The online racing simulator
Running two monitors with view centered on one display, offset on the other
I would like to run Live For Speed across two displays, but with the view center on the left display and the front-right view on the right display. Think of it as if it were running on a triple-head setup, but the leftmost display of the three was just switched off. Is there a way to do this?

I can get Live For Speed to run with both displays, but the "center" is between the monitor bezels, and it's unplayable. I have tried playing with view rotate in the options menu of Live For Speed to, but it never looks quite right, as the perspective is very skewed.

Any ideas? Thanks!
#2 - ajp71
#4 - ajp71
I really have no clue but it maybe worth sending Kegetys a PM.
It's something I've wanted for while, an adjustable FOV centre, there's a thread for it somewhere in Improvement Suggestions. There's no solution from within LFS atm. It's possible Ketegys could adapt SoftTH to render a triple screen image and just lose the left (or right) third, thus moving the FOV centre at the expense of some framerate (due to the larger image having to be rendered).
It´s easy to use only two Displays. Just put that little character ";" before "deviceIDright=" or "deviceIDleft" in the file softTH.cfg. than you can only use two Displays and the best thing is you can simulate the performance in fps as when you have 3 displays, because the software renders the hole resolution you have set up, independant if there are only one or three displays. Very nice to see if your components are fast enough to have good framerates. I appreciate your work very much Kegetys - great job :-) So, my only problem is to find out how it works in GTR2. It seems that it works, but the startsplash with the menue splits and i cannot press the button in the left and right display with the mouse. Seems that the mouse is deactivated in the side displays. Anyone found a solution? regards RaceRay
Hmm, interesting, will have to try that, thanks for the tip!
#8 - Dru
Quote from Bob Smith :Hmm, interesting, will have to try that, thanks for the tip!

did this work??

if it did, tell us as i only have a 2 out graphics card so this would be great and i don't mind buying a second monitor if i know this works
Just tested it today, it does indeed work. It's no perfect solution though. Unless you've got a DX10 card you'll be limited to a resolution 1365 pixels wide (per monitor). I was testing without any FSAA, but was only running about 55fps, so I'm doubt I'll be able to crank that up too far. So pixelisation is a problem with this setup.

On the whole I still enjoy racing like this, but be warned, it will make you want the third screen all the more.
I was thinking of getting a twin TFT monitor setup (as i cannot afford 3). The line in the middle would be annoying although if I can find the right TFT's only 2x5mm bezels, further more has anyone ever tried taking the bezel off the outside of a TFT so there is no plastic in the way?? (for better joining)
can any 1 post thier cfg file for 2 moniter
i have no luck doing it
thz
Quote from anttt69 :I was thinking of getting a twin TFT monitor setup (as i cannot afford 3). The line in the middle would be annoying although if I can find the right TFT's only 2x5mm bezels, further more has anyone ever tried taking the bezel off the outside of a TFT so there is no plastic in the way?? (for better joining)

Sorry for the bump, but..

The plastic is there for a reason. Taking the plastic off would just mean exposed things, that aren't meant to be exposed. You can overlap the monitors, to take away one of the gaps, but the only true solution that I can think of is getting a frensel lens. They work like giant magnifying glasses, as well as getting rid of that center line if you set it up right. I once read that a standard frensel lens put on a 19" screen, can make it appear up to 30" big. Don't know what it does to your eyes, though.
#13 - Jakg
You can slim it a bit (ie 0.5-1 mm), but it's not just the besel that makes it that wide - they're PCB etc past the edge of the visible screen.
I've taken the bezel off a cheap 17" TFT and there wasn't anything dangerous exposed under it.

Obviously the circuit board for the buttons is exposed at the bottom, but other than that, the actual panel was housed in a metal casing that was indeed much thinner than the bezel.

Either way, I don't think anything will make having a line down the center of the game any more tolerable.
#15 - MR_B
Sorry to bring up an old thread, but editing the file didn't work for me. I've got 2 screens, one will be center and one will be right, but when i adjust the file with the little ";" LFS minimizes itself and says "left monitor auto detect failed, set ID manually to config."....

I have one graphics card, and it has two outputs. Running on XP of course.

The card is a XFX 6800 (GeForce) AGP slot (pc doesn't have pci-e). If that helps at all?

EDIT: Also! Is it possible to apply an offset to windows? As running a 22inch and a 17inch monitor is a pain in the A double S ...

Thanks in advance,

Kringle
The only offset settings I am aware of with the 6800 leave black space where the image was. Perhaps some kind of crazy solution would be to set up the computer thinking it was rendering to three screens (some sort of dud monitor setup or virtual monitor or something) so that when you offset the image, the image from the third monitor came onto the screen, so that you weren't left with black space. However, that's just theoretical and it wouldn't be worth the effort, or performance degradation to implement.

