Multi Monitor setups

I know with UltraMon you can run two different walls. (Ultramon isn't free, though) I don't know how it would work with Dreams.

I've got the latest beta of ultramon, released last night. Unfortunately, it doesn't support Dreams in any way.

Bummer.

Hopefully, this will be something SD add's in future updates. I'm thinking it might be a bit demanding on the system, but then I think too much. lol.

...Presumably it would be less demanding to use a Dream on one monitor, and a static background on the other than to put the same Dream on both monitors, as is currently happening.

I also would love to see Stardock support multi-monitor setups better, for all there apps.

There's the wallpaper issues, but on top of that windows blinds or XP?, displays please wait messages on my secondary screen, which I leave off when not needed.

I also have two different size screens being a 17" normal and a 20" Widescreen, both being the same height if I run them at something by 1024.

From what I have been told stardock has no plans to add
Dual/multi monitor support.

hopefully when/if nView for Vista is released they can add something
but i dought it.. I just wish i could make one desktop out of my two
monitors like I did with XP and nView.

If that's the case, then it is a real shame - programs like Stardocks are to a large extent targeted at the enthusiast community, and so they should cater for us adequately...

There's a flash based LCARS screensaver that works quite neatly with dual monitors.

Being flash, to save on resources, it is able to be divided into what might be thought of as several episodes or modules. If I remember correctly, it simply directs the same screensaver only at a slightly different point of the run, to the second monitor.

This offers two complementary but differing screens routed from the same design.

I haven't looked at how Dreamscenes are created and so this may be an inappropriate solution. I just add this post to offer a sort of lateral viewpoint to the challenge.

Edit addition; so in a Seasonal dreamscene - Autumn would be on monitor 1, while Winter is on 2 & obviously each then follows its routine through the Seasons.

I'm surprised anyone is doing multi monitor. I have a reasonable setup with 3 monitors running on 2 ATI X800's, 1gb ram and 3ghz P4, but dreams in a multple monitor mode are horribly slow for me. It makes my system unusable. Works great if I turn off all but a single display.

Is there some trick?

I honestly don't mean to brag here, but my specs are around double that. You can call it a "trick" if you like..

I have another thread going on this too.
Here it is
You can see my specs there. I was trying to run it on 4 monitors.
I finally got it to run by lowering my resolution to 1024x768 (ewwwww) as a test.

I can't type the words AWFUL, SUCKS, AND SLOWWWWWW nearly large enough to convey the true amount of Awful, Sucks, and Slow that I incurred.

These things are entirely useless on a multi-monitor setup. Your system becomes entirely unusable for anything but watching a choppy wallpaper move on your screen.

On a positive side, running on my laptop it looks nice, but still eats my cpu.

Deskscapes supports multiple monitors already.  The existing dynamic content is set to show the same thing on all monitors, but thats something that is decided by the content itself.  If I wanted to I could have one monitor showing one thing and a second showing something different.

For videos things are much more limited.  Having 2 HD res videos open at once would start to stress machines even more.

Regarding the performance problems with multiple display adapters : Deskscapes is designed for systems with 1 or 2 monitors on a single video adapter.  If you have more than 1 card then things are going to need to be sent from card to card and that can be slow.

When I wrote the engine I looked into making things happier on multiple physical cards, but my tests showed that it was not going to be possible without some serious compromises which would impact the most common users (people with 1 video card)

Phoon: Your PCI video card is the problem.  Dreamscene / deskscapes will be saturating the PCI bus.

Just a reminder to everyone.  If you want low cpu usage then pick a dynamic dream.  They should run with almost no cpu usage (assuming you don't have a setup like Phoon's)

Neil,
Thanks for the insight.
Also, I should mention that Deskscapes ran all but 1 of the default animations at 1280x1024 on all 4 monitors. Dreamscene would not even think about it.
Is it possible to work something in to tell deskscapes to run on any 1 monitor only?

To anyone else,
Don't take my post as a negative endorsemnet of Deskscapes. If I were running just one monitor with the powerhouse system I have you can rest assured that it would run without a hitch. (I shouldda' used a wink wink smiley or two in that post to show humor.)        

So re. my #8, can that not be made to work at all with Dreamscenes ?

The calling up of the one video file, which is then sent to each monitor, only from a different point in that file.

Ok, so I turned off the 3rd monitor running on the second video card and things get MUCH better.

So this means that we need dynamic content that can "deselect" certain displays/cards

I'd take a crack at that if I could find the API/toolkit for making them, as posted in another thread

Until then, those of us who are addicted to our multiple monitors (> 2) AND our animated desktops will have to choose one or the other.

Thank you for this response, but in reference to my original question at the top of the thread, is there any way that a user can designate a video based dream to appear on only one screen, rather than both, which is the default behaviour and causes the stress problems, and looks "wrong" for 90% of dreams.

