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Can I put a virtual monitor in Unity
Hi, Can I put a virtual monitor (display) in unity which shows the output of another program? Is it possible in free or pro Unity?
I want to put someones experimental data onto a monitor in a virtual lab and hopefully be able to toggle that monitor to full screen in the game.
I don't even know where to start.
all Ideas and suggestions welcome.
Answer by Eric5h5 · Sep 18, 2012 at 04:08 PM
You would use rendertextures in Unity Pro for the monitor graphics. As for the output, that depends. If the output is in the form of a file, you can use System.IO.File functions to load the file, then you can parse the data in Unity and use that to create the graphics you'll use for the rendertexture.
Thanks Eric5h5. I know nothing about System.IO and have been searching the scirpt reference and answers to learn more. But I really need a book or tutorial on this stuff as it is very new to me and I'm going to need it lots in the near future. Can you recommend a book or tutorial on system.IO and www?
Thanks for any direction you can give...
sorry about putting "http://System.IO" I don't know what it means. $$anonymous$$y mac did that when I wasn't looking. I just meant "system.IO".
No, it's this website that does that...it's trying to be "helpful". (Amongst many other bugs....) Anyway, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.aspx
Answer by DaveA · Sep 19, 2012 at 01:40 AM
If you mean the arbitrary output of some arbitrary program being piped into Unity, the answer is: maybe sorta, not easy. You could manage some screen grabs of the area and socket them in via WWW (local server) or socket programming, or a DLL.
If you mean some data that can be put into a file, and that file then displayed in some way, the answer it probably, may be hard. If it's just some numbers, you can format them onto a texture or something. If it's a web page, you'd want a web browser that can render to a texture like that (someone did it for mac, don't know about PC).
So, what kind of data do you want to show?
Thanks Dave A. The input comes from (or has been pre-recorded from) analytical equipment and then goes through a package to produce a graphical interface. So I can take the data from anywhere along that process. eg. csv or gpu output. I deally I think I'd prefer to use the screen output as it saves the work of reproducing what a package has already produced.
So really I need to be able input video realtime from a program. I suppose a bit like virtual youtube. But I may end up using simulated data in the form of csv.
Sorry to be so vague. I'm still considering the best way to proceed.
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