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(Redirected from Multi monitor)
'Multi-monitor', also know as 'Multi-head' and 'Dual-Monitor' are synonymous terms referring to the use of multiple physical display devices such as monitors, televisions and projectors in order to increase the area available for computer programs running on a single computer system.
Setting up multiple monitors can be an inexpensive way of improving computer usage. It increases the display area, although it is still limited by the size, resolution and number of the monitors. The monitors used for multi-monitor can be different types (LCD or CRT) and sizes. The operating system manages the monitors' resolutions independently.
Video output on a computer is generated by a video card and is interpreted and displayed by a variety of devices. Video cards are typically connected to a monitor (of either the CRT or LCD type), however they are increasingly being connected to projection equipment or television sets. As a result of this trend, manufacturers have produced video cards which can connect to several types of display devices using the appropriate interface. A video card that has two sockets on it (for two monitor cables) is referred to as Dual Head. Two separate video cards are just as acceptable, and so is using the motherboard video socket plus a second video card.
Dual monitor support once depended on specialized proprietary video drivers supplied with few video cards, but recently, support for dual monitor configuration comes as a standard feature in Microsoft Windows, Apple's Mac OS X, and on the X Window System. The latest versions of MS Windows support up to 64 monitors.
Initially, the multiple output interface was designed to display the same image on all output interfaces (sometimes referred to as 'mirroring' or 'cloning'). This reflected the fact that these video cards were originally used in presentations where the user typically had his or her face to the audience with a duplicate of the projected image available to the presenter. This concept was further developed by manufacturers and led to the "extended" or "independent displays" mode and the "spanning" or "stretched" display mode. In both these modes, display devices are positioned next to each other in order to create the illusion that the two displays are logically contiguous.
In "extended" mode, additional desktop area is created on additional monitors. Each monitor can use different settings (resolution, color, refresh rate).
Alternately, some video cards are able to "span" the existing desktop area across two monitors rather than create additional desktop space. This is accomplished by using a widescreen resolution such as 2048x768. That is, 2 monitors at 1024x768 resolution each. Each monitor needs to have the same resolution and color depth settings, and often the same refresh rate.
Three main commercial competitors are ATI Technologies with its Hydravision, Matrox with its DualHead Multi-Display and NVIDIA's nView. The technology was once limited to the professional graphics market, but with the advent of more powerful graphic processing units, and the bundling of the software with the respective display cards, penetration into the consumer market has been enabled.
When configuring the layout of your Multiple-Monitor system, it is imperative that you use a layout which will provide optimum productivity. According to [This Article]:
Using Xdmx, which is an X Window proxy, it is possible to have multiple monitors displaying as a single virtual desktop. Multiple university display wall projects use this capability,[1] such as The LambdaVision display by the University of Illinois at Chicago's Electronic Visualization Laboratory, with 55 LCD monitors which are connected to 32 PCs.[2] This results in a 17600 x 6000 pixel display. As long as the xinerama extension is enabled, GNOME can use the entire desktop.
Software such as Maxivista for Windows and ScreenRecycler for Mac OS X let you set up multiple PC multi-monitor mode through virtual display drivers and client-side software.[3] ScreenRecycler uses VNC to achieve this by setting up the primary PC as a VNC server, and configuring other PCs as VNC clients that display the primary PC's extended desktop.[4] Each of these can also be set up to allow desktop sharing.
The primary disadvantage to the usage of dual monitors is that the resources of the video card are effectively halved when the second display device is connected. The decreased processing power and VRAM available to each display may lead to unacceptable performance on both devices. In this case, the second display device may be connected to an additional video adapter installed in the computer allowing the full processing and VRAM capability for each device. However, as newer and more powerful graphics cards are introduced, this problem is not so much of an issue.
Full-screen software also poses a problem on multi-monitor PCs. A large amount of full-screen applications makes use of the absolute edge of the display to control view movement. Unfortunately, this software generally does not work properly on a multi-monitor PC unless the software specifically was designed to be multi-monitor aware.
You can often find “edge-scrolling” in full-screen image viewers, 3D model editors, and RTS (RealTime Strategy) genre video games.
