's.

If you want to run 3 monitors, you can try the Matrox Parhelia. Drawback is that you'd spend the same amount of cash that you would on a GFX5900 or a R9800XT, and only get performance of like a GFX52/600 or a similar Radeon.

[m16a2m203 0]

Tried it. I can only get a dual-view or a clone with ATI. I can't span the view over the two.

[shinRaiden 0]

HOWTO:

Here is what your normal display control panel looks like:

Click on the "Advanced" button, then your "Nvidia {CARD}" tab. You'll get the little side bar, select the "nView display mode" option. In the 53.03 drivers, it is the first option. In the 44.xx series, you may have had to enable an option, and any rate it was further down the list. Consult the documentation for your specific driver.

When you find it, you need to change the "nView mode" to "Horizontal span". Other options may include Dual, clone, Vertical span, and single.

When you click "Ok" it will take you back to the main Display control panel screen. It should now look something like this: (you will likely now have to adjust the desired resolution/refresh too.)

Once all your changes are made, you need to add "-twomon" to your desired OFP shortcuts. If you are running in windowed mode by using the "-window" shortcut, you will need to adjust the resolution via the "Flashpoint Preferences" app prior to launching.

Enjoy.

[shinRaiden 0]

FYI.

There is a post at Ars Technica today about the new ALX dual-PCIX-card Video system from Alienware. This is NOT a dual monitor solution, it is a splitscreen dual-processing system to render a single display. This is similar in function to the old Voodoo2 SLR dual accelerator card system.

Also, 3dLabs has a sync-lock slaving system on some of their newer Wildcat cards, where iirc 'slave' machines are connected via a "Multiview" data cable and a "Genlock" syncronization cable. I don't know if this 'steals' the video card, or just syncronizes processing on multiple machines. This may be similar to the Quake2 system where you could spawn a coop server, and then have 2 clients connect, then slave in as left and right views of the host.

If someone would graciously donate to me 3 loaded FX-53 workstations with an ATI X800, 3dLabs Wildcat 4, Matrox Parhelia, and a GFX6800 for each machine, I'd be more than happy to post the capability results and benchmarks.

[shinRaiden 0]

Kegetys (of course) has brought it to my attention that -twomon is not needed for multiple monitor spanning support in OFP. In fact, he showed that there is no support for a "-twomon" commandline switch. I don't know how that story got started, but it's at least a year and a half old now.

So...

To enable multiple monitor support, you must have the following setup:

OFP:RES >= 1.85

Video card:

GeForce 4 or higher Nivida card that supports nView desktop spanning. I know the Quadro NVS supports four displays, I don't have an NVS and four displays, so I dunno on that one. Also, as I don't have two pci-x nv40 boards, I don't know if you can cross cards or not. Anyway, current Nvidia cards only have two outputs, so you are limited there to two displays.

Alternatively, you can check out the Matrox Parhelia series. These support two displays as-is, or three outputs with a funky octopus cable sort-of-thing iirc. Performance is alleged to be in the range of Gef4 42~4800 range. These are almost certainly the cards used in the VBS screenies.

OS configuration:

You need to be using nVidia's drivers, not MS's, and enable horizontal spanning from the nvidia specifc advanced options. This 'hides' the existing display wrappers, and creates a single virtual display. OFP sucks up the the provided display resolutions dutifully and launches into spanned mode.

As mentioned elsewhere, you will need to double your horizontal fov display settings in your userinfo.cfg.

Thanks.

[subx 0]

A bit off topic, but is there any documentation for all the command line switches? Tried to find some the other day and didn't manage to come up with anything.

[HOBOMAN 0]

i use to have dual monitors till me walmart cheap ass brand one blew up on tuesday. An ati radoen helps the duel monitors prefform better if ya want to buy one.

[shinRaiden 0]

I went through a pile of monitors this summer until I figured out that having two right next to each other on all day long was over-heating them. So I built a hideous four-fan octopus assembly out of 90cm fans, spare molex connectors, a flexy tube from home depot and no-skid pads from lowes, and a brick adaptor from Radio Shack. It's horribly ugly, but works wonders, and nobody else makes them. Thank goodness for a wonderful warranty.

Kegs has a list, but I can't remember the link off the top of my head. Basically -nosplash, -nomap, -x=, -y=, -mod=, -window should pretty much cover it all.