SecondLife on Dual Monitors

I'll admit, this is really super cool to do. The avatar POV is stretched, which can sometimes be disorienting, but other than that you feel like you're really in the Metaverse!

In case you wanted to know: 22" Acer Left, 19" Westinghouse right, using UltraMon management tool

[EDIT]

Changed a couple things in settings and mostly fixed distorted POV

sorry, no pictures, but I have 42" Sharp Aquos HD 1080p as the SL display and a 19" NEC for the PC window. Incredible when flying, makes you air sick...

42" SL... Wow!

thats pretty cool , i use the acer 22 as well its a great monitor and its super cheap

i run them both, as well like that but i run each on its own pc, but i will have to try that sometime looks like fun!

What settings (both SL and graphics card) do you use?

Ive run two LG screens for a while, even before SL because of the ease of use with graphics design with Photoshop etc. Only used single with sl though.

I used a 42 inch plasma on the weekend and yeah it was preety good.

SL First Look Client (Might be my mind, but First Look seems to stretch better?)

ATI x1950 Pro PCI-Express x16

See image for details

thanks

Any luck getting your's working?

I got it working, but didn't like the results.

First off, I had to set my (NVIDIA) display choices to "extended desktop". This stretches your normal wallpaper and program windows by a factor of 2. (But it was cool that instead of a 1920x1200 display, I now had a 3850 x 1200!)

SL runs OK at this setting, for me anyway. But there are problems.

1. Distortion. On my usual 16:9 widescreen display, the image distorts near the edges to fit the screen's wide aspect ratio. This distortion is doubled when using dual widescreens. The moon looks like a football, unless it's in the center of the screen. (text windows, however, are not distorted).

2. My avatar appears in the center of the screen. But, with a dual display, that's right where the two monitors butt up against each other, so the monitor edges divide my AV in half. Maybe if I used Mouselook as my default view, this wouldn't be such a problem.

What I'd really like to see is for the SL interface to have tear-off windows, so you could move your Communicator window, Inventory window, and your HUDs to the second monitor, leaving the first monitor with an uncluttered view.

That would rock! I use a dual monitor set-up with a CRT as my main monitor (on which I play SL) and a TFT (on which I browse the net, i.e. look up the LSL wiki when scripting). This reduces the Alt-Tab-ing however being able to drag the windows (such as edit, script, notecard, inventory, communicator etc) out of the SL window sounds like a better use.

If you stretch your SL window so that it occupies a third to a half of your second monitor - you can then put all your bits (inv, minimap, whatever...) on the second monitor and your AV is about 2 thirds to one side of an uncluttered window... And you still have room for a smaller Internet browser or Photoshop or whatever else you do while SLing on the space remaining on your second monitor!

I did stop doing this because it seemed to be making SL unstable (?) but have installed a new graphics card since then so will try it again soon - tonight maybe

I tend to have Firefox and Photoshop on my second monitor most of the time...

Cat x

* UPDATE: Tried it again last night and no problems at all - and with a third of the 2nd monitor being used your AV will only be a little to one side - the transparency of the various windows (IM, History, Inventory...) still allows a more panoramic feel too! Go on, try it!

now that's a good idea, Cat. I'll give it a try.

**************

OK, I did it. It does work, and it does give more screen real estate. However, I notice a framerate hit as soon as the UI extends anywhere into the second monitor. My Resident Geek is using this as an excuse to wheedle me for a second graphics card.

Nice Kujila! i`ll have to set myself up something like that ... First I must clean off my desk. lol

What a simple but great solution!

Have just tried it & works a treat; it also provides some welcome relief from the big, ugly 'Communicate' window blocking the main in-game view.

Need to test it over time for stablilty but am achieiving 50+ fps comfortably.

For info: 2 x 19inch DVI flat screen monitors each with dedicated Nvidia 8600 GTS 256Mb PCI-E graphics cards (in SLi configuaration but disabled for SL)

Many thanks!

Workflow from SL to Photoshop and back on dual 22" Acers.



Running SL on both monitors is fun for a minute or two, but not practical for multiple applications. I've got six applications running (SL, SL debug, Photoshop, Firefox, Thunderbird, and an FTP application)

I wouldn't want my AV to be split in half...that would really bug me. I'd prefer to put my money into a projection system, or a very large monitor.

Nice setup Namssor.

When i was using a similar setup i fiwed me up a shoulder cam so my AV was off on the right monitor. no big hassle at all.

Fer me, the sweetest thing was getting SL to run stereo RB movie glasses style (for a few miniutes till it crashed)

I've been using the "1/3 of second monitor" scheme as a way to gain more screen space for my message and inventory windows.

It works very well, with three minor reservations:

1. The load on the graphics card goes up enormously. The second monitor image often flickers, or neglects to add important features like hair. It's not a huge problem, since this area is used mostly for UI windows anyway. (single EGA GeForce 8800 GS with 320 MB memory)

2. My impression is that client-side crashes are a little more likely to occur in this mode. However, I don't have any hard data to support that impression.

3. On the SL startup screen, the links to blog entries and so on are disabled in this mode.

A mode I haven't tried yet, but hopefully will soon, is to run my main and my alt side by side on separate monitors. I've been improving my facilities to use 2 clients, but doing it all on one screen is starting to get to me. I expect if it is harder on the system it would only be marginaly so compared to running 2 clients on one monitor.

Any chance i could run them on separate CPU's on my AMD Turion64X2?

Running a dual monitor configuration (24" Dell + 19" Acer). Using a 1950XTX to be able to run this smoothly (at 256m draw distance).

I never run SL stretched over both screens ,as i use the acer to display other apps (browser, mail, PS etc.) while in sl on the 24".

For some reason the ATI drivers are giving me problem running SL on both monitors correctly, probably becauce my setup is different from the 'normal' setup. (My secondary monitor is actually to the left of the main monitor). This causes SL to not render correctly anymore. So i'm constantly switching my primary and secondary, which is kind of annoying.

I tend to switch SL over, or drag my work window over, when working in PS at the same time. As the dell has much more vivid colours than the acer (no i don't have a displaymate...).

It also told me how different monitors are in their representation of SL.

I've been thinking about getting a second monitor mostly for my digital artwork, but MAN does SL look awesome stretched across two monitors... ::drools::