Yet Another Multiscreen Thread

Hi
I am planning to drive a 4 projectors system, they will work on a couple basis on a multiscreen setup.
I discarded already the Eyefinity idea because of all those DP adapters, so i ll go for the DualHead2Go, one each couple of projectors.
Now I need a video card with all the necessary outputs to drive the 2 main outputs plus one free head for the patch.
Which way to go? How can I send in the same patch a render to one head and another render to the other? I have no experience on that…
S.

Hi io,

you could control the patch with other computer/device via osc, are you using xp or w7? in xp you can use one horizontal span render.

good luck

I know it is a bad habit but I d like to be able to control the patch directly so maybe a triple head on one of the graphic card head without fullscreen may work, still how do yo usay vvvv which head is which?
tx
S.

Why without fullscreen?, if you use the triplehead and the other output to control the patch you don´t need hz span mode.
or am i understanding you wrong?

Idea 1

  • normal 2 heads vga
  • 1 head with DH2Go to 2 projectors (fullscreen)
  • 1 head with TH2Go to 2 projectors (no fullscreen) third output to display (patch)

Idea 2

  • vga with 3 independent heads
  • 1 head with DH2Go (fullscreen)
  • other head with DH2Go (fullscreen)
  • 3rd head to display (patch)

So my question is for Idea 2, how does it work with this kind of graphic card?
Also, something I asked already: why if the specs say max 2560 pixels on width you can still achieve far more than that if you connect a Matrox? Will that work with 2 Matrox connected ?
tx

… and of course Idea 3

  • sli
  • crossfire

Idea 4:

  • 2 heads with DH2Go Fullscreen.
  • external device/computer/controller via osc/midi to control all the stuff.

Maybe you could have performance problems with 2 render windows, one in fullscreen and the other in window mode.

The screens have different content, or this is a continuous screen?
for a continuous screen and the “Idea 1” you could experiment synchrony problems.

No experience with the Ideas 2 and 3.

Any tip?

Projectors are in a 2 + 2 setup. 2 pairs with independent content on each pair, one of them will probably just do some very simple texturing work so a relatively cheap graphic card should do. The other 2 will need more power.
Computer specs: i7 940, 8Gb RAM, SSD, mainboard with sli or/and crossfire, 2x renderer at 2048x768 + one full HD for patching
tx

I think you can only connect to the matrox identical displays/projectors (also the resolution), so the combination TH2Go + 2 Projectors + 1 HD display doesn´t work.
or am i wrong?

Very true, but I can cope with the screen internal upscaling, as long as the rest of the stuff work.
Anyway I am more and more thinking about sli or crossfire, so I have 4 easy output, just i never troed it before and I am looking for info about the 2 systems.
Does anybody know if you can connect different type of card?

i do tonnes of multi projector setups and always have a low-end nvidia card in first PCIe slot for control/patching and then a high-end NV card in the next. both x16 PCIe of course. then you can run up to 6 projectors via 2x3TH2GOs with 1 spanned renderer. Only problem with this setup is you can’t get video on control display and projectors at the same time - rarely a problem though.

Nice! What I wanted to hear, but is thi sonly possible with XP and spanned mode or can i send 2 fullscreens on both head of the second card? (would be nice to use those 8Gb).
How does the computer see 2 cards in a sli/crossfire setup? (can twrap my mind around that…)
Do you advice sli or crossfire?
tx (a lot)
S.

there’s always xp 64 in that case…

I ve heard the most horrible things about XP64, like that they keep it chained in the Redmond s basements and feed it dead rats.

sli crossfire computer see’s only one monitor out of any amount of cards in sli, btw dunno with crossfire suspect qute same. The problem that you can’t have videos in your render if you are not in span mode so for generative setup it will work with windows 7, but if you want video or dx9textures is XP span + 2d videocard card

I would go for something like option 5 or 6 or whichever number we have come to.

get something like a Radeon HD6950, two digital dualheads on the DVI outputs and then a cheap displayport screen for the patching.

everything in one GPU, and unless you are doing some of the fancy shaderstuff that only works on nvidia, you are good to go.

you might even be able to put the dualheads in spanmode (not sure about the resolutions in eyefinity though) but in independant renderers it does work.

just my 0.02€

-sunep

everything should work also on ATI now

you can even span all 6 outputs of an Eyefinity card if they have same resolutions.

spanning 2,3 or 4 outputs with each Dual/Triplehead also is no problem

anyway i would always choose a triplehead cause you anyway can run them like a dualhead.

since i’ve been administering a pool of 3d workstations and a rendercluster both running xp 64 for a few years i can absolutely assure you that xp 64 is rock solid given decent hardware/drivers. Any instabilities i’ve ever encountered could exclusively be traced back to faulty hw/drivers, but your mileage may ofcourse vary.

anyway it was just meant as a suggestion if you really need video on all heads and vlc plugin is not an option… ;)

(and yes, i switched the workstations to windows7 this year. The cluster is still going strong with xp 64 though :D)

oh well, i digressed… sorry for going offtopic

io i use to do setups with dh2g and 3h2g
i would recomend somethink like this

  • 2 vga
  • vga 1 , output 1 , dh2g
  • vga 1 , output 2, another dh2g

so here you have 4 outputs + your monitor and another output if you wish

set up you screen resolution at 1680x1050 ( well this is my native monitor resolution, use your own :P )

on windows you will see your monitor + 2 monitors of 2048*768 ( each of them is the dh2g with 2 more outputs ). If you want to use more than 1024x768 change it

on vvvv create the render node and drag the windowed render to the 3rd or 4th proyector area, and then inspector will show you the option to fullscreen at that resolution, if not you wont see the maximum resolution.

Alt + enter and you have a rendered for the 3rd and 4th proyector, do the same with 1st and 2nd. then put some quads there and a dxtextrure from your original render parch.

im not sure if this is the more effective set up ever, but on my tiny personal experience this was the best thing to do, and if you have the proyector one next to each other, you will have control of each quad to align them, and you can use “Homography” node. Hope this works ;)

I suggest you to overthink that. You’ll have much fun with that card.

tenerife is a bit special with shipping, for everybody else in europe:
satis&fy currently has 10 PCs ( i7, Eyefinity, 60GB SSD Win7, 240GB SSD Data, 19inch Case ) and loads of tripleheads in the rental stock…