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EVE New Citizens Q&A

 
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Dual monitor support.
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Areen Sassel
Dirac Angestun Gesept
#1 - 2014-06-25 13:43:54 UTC
Background: I have two CRT monitors (no, really), a 21" and 19". However, neither of these has anything but VGA input, so one has to be plugged into my graphics card, one into the motherboard's on-board graphics. For most stuff this is fine; games on the 21", wiki or IM or whatever on the 19".

Eve, however, has proper dual monitor support; and with the Overview, full-height Local chat, a box for whatever channel I'm actually talking in, d-scan, and maybe a hacking minigame, there is not very much room left in 1280x960 to actually see the game. :-)

So, I'm looking at buying another monitor with a DVI and/or HDMI input, and hopefully checking here that there aren't any unforeseen problems before I drop any cash on one.

Well, I'll get another 21" CRT and... hm, it's not 2005 anymore, is it, and flatscreens have fixed native resolutions. Well, I'll get something else 960 pixels high and... bother.

So, first question: can the dual monitor support cope with a non-rectangular display area (suppose I have a 1920x1080 next to a 1280x960)? I'll cope if it's by spitting out 3200x1080 and letting a corner of the screen fall off.

If not, I believe I can coax the CRT into doing 1440x1080, which is in the right aspect ratio.

Next question: if so, is the dual monitor support restricted to multiples of common monitor sizes (eg 2x1920x1080), or if I turn up with this oddball 3360x1080 desktop, will it work?
Velarra
#2 - 2014-06-25 13:51:57 UTC
Areen Sassel wrote:
Background: I have two CRT monitors (no, really), a 21" and 19". However, neither of these has anything but VGA input, so one has to be plugged into my graphics card, one into the motherboard's on-board graphics. For most stuff this is fine; games on the 21", wiki or IM or whatever on the 19"


What sort of CPU/Motherboard + Graphics card combination are you running?

How well does Windows work while running on both the Integrated + Discreet graphics card?
Tyrendian Biohazard
The Bastards
Sedition.
#3 - 2014-06-25 14:21:52 UTC
I don't know about running dual video graphics outputs, but when I first started, I used to play on a 32 inch TV, with a 19inch monitor. Natively, the TV would go 1366x768, and the monitor 1440x900. With some tweaking, I could run EVE at 2732x768 across both, and use the camera adjustment to keep ship, overview, HUD on the TV, and chat, browser, etc on the other. The monitor would adjust and things would be stretched a bit. It was a bit odd but was able to get used to it. However, I didn't like it in the long run, and just ended up buying multiple 1920x1080 displays that I use now.

Twitch streamer and EVE NT tournament broadcaster.
Areen Sassel
Dirac Angestun Gesept
#4 - 2014-06-25 15:40:56 UTC
I think I may have confused issues slightly by mentioning the current arrangement; sorry about that. I don't want to try and use both the graphics card (Radeon HD6670) and the motherboard's onboard graphics to play EVE, because I'm pretty sure that's impossible (and if it wasn't, I wouldn't need a new monitor). I want to buy a panel that will plug into one of the other outputs on the graphics card and then use the card to drive the 21" CRT and the new panel - forget about the motherboard graphics and the 19" CRT.

Tyrendian Biohazard, that's interesting to know, since 2732x768 is a totally oddball size. Thanks.
Velarra
#5 - 2014-06-25 16:21:32 UTC  |  Edited by: Velarra
Areen Sassel wrote:
I want to buy a panel that will plug into one of the other outputs on the graphics card and then use the card to drive the 21" CRT and the new panel - forget about the motherboard graphics and the 19" CRT.


Should work. If they're differing physical & resolution sizes, it may look a bit odd yet remain modestly functional relative to how jarring the difference between the 2 screens happens to be.

I've run Eve 1440x900 & 1920x 1080 in the moderately distant past via a 15" & 24" screen combination.

While it worked, the difference between screen sizes was a bit too disconcerting to use even if technically functional. You can even center the camera / UI to the screen of your preference.

In any event, which motherboard/CPU are you running that lets you run windows + game via onboard integrated graphics + the Discrete ATI graphics card? (Even if the game is only being processed by the discreet card.)

(re: integrated gfx going to an external screen would be great for various forms of low intensity non-game/windows information display, no? :) re: Task Manager, System temperature, web-browsing, )
Tau Cabalander
Retirement Retreat
Working Stiffs
#6 - 2014-06-25 16:54:58 UTC  |  Edited by: Tau Cabalander
Areen Sassel wrote:
So, first question: can the dual monitor support cope with a non-rectangular display area (suppose I have a 1920x1080 next to a 1280x960)? I'll cope if it's by spitting out 3200x1080 and letting a corner of the screen fall off.

If not, I believe I can coax the CRT into doing 1440x1080, which is in the right aspect ratio.

EVE runs fine at most any resolution that is usable. Put it in window mode, and you can size it as needed.

I have two 24 inch 16:10 IPS LED displays (1920 x 1200), as I hate 16:9 widescreens (1920 x 1080) for general computing.

Areen Sassel wrote:
Next question: if so, is the dual monitor support restricted to multiples of common monitor sizes (eg 2x1920x1080), or if I turn up with this oddball 3360x1080 desktop, will it work?

See above.

I do recommend IPS displays when using multiple LED monitors, as it avoids viewing angle issues (brightness and colour can appear to shift on non-IPS LED monitors).

