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Ozfer
Let's face it, multimonitor has been around since the 90's and since that time Microsoft has not updated much. The only real new thing we have is aero snap and this is just a carryover from single monitor support. But between Microsoft, Nvidia, and AMD something needs to change as the current state of multimonitors is a semibroken crapfest and either the GPU vendors or Microsoft needs to come up with a solution to fix this.
The current state of affairs for gaming:
For gaming you need 3 or 5 monitors. 2 Will not do for most games because the middle of the two monitors is where the crosshair is in most games making them unplayable. This is not intuitive to people who have never used multiple monitors before and this should be made aware to them. Furthermore if going with 5 monitors you need to make them vertical and not all monitors can go vertical with optimal results. Some look absolutely ugly sideways or are unusable. Furthermore the most common option for surround/eyefinity is probably 1x3 monitors and 1080p is the most common with 4k growing in popularity. The problem with vertical 1080p is most applications look like crap with a width of 1080 and is unusable for most tasks such as modern web browsing. For gaming it can work. This is why most people use 1080p horizontal. The problem with 1080p horizontal is you now have a 21:9 aspect ratio that is unsupported by almost all video games. The games that do support it usually do by making the corners fish-eyed and this is not what many people expect going into multi monitor surround. The only games that give you a clear expanded view are RTS, TBS, and 4x games like civilization and even then the UI is stretched out to all corners. Furthermore many competitive games flat out ban 21:9 aspect ratio since it gives an unfair advantage or they cap the FOV and you can barely see anything. Many games UI is completely broken and unplayable and this needs to be tweaked on a game-by-game basis. CSGO UI has been broken for multimonitor for YEARS even though the game itself works fine.
This is not completely Microsoft's fault and the GPU companies should be held accountable for the gaming problems. They advertise their cards for multimonitor gaming and then don't push any developers to make sure their games support this configuration. But Microsoft does fail in some spectacular ways here. The first is that since the multiple monitors need to appear as one monitor for the game, the software relies on the nvidia control panel, or AMD setting to spoof the display as one big 5760x1080 monitor and then either the same software or others (displayfusion or maxtrox software) to split it back into multiple monitors when not gaming as microsoft has no such function of virtual displays. This is where windows craps the bed. Nothing about windows desktop is designed for a resolution that wide and it borders on unusable when virtually splitting it. Some programs will open across all 3 displays (completely unusable), some programs UI is completely broken (such as photoshop, adobe, and solidworks). If you open an app between monitors it will full screen across all of them. This is compounded by only having one taskbar under normal windows (that depending on the software will either be in the middle monitor or stretch across all monitors (unusable)). Full screen apps will not work on individual sections of the virtual display. Matter of fact they are very buggy and you cannot interact with a full screen video for instance and will need to take it out of fullscreen to click any of the playback options. Furthermore windows has no support for wallpapers for virtual displays and by default will span one image across all monitors (this could be good or bad but there is a very limited selection of multimonitor wallpapers).
Since this is so bad there NEEDs to be an easy way to switch between multimonitor more and separate monitors. Microsoft has no such option. This is once again attempted to be taken care of by ATI or Nvidia settings with varying degrees of success. In some versions of their software you can setup key combos and one click between the two types of displays. I have never been able to get one key switching to work under nvidia even though it used to work for me with ATI back in the day. Some people report it doesn't work right every time this software is update and without this the displays are very unusable for productivity tasks. Without one button it takes a few minutes of struggling through the nvidia control panel, and re-enable each monitor in windows since Microsoft disables the second and third monitor when coming out of surround and you can only enable one monitor at a time. This combines with the fact that when enabling surround the monitors have to be arranged one way say (2 - 1 - 3) and when going back to windows they have a different numbering system such as (1 - 2 - 3).
Even worse is the fact Microsoft has no way to remember desktop shortcuts, wallpapers, or orientations of taskbars in these different settings. So if you go for multimonitor gaming you pretty much have to give up having any control over the location of these things, or never switch out of surround and many applications are broken. Every time you switch into or out of surround the icons get completely jumbled up on the desktop.
