rec.autos.simulators

I have a couple of old monitors laying around. Win 98 can handle mutiple
monitors. My question is how can this be done? Do I need mutiple video
cards? I think it would be cool to have the left and right veiws as well
as the forward veiw all at the same time. Please someone tell how to do
this or send me somwhere that has the info. I've looked and looked for
the info but came up dry. TIA

Reddog

Yes you need multiple video cards, but they need to have software to make
them work with multiple monitors under Win98.

Multiple monitors are used to expand the desktop.  Getting separate left and
right view from a car game would need to be programmed into the game
itself.  Too my knowledge there is no such game yet.

Jason.

--------
Jason Monds
"My other car is a Ferrari"
http://members.home.net/gpl.mondsj/gpl - For my combined gas/brake setups
(Please remove 'no extra spork' when replying)

        Caveats: 1) EACH monitor must have its own video card;
        2) EACH program MUST be written to specifically write to a
given monitor;
        3) each subsequent monitor will demand quite a bit of
resources to keep updated.

        Right now, no DRIVING game takes advantage of multiple
monitors (MS's Flight Sim98 does, tho).

        There are other options: Colorgraphics (www.colorgfx.com)
makes multi-monitor video cards that will spread your desktop over up
to 4 monitors in any combo you want (wide, tall, square), but they're
DAMMED expensive.  They are AWESOME to watch, tho.

Gunner

See below.

Sort of...  Any program that can open a view in a separate window can
work.  MS Flight sim (for one), but no driving games that I can think of.

Like what?  The occasional download of a new driver?  big deal.  How
often do those come out?

See answer to #2 above.

Matrox also has a new multiple monitor card out.  Two monitors, DVD, the
demo I saw of it looked pretty good, but is it compatible with 3dfx?  I
don't know.
wilbur

  I'd be willing to guess he meant cpu cycles.  So that running
two monitors would really put a drain on most processors which
in turn would really kill the framerates

  No Matrox card is compatible with the latest gen 3dfx cards since they are
standalone 2d/3d.  Even if you were able to get a V2 to work, you'd loose
the
2nd monitor option because the V2 only supports one monitor.  So pointless
if your looking for 3dfx compatiblity.
Hardware options like 2 monitors are nice sounding until you try and get
them
to actually work.  and then find the software designed to actually USE two
monitors.
good luck
dave henrie

I heard that someone at papy did setup three monitors with gpl.

What was done required three computers networked with two
"slave" computers "riding along" with the "master".
The left/right view keys were wedged on to set the views on the slaves.

Interesting idea though.

Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.

A bunch of this may be in the thread but there you go.

Any application (game or "serious") that runs in windows and doesn't go
full screen can support multiple monitors. The problem with the win 98
implementation is that if you have an AGP card and another PCI card, the
system seems to default to the PCI card as the primary and the AGP as the
secondary, something that isn't too great if you're hoping to run your
latest gfx card as the main card.

This may have changed by now as it's a while since I played with it
however.

The Matrox G400 has 2 monitor support onboard, *fast* 3D, good image
quality and bump mapping. Maybe you need that? :)

M

   Yeah, as soon as I thought about multiple monitors for GPL, those
side views came to mind. I'm just wondering if these side views are
perhaps a bit of a prelude to multi monitor support by Papy in future
sims? Or if they even toyed with the idea for GPL somewhere along the
line - perhaps after hearing of multiple monitor support for win98?
Anyway, this certainly would be a great option to have in any sim and
would solve most, if not all, of the lack of peripheral vision issues
that we now have. Not to mention the added sense of speed, depth and
general perspective.

yes you are right that a 3dfx card only supports one monitor.
But you can have up to 4 3dfx cards plugged in at once according
to the Glide documentation, and if your software decides to
recognise all 4 cards, it can render to all 4, giving you a 4
monitor application.

For the ultimate, how about 3 monitors, all with stereo 3D using LCD
shutterglasses?

I guess all 3 monitors would have to be synchronised with the glasses,
so that could be pretty tricky!

My company uses a 4 head Matrox gfx card for one of our petroleum
simulators. We are speculating about using 3 of the new SGI NT boxes with
the LCD flat panel monitors in our next driving sim.......  Does anyone have
any experience with this? My greatest concern has been the angle on the LCD
panels causing poor colors. Do you experts think the perspective will be
off, too?