"If you want low cpu usage then pick a dynamic dream"

I assume this is what the spinning world and box are ? If so is there any easy way to find other downloads like these? All of the ones I've tried on this site require Dreamscenes which doesn't work on my 2 monitor setup. So far only the spinning world and Stardock spinning box have worked correctly.

Liquid Dream is dynamic.
https://www.wincustomize.com/skins.aspx?tag=dynamic

Ovals, expanding shapes, spinning box, desktop earth, liquid dream and desktop collage are all dynamic dreams.

If you want to try different videos on different monitors to see what the CPU load would be (or just to see what it would be like) you can try my SSDream application. It doesn't support the .dream file format, but it will play different WMV and MPEG files on each monitor.

On my:
6600 Core Duo 2.4ghz Over clocked to 3.2ghz
NVidia 8800 GTS

I get a 14% CPU load when I run two MPEG2 videos:
Ripple Purple Rays MPEG2(1152x720) on the 24" 1920x1600 Monitor
Apollo v2 MPEG2(1024x768) on the 21" 1600x1200 Monitor

I get a 25% CPU load when I run two WMV videos:
Ripple Purple Rays WMV(1920x1200) on the 24" 1920x1600 Monitor
Apollo v2 WMV(1600x1200) on the 21" 1600x1200 Monitor

These numbers a on par with what I'm seeing if I add the CPU loads together when running them separately.

I confess I dont use ObjectDeskTop - Forgive Me Stardock For I have Sinned.

However, I am thinking of getting into it - I did get WindowsBlinds many years ago in an early incarnation, but never really got further into it. As an impressive side note, many years later I get into GalCiv and discover the full scope of Stardock for the first time. So, I register GalCiv II having got hooked, open Stardock Central in the course of my travels for further knowledge on Stardock, and sitting there is my registration from years back of WindowsBlinds, it wasnt even on my current PC of the time. That was impressive, as I had also changed basic email addys in the meantime, and to be honest had not made the connection between WindowsBlinds/GalCiv/Stardock before, the mindset was Product orientated not source orientated.

Anyway - enough ramblings ....

Advice would be greatfully received. Basic spec is AMD FX60 Dual Core, twin Nvidia 7800GTX 256mb in SLI, 2Gb Ram, 1Tb RAID, ASUS A8N32-SLI-Deluxe motherboard.

Noted discussion above re separate monitors and its effect on Dreams, with the info concerning the preference for a single video card to limit performance issues. With the setup I described, is the SLI pairing of the cards seen by the software as "one card", or two - the mindset here is the comment about its better to have one card driving two monitors with dreams (I have two, a 19" CRT, and a 20" Belina LCD, hooked up, CRT at 1856 x 1392 and the LCD 1680 x 1050 ).

Second and last question - Vista. User views of ObjectDeskTop under Vista? (I have XP Pro and will stay there for at least another year until Vista settles, just peaking over the hill re effect on ObjectDeskTop)

Just general views, nothing intense, I am just touching on all bases in the final stage of yes or no to getting the full blown ObjectDeskTop.

UltraMon screws up Windowblinds, it's out out of here!

I run a Quad and 640mb of G/mem like alot of people now prices have come down there must be some way to run to two? I dont think two would tax this type of system that much.

If I read this correctly, deskscapes works with dual monitors, however it shows the same on each monitor. but this can be changed for dynamic dreams, however at this point none of the dynamic dreams allow me to do that?

a little confused. I have a dual monitor setup and would like to have the collage spread over the entire area of the two monitors rather than each individually (and identical).

looking forward to changes

tgd

the_great_deceiver (and Stardock): I think the majority of us would rather Stardock fixed Desktop Collage first to handle randomizing, or multiple photo directories. But yes, I run two monitors, and they always get the aspect ratio wrong on the second display. Would be nice if they'd make it handle the whole thing. Would be *REALLY* nice if someday, they'd open-source something like that.

Everyone with more than one video card: The problem with multiple video cards is the bus. If you take two monitors, plug each one into a different video card, your performance will drop. As soon as you turn off one of those cards, it's no longer eating up bandwidth. Most video cards support two monitors on one board, so for the majority, they don't need the dual cards (not including SLI or CrossFire). It's possible that if Stardock can make only the primary card run an animated desktop, the usage will go down, but it will not go down to the level of one card. That other card is still talking on the bus, and still using up bandwidth.

Ultramon/Multimon: These use a hack to put different wallpaper on multiple monitors. They take the BMPs you choose, and the resolutions, and create a new BMP of the full size, and tell windows not to scale it. For instance, a 1600x1200 and a 1280x1024 display, side by side. It will create a BMP file of 2880x1200, and paste in both BMPs, with a small region on the lower-right that's blank. Put this up on your desktop, and it neatly fills both.