Furthermore when switching between multimonitor virtual and split many applications run into problems. Discord and Slack both have the ability to then be in a limbo where they are open outside the newly created 'screen' and the only way to get them back is to close the program, delete some settings files manually and reopen them since windows has no function to relocate software back onto the screen. I have notified Discord about this problem and they have yet to fix it in over a year.
Multi-monitor for productivity (not surround):
This shortcut problem is also true if you just attach and detach and external display. Get ready for windows to never remember where anything goes and shortcuts to be broken. Wallpaper support is especially bad if you have two monitors of different resolutions. Furthermore when mirroring a display DPI can really broken. If you attach an external screen with less resolution than a laptop screen windows completely freaks out when attempting mirroring and the DPI needs to be adjusted every time.
Also every monitor gets its own taskbar in split view, but not all of them get all the information on the right side (background apps and network status etc) with no option of enabling this or disabling clock. Furthermore all applications show in each monitors start bar even if the app is not for that monitor (makes no sense). Also when opening an app in one start menu it still has the possibility of opening on the other monitor!
Full screen apps are broken in split multimonitor too! If you full screen a video on one monitor and go to try to do something on another when the focus is lost from the full screen app the windows task bar appears over your full screen video for no reason!
Multimonitor with RDP and RDP in general:
All of these issues are compounded with Microsoft RDP. RDP kills the icon positioning, has all the same desktop positioning/full screen problems, and causes major problems to programs. Programs such as discord will change the audio input when RDP is connected and then never switch back when RDP is disconnected meaning many apps need to be restarted after RDPing into a system.
Furthermore if you RDP in with a small screen of say 720p to a system running 5760x1080, windows freaks out pretty hard. Applications will not open in full screen through RDP and you need to manually make applications bigger.
End:
Altogether in 2019 multimonitor support is still a disaster. Vendors need to push developers to support multi monitor in more games. Vendors should also inform end users of optimal monitors for surround gaming. Windows should make a toggle like optimus to enable surround only when going into full screen gaming. Age old standard multimonitor problems should be fixed and icon positioning should be remembered. Software vendors need to check to see if their programs are open off the visible screen. If these few things could happen I think everyone would have a much more enjoyable experience.
Continue reading...
The current state of affairs for gaming:
For gaming you need 3 or 5 monitors. 2 Will not do for most games because the middle of the two monitors is where the crosshair is in most games making them unplayable. This is not intuitive to people who have never used multiple monitors before and this should be made aware to them. Furthermore if going with 5 monitors you need to make them vertical and not all monitors can go vertical with optimal results. Some look absolutely ugly sideways or are unusable. Furthermore the most common option for surround/eyefinity is probably 1x3 monitors and 1080p is the most common with 4k growing in popularity. The problem with vertical 1080p is most applications look like crap with a width of 1080 and is unusable for most tasks such as modern web browsing. For gaming it can work. This is why most people use 1080p horizontal. The problem with 1080p horizontal is you now have a 21:9 aspect ratio that is unsupported by almost all video games. The games that do support it usually do by making the corners fish-eyed and this is not what many people expect going into multi monitor surround. The only games that give you a clear expanded view are RTS, TBS, and 4x games like civilization and even then the UI is stretched out to all corners. Furthermore many competitive games flat out ban 21:9 aspect ratio since it gives an unfair advantage or they cap the FOV and you can barely see anything. Many games UI is completely broken and unplayable and this needs to be tweaked on a game-by-game basis. CSGO UI has been broken for multimonitor for YEARS even though the game itself works fine.