Despite that the use of multi-monitor PCs is steadily growing, there still are significantly more single monitor PC users out there. As a result of this vast majority of single display users, software developers often see adding multi-display support to their titles as a low priority (since so little of their potential market-base uses multi-display systems). This will likely change someday as the percent of multi-monitor PC users increases, yet at present multi monitor computing is still fairly limited in the home consumer market.
The problem that full-screen applications present is that they generally only cover one of the displays on a multi-monitor computer. Edge-scrolling still works in these applications if you position the mouse cursor on the absolute edge of the screen, yet this is often impractical and hard to do. The reason that you cannot easily position the mouse on the absolute edge is simple; the desktop space on a multi-monitor PC is not limited to just that display. Instead of the mouse cursor stopping at the screen's edge (where the software developers assumed that it would), the cursor migrates into the adjacent monitor's desktop space.
On a Microsoft Windows PC, it turns out that this is actually much more of a problem than one might first think. All sorts of severe problems can arise if the user clicks outside of the full-screen application's display area. Clicking in another display has a similar effect to hitting the Windows key or Alt-Tab. In other words, clicking on another display causes the desktop to gain focus, which in turn causes the full-screen application to lose focus.
Ideally, software should be written to be multi-monitor aware. However, until that happens there's a variety of ways to overcome the edge-scrolling problem.
One of the most common methods of overcoming the edge-scrolling problem is to setup your multi-monitor orientation on a diagonal. With a diagonal orientation there is no desktop space to the left, right, top, or bottom of the full-screen application. What this does for full-screen applications is prevent the mouse cursor from moving beyond the screen edge (since there's no desktop space there), thus permitting the user to edge-scroll properly. As a downside, a diagonal orientation can make moving the mouse from monitor to monitor difficult. It also often does not match the physical arrangement of monitors, adding to difficulty in working between displays.
Another method is to temporarily remove the offending monitors (literally). While this clearly lets a person run their software properly, it may not be desired to disable all other displays. On a Windows platform removing displays from the screen layout tends to also push all shortcuts onto the remaining active monitor(s). This can be overcome by using utilities that can store shortcut locations, such as ATT (ATI Tray Tools).
There are also some programs that provide full workarounds to the issue. One such utility is CSMMT[5].
The multi monitor tools available with the operating system, such as Microsoft Windows can be very limiting. Most of the drivers for video adapters capable of managing multiple monitors enhance the OS's features by their own. Aside from the VGA drivers few third party applications have been created to fill the gaps that the operating systems have not fulfilled. For Windows, Ultramon is a shareware utility that gives you much more control over multi monitor set-ups. ATI provides the free Hydravision software for its cards.
The interface of the systems graphics cards governs on what is needed for the setup. Newer graphics cards usually come with 1 DVI port and 1 VGA port or 2 DVI ports. CRT monitors usually utilise the VGA port but higher end CRTs can use the DVI and LCDs depending on the model can support either. Users who have a Graphics Card with 2 DVI ports will need to use a DVI-VGA converter to use a CRT monitor in the setup.
The most common setup for a pair of monitors is side by side (as pictured above) however it isn't uncommon for those who work with graphics to place (sometimes for short periods of time) a monitor above another.
Since computers with two or more PCIe interfaces and dual core CPUs are getting more popular, high-end computer users no longer feel limited to two monitors driven by a single main graphics adapter. It is not too uncommon to see users with three or even four monitors connected to a system with multiple graphics adapters. If a dual PCIe interface is not available, a standard PCI graphics card can be used along with a PCIe or AGP card to extend to two or more monitors. Also, some specialized cards support more than two monitors with a single card. Particularly in CAD, Day-Trading, and Software Development environments, it is gradually becoming more common to see as many as six or more monitors on one production system [1].
An additional and different approach to multiple monitor systems involves using the monitors of networked computers to display the output of a central computer. By using the graphic cards of the networked computers, stability and speed are dramatically enhanced. This is often a preferred choice for systems in which adding additional graphics cards is problematic, such as laptops.
Products such as MaxiVista allow a modern laptop running Windows to extend their desktop to up to three additional monitors powered by networked computers. If the laptop user plugs an additional monitor into the external monitor jack that are included with most laptops, this allows for a total of 5 monitors to be used at the same time.