I also colour calibrate when using multiple monitors. A colour calibrator is a good investment.
Schmata Bastanold
In Boobiez We Trust
#7 - 2014-06-25 19:45:54 UTC
Maybe it's obvious but WTF do you want to continue using CRT? With prices of LED screens being so low you could buy two identical screens and use them to display 1 client on both or 2 clients on each of them without any need for setting different resolutions, etc.

I mean I have heard about CRT being awesome for some graphic work due to better color fidelity or sth but if that's a case I would rather use just 1 screen for Eve (new one) and keep CRT for out of game things/work.

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Areen Sassel
Dirac Angestun Gesept
#8 - 2014-06-26 00:37:58 UTC  |  Edited by: Areen Sassel
If this wall of text makes you think tl;dr: problem solved, thank you all for your suggestions.


First of all, a discovery; if I set the EVE client to Windowed and both tubes to 1280x960, it will quite happily pop up to 2560x960 with one half of the window on each monitor.

I did not expect that! Half the game is being 3D accelerated by the graphics card and the other half by the onboard graphics. Is that even possible? (Obviously it is - and yeah, I checked the cables and have not lost my mind - but I would never have predicted that). The frame rate's down (since presumably the onboard graphics are the limiting factor) but quite respectable, and this lets me experiment with side-by-side setups with zero outlay. (But why on earth can't I put the viewpoint at 75%? This is surely something totally predictable for a player with two identical monitors to want to do. If I can, feel free to tell me how.)

Velarra wrote:
In any event, which motherboard/CPU are you running that lets you run windows + game via onboard integrated graphics + the Discrete ATI graphics card? (Even if the game is only being processed by the discreet card.)

Ah, I didn't realise you were more generally interested in this beyond the oddities of my setup. Sorry. To be honest, I didn't know it might not work; I didn't plan this setup, but when we started to play Starship Artemis over the Internet, I dusted off the 19" tube to use as a second display - if you're an Artemis player by themselves it is really, really useful to have two consoles, one for the Main Screen.

It's a Sapphire A85XT (ie, AMD A85X chipset) motherboard with an AMD A4 4000 CPU (2 cores, 3GHz). On these, the "motherboard" graphics are actually built into the CPU, which in this case has a Radeon HD 7480G built-in.

(You may be saying, Areen, this is mad; why would you buy this fancy CPU integrated 3D graphics arrangement when
you planned to put in a separate graphics card, and _then_ not get the A8 or A10 CPU which lets you use the AMD Dual Graphics thingy to combine the on-CPU and graphics card acceleration for some purposes? Answer: I had the graphics card already, and the CPU was scrounged up for free.)

The arrangement seems perfectly fine apart from the way that the EVE client hides itself if you try and interact with an application on the other monitor, so you can't actually look things up on the Wiki while watching D-scan like a paranoid. It's not in general any different to two monitors on one graphics card, that I can see.

Tau Cabalander wrote:
I do recommend IPS displays when using multiple LED monitors, as it avoids viewing angle issues (brightness and colour can appear to shift on non-IPS LED monitors).

Good point, but I wouldn't have that issue, fortunately; if I bought one flat panel, it would sit in front of me with the 21" tube off to one side.

If. It turns out active DVI-D to VGA converters are about 15 quid, which is a much, much better deal than a new monitor, so I could just hang both tubes off the main graphics card.

Schmata Bastanold wrote:
Maybe it's obvious but WTF do you want to continue using CRT? With prices of LED screens being so low.

I thought someone would ask me that, and it's a fair question. For two reasons:

1) Flatscreens are cheap these days, but the CRTs I own already are free. I'd still be looking at 190 quid for a good quality flatscreen with a high contrast ratio and 2ms response time. The extra electricity tubes burn is less than one might think. My 21" VMP 510 tube pulls 165W; the flatscreen I was looking at, 42W. With electricity at about 13p a kWh, I'd have to run the VMP 510 for about 11,000 hours before I was saving any money. 20 hours of videogaming a week (I should be so lucky), that's... over ten years. (And that's without considering whether I can reasonably count some of the electricity in winter, when I'd be heating the study otherwise, as free).

Also, I'm not exactly loaded right now. 190 quid isn't a lot, but it's a stretch this month, probably this year.

2) Retrogaming resolution. It's no longer a complete disaster trying to get 4:3 games to run on 16:9 flatscreens (for example, the ASUS flatscreens have a mode to put sidebars on a 4:3 picture, presumably because someone noticed flatscreen TVs have done this forever), but CRTs still have a really compelling advantage in being able to say "Sure, send me any resolution, within reason; I'll deal with it."

And, sort of 2a) sure, I don't need fancy graphic-artist colour balance, but it is nice when black is dark and white is bright, and CRTs still handle that better than the sort of dark-grey-ish of a panel.

Plus when it rains and you get soaked you can't dry your gloves and hat on top of an LED screen. :-)
Schmata Bastanold
In Boobiez We Trust
#9 - 2014-06-26 06:44:23 UTC
Oh, energy consumption of my hardware is never my concern, it takes what it needs, "HTFU and pay your bills" is my approach otherwise it would be like buying a H3 and complain about gas prices :)

Anyway, I'm glad you found a way to put space sandbox on both of your current displays. Hopefully it will enhance your experience when you get sand kicked in your face :)

Have fun o/

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