This is not completely Microsoft's fault and the GPU companies should be held accountable for the gaming problems. They advertise their cards for multimonitor gaming and then don't push any developers to make sure their games support this configuration. But Microsoft does fail in some spectacular ways here. The first is that since the multiple monitors need to appear as one monitor for the game, the software relies on the nvidia control panel, or AMD setting to spoof the display as one big 5760x1080 monitor and then either the same software or others (displayfusion or maxtrox software) to split it back into multiple monitors when not gaming as microsoft has no such function of virtual displays. This is where windows craps the bed. Nothing about windows desktop is designed for a resolution that wide and it borders on unusable when virtually splitting it. Some programs will open across all 3 displays (completely unusable), some programs UI is completely broken (such as photoshop, adobe, and solidworks). If you open an app between monitors it will full screen across all of them. This is compounded by only having one taskbar under normal windows (that depending on the software will either be in the middle monitor or stretch across all monitors (unusable)). Full screen apps will not work on individual sections of the virtual display. Matter of fact they are very buggy and you cannot interact with a full screen video for instance and will need to take it out of fullscreen to click any of the playback options. Furthermore windows has no support for wallpapers for virtual displays and by default will span one image across all monitors (this could be good or bad but there is a very limited selection of multimonitor wallpapers).
Since this is so bad there NEEDs to be an easy way to switch between multimonitor more and separate monitors. Microsoft has no such option. This is once again attempted to be taken care of by ATI or Nvidia settings with varying degrees of success. In some versions of their software you can setup key combos and one click between the two types of displays. I have never been able to get one key switching to work under nvidia even though it used to work for me with ATI back in the day. Some people report it doesn't work right every time this software is update and without this the displays are very unusable for productivity tasks. Without one button it takes a few minutes of struggling through the nvidia control panel, and re-enable each monitor in windows since Microsoft disables the second and third monitor when coming out of surround and you can only enable one monitor at a time. This combines with the fact that when enabling surround the monitors have to be arranged one way say (2 - 1 - 3) and when going back to windows they have a different numbering system such as (1 - 2 - 3).
Even worse is the fact Microsoft has no way to remember desktop shortcuts, wallpapers, or orientations of taskbars in these different settings. So if you go for multimonitor gaming you pretty much have to give up having any control over the location of these things, or never switch out of surround and many applications are broken. Every time you switch into or out of surround the icons get completely jumbled up on the desktop.
Furthermore when switching between multimonitor virtual and split many applications run into problems. Discord and Slack both have the ability to then be in a limbo where they are open outside the newly created 'screen' and the only way to get them back is to close the program, delete some settings files manually and reopen them since windows has no function to relocate software back onto the screen. I have notified Discord about this problem and they have yet to fix it in over a year.
Multi-monitor for productivity (not surround):
This shortcut problem is also true if you just attach and detach and external display. Get ready for windows to never remember where anything goes and shortcuts to be broken. Wallpaper support is especially bad if you have two monitors of different resolutions. Furthermore when mirroring a display DPI can really broken. If you attach an external screen with less resolution than a laptop screen windows completely freaks out when attempting mirroring and the DPI needs to be adjusted every time.
Also every monitor gets its own taskbar in split view, but not all of them get all the information on the right side (background apps and network status etc) with no option of enabling this or disabling clock. Furthermore all applications show in each monitors start bar even if the app is not for that monitor (makes no sense). Also when opening an app in one start menu it still has the possibility of opening on the other monitor!
Full screen apps are broken in split multimonitor too! If you full screen a video on one monitor and go to try to do something on another when the focus is lost from the full screen app the windows task bar appears over your full screen video for no reason!
Multimonitor with RDP and RDP in general:
All of these issues are compounded with Microsoft RDP. RDP kills the icon positioning, has all the same desktop positioning/full screen problems, and causes major problems to programs. Programs such as discord will change the audio input when RDP is connected and then never switch back when RDP is disconnected meaning many apps need to be restarted after RDPing into a system.
Furthermore if you RDP in with a small screen of say 720p to a system running 5760x1080, windows freaks out pretty hard. Applications will not open in full screen through RDP and you need to manually make applications bigger.
End:
Altogether in 2019 multimonitor support is still a disaster. Vendors need to push developers to support multi monitor in more games. Vendors should also inform end users of optimal monitors for surround gaming. Windows should make a toggle like optimus to enable surround only when going into full screen gaming. Age old standard multimonitor problems should be fixed and icon positioning should be remembered. Software vendors need to check to see if their programs are open off the visible screen. If these few things could happen I think everyone would have a much more enjoyable experience.
Continue reading...