All I can say is, do what I did and live with it. After a while you get used to it, and the bar in the center disappears (until some jerk comes up behind you and asks, "Isn't it hard to drive INTO a bar?" and then you spend the next few minutes TRYING to ignore the fact that you are following an EXTREMELY wide car in front of you, lol.) Point is though, it's nice to have the image CENTERED in front of you instead of only to one side.
Quote from MR_B :Sorry to bring up an old thread, but editing the file didn't work for me. I've got 2 screens, one will be center and one will be right, but when i adjust the file with the little ";" LFS minimizes itself and says "left monitor auto detect failed, set ID manually to config."....

I have one graphics card, and it has two outputs. Running on XP of course.

The card is a XFX 6800 (GeForce) AGP slot (pc doesn't have pci-e). If that helps at all?

EDIT: Also! Is it possible to apply an offset to windows? As running a 22inch and a 17inch monitor is a pain in the A double S ...

Thanks in advance,

Kringle

You're using SoftTH I'm assuming? Can you post what's in your config file, the first section at least.

I'd post mine up but I'm at work.
#18 - MR_B
;
; SoftTH configuration file
; by Kegetys <kegetys[ät]dnainternet.net>
;

[config]
; deviceIDLeft/right: Direct3D device ID's of left and right monitor, or 'auto' for automatic
; secondaryWidth/Height: Left & right monitor resolution, or 'auto' to use same as middle screen resolution
; secondaryRefresh: Refresh rate of left & right monitors, or 'auto' for automatic
; secondaryFormat: Secondary device image format, 'RGB32', 'RGB16' or 'YUV12'.
; antialiasing: Level of forced anti-aliasing
; anisotropic: Level of forced anisotropic filtering
; borderSize: Size in pixels of frame border between monitors that is discarded
; noHotkeys: Set to 1 to disable all hotkeys
deviceIDLeft=-1
deviceIDright=1
secondaryWidth=auto
secondaryHeight=auto
secondaryRefresh=auto
secondaryFormat=RGB16
antialiasing=0
anisotropic=0
borderSize=0
sideExtraWidth=0
noHotkeys=0

[Direct3D]
; ** Advanced setting for Direct3D games **
; cylindicalCorretionAngle: Amount of cylindrical correction done, use with sideExtraWidth
; hideNondefaultDevices: Hides all but the default adapter from the game
; forceHorizontalFOV: Forces horizontal FOV to be three times as wide
; forceResolutionWidth/Height: Forces device to be created with this resolution
; force16bitDepth: Force game to use 16bit depth buffer, can improve performance and reduce memory use
; sleepBeforeRead: Time in ms to sleep before reading back buffer data from video card
; useMultihead: Uses multihead features of primary card if available, can increase performance and reduce memory use
; Set to 2 to force multihead initialization even if game doesn't create device with TH resolution
; delayedPresent: When useMultihead enabled, delay primary monitor present to sync with secondary head
; swapOrder: Swap order at which the frame contents are copied
; autoSquash: Automatically squash output to middle monitor if only pretransformed (GUI) elements are drawn
; d3d8dll: Path to D3D8.dll/D3D9.dll to use or auto for automatic (system32 dir)
cylindicalCorretionAngle=0
hideNondefaultDevices=0
forceHorizontalFOV=0
forceResolutionWidth=0
forceResolutionHeight=0
force16bitDepth=0
sleepBeforeRead=2
useMultihead=0
delayedPresent=0
swapOrder=0
autoSquash=0
d3d8dll=auto

[hooks]
; Win32 API hooking settings - Used for some extra compatibility and game-specific fixes
; doHooking: Enable/disable hooks in Direct3D, with OpenGL hooks are always enabled
; doScaleMouseCoordinates: Scale mouse coordinates for getCursorPos to fix games which do not handle negative screen coordinates properly
; doScaleFromLeftScreen: Spread out mouse coordinates from left screen to full width
; doScaleWindowRects: Scale game window rectangle to triplehead size
; mouseXoffset: Number of pixels to offset mouse cursor position in X axis, to fix misplaced cursor due to negative screen coordinates. auto = use X resolution
doHooking=1
doScaleMouseCoordinates=0
doScaleFromLeftScreen=0
doScaleWindowRects=0
mouseXoffset=auto

; Triplehead screenmodes to add to resolutions list (width multiplied by 3 and border added)
; Must be last in this file
[modes]
640x480x60
640x480x75
640x480x85
800x600x60
800x600x75
800x600x85
1024x768x60
1024x768x75
1024x768x85
1280x960x60
1280x960x75
1280x960x85
1280x1024x60
1280x1024x75
1280x1024x85
1600x1200x60
1600x1200x75
1600x1200x85

That's my config file....... LFS now fires up, but still only shows the game in the center screen, the only way to get it onto my right hand screen is if i change the resolution. (stretching the screen and placing the center point between the two...)
What are your screen resolutions?

After you have SoftTH all set up, you still need to select the new resolution in game in the options menu for it to take effect.
#20 - MR_B
What I needed to do in the end was uninstall my graphics drivers, including the nvidia control panel, and let it go back to windows default, then re-install them again.

So now i've got two lovely working monitors, woohoo! BTW...... is there any way to manually change the resolution of LFS without going into the game???? I couldn't find it in a cfg file...

Thanks

Running two monitors with view centered on one display, offset on the other
(20 posts, started )
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