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using multiple monitors / video outputs?
Hello there!
As you can see in my profile, we are working on a car simulator. For that, we would like to have multiple video outputs e.g. for front-view, wing mirrors, rear view mirrors and so on.
Is it possible in Unity to access multiple outputs of one video card or to access multiple video cards?
Another solution would be, that we have a PC for every view and we send the current position via LAN. But that could be a bit expensive with currently 4 planned views and another 2 in the future ;)
Any suggestions? On every question stated here, I got an answer very quickly. Thanks for that again dudes!
Your project sounds interesting. Have you been working with Paul Pauli at any stage? He has VR projects for tunnel safety running as far as I remember.
Nope, never heard of Paul Pauli. But a workmate is working in exact this sector with VR too. I think I will have a talk with him :)
Professor at Wuerzburg University. They are doing quite a few VR studies. Fear of flying, tunnel saftey, etc.
Answer by Sebas · Feb 10, 2010 at 11:18 PM
We also use multiple video outputs in our lab setting. We output to a total of 6 projectors. Our older setup included the LAN version which you described, but as far as I remember we ran into latency issues and the setup is just much more complicated than necessary. This setup was using Quest3D, so not sure whether Unity would provide a better solution there.
What we currently do is use those TripleHead2Go and span everything as one large desktop. You can then adjust which content needs to be displayed where by using different normalized viewport rectangles (link)
As far as I know it's not directly possible to target a certain output of your video card (at least that's what it was like with Quest3D and a few other engines). Please, anybody correct me if I'm wrong.
Thanks for the link! I think, this is exactly what we need. I will have a try, if our machine can handle 3 viewports at the same time. If it can handle it, we will have a TripleHead2Go soon. Then, I will report back, how it works. Thanks again.
Answer by StephanK · Feb 12, 2010 at 12:04 AM
Maybe this answer helps?
http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/1786/unity3d-to-cave-systems
Hey spree, thanks for the answer! VR Juggler (mentioned in this thread) sounds very interesting. I will have a look. Currently, we aren't using a real CAVE-Sytem, but another $$anonymous$$m here does. Perhaps they can use it.
Answer by Wolfram · Oct 27, 2010 at 06:01 PM
In the hope that my answer is not in vain (since this questino already has an accepted answer), there are two other possibilities:
With additional graphics cards and SLI/CrossFire, you no longer need a TripleHead2Go, since ATI EyeFinity and Nvidia Surround re-introduce the Horizontal Spanning mode (=wide desktops), which got lost since Win Vista, as a "this is a brand new feature, buy our updated products!".
Without any additional hardware at all, there is a weird workaround to achieve a wide-screen fullscreen window with Unity, where you can use your two monitors connected to a single graphics card, and using the "normal" DualView mode that Windows provides:
The trick is to create a custom resolution (with the nvidia control panel) that is 1 pixel less than your wide resolution. Once this resolution is defined, it is available to Unity's resolution dialog. Start the app with that resolution (windowed, not fullscreen!), and the resulting window will fill the available space as good as possible (except for the window decorations/borders/title bar) (instead of shrinking to a smaller window, which happens if you include that last pixel in your resolution). With tools such as AutoHotKey you can get rid of these decorations, and have a fullscreen image. The disadvantage, however, is that the rendering canvas will be scaled, not resized, when hiding the window decorations, so your Anti-Aliasing will lose some quality.
For example, if you have 2 monitors with 720p each (=1280x720), create a custom resolution for 2559x719. Don't use that resolution, keep your monitors at 1280x720.
This thread describes this workaround in detail: http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=242644
Answer by efge · Feb 13, 2010 at 09:06 AM
Found this thread on the forum. Maybe it is interesting for you:
Hey, thanks for the link. It's an interesting project, but it doesn't fit our needs. We need seperated views and they "only" have a real big one.
Answer by lowbloodsugar · Feb 12, 2010 at 03:42 AM
Willkommen!
Unfortunately, Sebas is correct. Unless you are running your simulation on multiple computers, Unity has this limitation. If you decide to use TripleHead2Go, you will notice that its hard to get unity to fullscreen on a secondary monitor. The next release of unity will allow you push fullscreen rendering to the secondary output, but an app called Ultramon will help you in the meantime.
An alternative to complex multiple projector systems is using a single spherical projector inside of a dome or other curved screen. Our company sells such immersive projection systems and we have a spherical rendering plugin for Unity.
Clement
Do you need to have Unity fullscreen on a second monitor? I'd just go fullscreen across all screens and divide content up by using several viewports.
I will have a look at elumenati, but I think its too expensive for a small project like ours. Additionally, we have purchased a beamer yet.
Perhaps you can just send me an E-$$anonymous$$ail with a rough budget we would have to spend? In the inquiry-form on the website, you have to define a budget. But its not easy for us to say something like "exactly that".