The additional monitors can be extensions of the desktop or mirrors of the central display. The arrangement of these monitors can be configured within the properties tab in the windows display dialog box, making horizontal, vertical, or other monitor configurations possible. Further, because the additional monitors are powered by networked computers, they can be located wherever the network reaches, both wireless and hardwired.
In many professions, the use of two or more monitors being driven from one machine is not a new one. While in the past, it has meant multiple graphics adapters and specialized software, it was common for engineers to have at least two, if not more, displays to enhance productivity.[6]
Now that Multi-Monitor setups are more budget-friendly, it is not uncommon to see other professionals use two monitors to quickly view documents side-by-side. This advantage helps push the idea of a paperless office, and is helping to make it more feasible. However, the use of one widescreen monitor also permits viewing of two documents side-by-side.
It was, for a time, a popular configuration for software developers to have a VGA display for the program under development and an independent monochrome Hercules card driving a separate monitor for debugging. The first Macintosh computer to support multiple monitors was the Macintosh II. The Macintosh SE/30, which had one slot in it, also supported a second monitor which could be colour even though the main monitor only supported grey-scale.
★ The Nintendo DS handheld system has two color LCDs placed vertically.
★ The Wacom Cintiq [2] is a drawing tablet/monitor combo, sometimes used alone, but it is often used as a secondary monitor.
★ The PC game Supreme Commander supports Multi-monitors in a dynamic way, effectively displaying two aspects of the game simultaneously.
★ The PC game often cited as one of the first video games to utilize a multiple monitor setup.
★ Bloomberg's workers use two monitors.
1. http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/os-mltihed/index.html
2. http://www.evl.uic.edu/cavern/lambdavision/display.html
3. http://www.maxivista.com
4. http://www.screenrecycler.com
5. http://www.comroestudios.com/CSMMT.html
6. Bill Gates. April 7, 2006. How I Work. Fortune.
★ Multiseat
'Multi-monitor', also know as 'Multi-head' and 'Dual-Monitor' are synonymous terms referring to the use of multiple physical display devices such as monitors, televisions and projectors in order to increase the area available for computer programs running on a single computer system.
Single PC multi-monitor
Setting up multiple monitors can be an inexpensive way of improving computer usage. It increases the display area, although it is still limited by the size, resolution and number of the monitors. The monitors used for multi-monitor can be different types (LCD or CRT) and sizes. The operating system manages the monitors' resolutions independently.
Video output on a computer is generated by a video card and is interpreted and displayed by a variety of devices. Video cards are typically connected to a monitor (of either the CRT or LCD type), however they are increasingly being connected to projection equipment or television sets. As a result of this trend, manufacturers have produced video cards which can connect to several types of display devices using the appropriate interface. A video card that has two sockets on it (for two monitor cables) is referred to as Dual Head. Two separate video cards are just as acceptable, and so is using the motherboard video socket plus a second video card.
Dual monitor support once depended on specialized proprietary video drivers supplied with few video cards, but recently, support for dual monitor configuration comes as a standard feature in Microsoft Windows, Apple's Mac OS X, and on the X Window System. The latest versions of MS Windows support up to 64 monitors.
Initially, the multiple output interface was designed to display the same image on all output interfaces (sometimes referred to as 'mirroring' or 'cloning'). This reflected the fact that these video cards were originally used in presentations where the user typically had his or her face to the audience with a duplicate of the projected image available to the presenter. This concept was further developed by manufacturers and led to the "extended" or "independent displays" mode and the "spanning" or "stretched" display mode. In both these modes, display devices are positioned next to each other in order to create the illusion that the two displays are logically contiguous.
In "extended" mode, additional desktop area is created on additional monitors. Each monitor can use different settings (resolution, color, refresh rate).
Alternately, some video cards are able to "span" the existing desktop area across two monitors rather than create additional desktop space. This is accomplished by using a widescreen resolution such as 2048x768. That is, 2 monitors at 1024x768 resolution each. Each monitor needs to have the same resolution and color depth settings, and often the same refresh rate.
Three main commercial competitors are ATI Technologies with its Hydravision, Matrox with its DualHead Multi-Display and NVIDIA's nView. The technology was once limited to the professional graphics market, but with the advent of more powerful graphic processing units, and the bundling of the software with the respective display cards, penetration into the consumer market has been enabled.
When configuring the layout of your Multiple-Monitor system, it is imperative that you use a layout which will provide optimum productivity. According to [This Article]:
The optimal layout is for each screen to be equidistant from the viewer, pointed directly at the viewer [...] A 180-degree encapsulation is the best. Then again, I don't mind turning my head sometimes as long as the main concentration of information (Specifically, actively productive information) is within the front-center 30-degree arc.
Multiple PC multi-monitor
Using Xdmx, which is an X Window proxy, it is possible to have multiple monitors displaying as a single virtual desktop. Multiple university display wall projects use this capability,[1] such as The LambdaVision display by the University of Illinois at Chicago's Electronic Visualization Laboratory, with 55 LCD monitors which are connected to 32 PCs.[2] This results in a 17600 x 6000 pixel display. As long as the xinerama extension is enabled, GNOME can use the entire desktop.
Software such as Maxivista for Windows and ScreenRecycler for Mac OS X let you set up multiple PC multi-monitor mode through virtual display drivers and client-side software.[3] ScreenRecycler uses VNC to achieve this by setting up the primary PC as a VNC server, and configuring other PCs as VNC clients that display the primary PC's extended desktop.[4] Each of these can also be set up to allow desktop sharing.
Disadvantages
The primary disadvantage to the usage of dual monitors is that the resources of the video card are effectively halved when the second display device is connected. The decreased processing power and VRAM available to each display may lead to unacceptable performance on both devices. In this case, the second display device may be connected to an additional video adapter installed in the computer allowing the full processing and VRAM capability for each device. However, as newer and more powerful graphics cards are introduced, this problem is not so much of an issue.
Full-screen software also poses a problem on multi-monitor PCs. A large amount of full-screen applications makes use of the absolute edge of the display to control view movement. Unfortunately, this software generally does not work properly on a multi-monitor PC unless the software specifically was designed to be multi-monitor aware.
You can often find “edge-scrolling” in full-screen image viewers, 3D model editors, and RTS (RealTime Strategy) genre video games.
Despite that the use of multi-monitor PCs is steadily growing, there still are significantly more single monitor PC users out there. As a result of this vast majority of single display users, software developers often see adding multi-display support to their titles as a low priority (since so little of their potential market-base uses multi-display systems). This will likely change someday as the percent of multi-monitor PC users increases, yet at present multi monitor computing is still fairly limited in the home consumer market.
The problem that full-screen applications present is that they generally only cover one of the displays on a multi-monitor computer. Edge-scrolling still works in these applications if you position the mouse cursor on the absolute edge of the screen, yet this is often impractical and hard to do. The reason that you cannot easily position the mouse on the absolute edge is simple; the desktop space on a multi-monitor PC is not limited to just that display. Instead of the mouse cursor stopping at the screen's edge (where the software developers assumed that it would), the cursor migrates into the adjacent monitor's desktop space.
On a Microsoft Windows PC, it turns out that this is actually much more of a problem than one might first think. All sorts of severe problems can arise if the user clicks outside of the full-screen application's display area. Clicking in another display has a similar effect to hitting the Windows key or Alt-Tab. In other words, clicking on another display causes the desktop to gain focus, which in turn causes the full-screen application to lose focus.
Ideally, software should be written to be multi-monitor aware. However, until that happens there's a variety of ways to overcome the edge-scrolling problem.
One of the most common methods of overcoming the edge-scrolling problem is to setup your multi-monitor orientation on a diagonal. With a diagonal orientation there is no desktop space to the left, right, top, or bottom of the full-screen application. What this does for full-screen applications is prevent the mouse cursor from moving beyond the screen edge (since there's no desktop space there), thus permitting the user to edge-scroll properly. As a downside, a diagonal orientation can make moving the mouse from monitor to monitor difficult. It also often does not match the physical arrangement of monitors, adding to difficulty in working between displays.
Another method is to temporarily remove the offending monitors (literally). While this clearly lets a person run their software properly, it may not be desired to disable all other displays. On a Windows platform removing displays from the screen layout tends to also push all shortcuts onto the remaining active monitor(s). This can be overcome by using utilities that can store shortcut locations, such as ATT (ATI Tray Tools).
There are also some programs that provide full workarounds to the issue. One such utility is CSMMT[5].
Tools
The multi monitor tools available with the operating system, such as Microsoft Windows can be very limiting. Most of the drivers for video adapters capable of managing multiple monitors enhance the OS's features by their own. Aside from the VGA drivers few third party applications have been created to fill the gaps that the operating systems have not fulfilled. For Windows, Ultramon is a shareware utility that gives you much more control over multi monitor set-ups. ATI provides the free Hydravision software for its cards.
Graphics cards
The interface of the systems graphics cards governs on what is needed for the setup. Newer graphics cards usually come with 1 DVI port and 1 VGA port or 2 DVI ports. CRT monitors usually utilise the VGA port but higher end CRTs can use the DVI and LCDs depending on the model can support either. Users who have a Graphics Card with 2 DVI ports will need to use a DVI-VGA converter to use a CRT monitor in the setup.
The most common setup for a pair of monitors is side by side (as pictured above) however it isn't uncommon for those who work with graphics to place (sometimes for short periods of time) a monitor above another.
More than two monitors
Since computers with two or more PCIe interfaces and dual core CPUs are getting more popular, high-end computer users no longer feel limited to two monitors driven by a single main graphics adapter. It is not too uncommon to see users with three or even four monitors connected to a system with multiple graphics adapters. If a dual PCIe interface is not available, a standard PCI graphics card can be used along with a PCIe or AGP card to extend to two or more monitors. Also, some specialized cards support more than two monitors with a single card. Particularly in CAD, Day-Trading, and Software Development environments, it is gradually becoming more common to see as many as six or more monitors on one production system [1].
Using monitors of networked computers
An additional and different approach to multiple monitor systems involves using the monitors of networked computers to display the output of a central computer. By using the graphic cards of the networked computers, stability and speed are dramatically enhanced. This is often a preferred choice for systems in which adding additional graphics cards is problematic, such as laptops.
Products such as MaxiVista allow a modern laptop running Windows to extend their desktop to up to three additional monitors powered by networked computers. If the laptop user plugs an additional monitor into the external monitor jack that are included with most laptops, this allows for a total of 5 monitors to be used at the same time.
The additional monitors can be extensions of the desktop or mirrors of the central display. The arrangement of these monitors can be configured within the properties tab in the windows display dialog box, making horizontal, vertical, or other monitor configurations possible. Further, because the additional monitors are powered by networked computers, they can be located wherever the network reaches, both wireless and hardwired.
Multi-display setups in the workplace
In many professions, the use of two or more monitors being driven from one machine is not a new one. While in the past, it has meant multiple graphics adapters and specialized software, it was common for engineers to have at least two, if not more, displays to enhance productivity.[6]
Now that Multi-Monitor setups are more budget-friendly, it is not uncommon to see other professionals use two monitors to quickly view documents side-by-side. This advantage helps push the idea of a paperless office, and is helping to make it more feasible. However, the use of one widescreen monitor also permits viewing of two documents side-by-side.
Other uses
Older uses
It was, for a time, a popular configuration for software developers to have a VGA display for the program under development and an independent monochrome Hercules card driving a separate monitor for debugging. The first Macintosh computer to support multiple monitors was the Macintosh II. The Macintosh SE/30, which had one slot in it, also supported a second monitor which could be colour even though the main monitor only supported grey-scale.
Other items of interest
★ The Nintendo DS handheld system has two color LCDs placed vertically.
★ The Wacom Cintiq [2] is a drawing tablet/monitor combo, sometimes used alone, but it is often used as a secondary monitor.
★ The PC game Supreme Commander supports Multi-monitors in a dynamic way, effectively displaying two aspects of the game simultaneously.
★ The PC game often cited as one of the first video games to utilize a multiple monitor setup.
★ Bloomberg's workers use two monitors.
References
1. http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/os-mltihed/index.html
2. http://www.evl.uic.edu/cavern/lambdavision/display.html
3. http://www.maxivista.com
4. http://www.screenrecycler.com
5. http://www.comroestudios.com/CSMMT.html
6. Bill Gates. April 7, 2006. How I Work. Fortune.
See also
★ Multiseat
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