Multi-Monitor Support (Nvidia Surround / Ati Eyefinity)

Hi,

Can't wait to jump into this game and play with my friends - but I'd love to know whether it's possible to implement multi-monitor support? I play using nvidia surround @ 5760x1080 and your game will look awesome across 3 screens - much like Terraria does, check this out by one of our community members at wsgf.org:



Any love?

 

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Do games need to specifically support it? Plus I feel it would be kind of over powered, being able to see 3 times more than every else and all.

 

I think the game is already able to support more than one screen. Two screens work, three should.
http://playstarbound.com/22nd-and-23rd-progress/

So yeah, the game should already be able to support multiple monitors.

 

Yeah, from what I can tell, this doesn't really do anything specific, except run the game at a (horizontally at least) ridiculously large resolution. As long as the game doesn't block you from using non-16:9/16:10 resolutions, I don't see why this shouldn't be doable, as it's really just treating the whole thing as one enormously wide screen.

That said, I really can't imagine why anyone would want to play the game like this. Putting aside the obvious "cool factor" of being able to do it, it seems to me that it would be very impractical, as you'd have to turn your head to be able to see the HUD or see what's going on the other screens. Personally, I find that it's actually more comfortable to play games on smaller screens than on very large ones, due to having better overview without having to turn your head or move your vision. I find myself actually doing better at most games when playing them on my 15" gaming laptop, than on my 27" monitor, and next time I get a new monitor, I'll probably get a 24" one rather than a 27" one.

 

I've never gotten the appeal of stretching the view across multiple monitors, because then you have the seams where one monitor ends and the next starts.

Now, multimonitor support like what supreme commander has (primary monitor has the UI and stuff, secondary monitor is a second viewport which can be zoomed/moved around as normal) would be neat, though Starbound doesn't really have anything to put in that extra real estate.

 

Thanks for the replies - hadn't checked this for a while. For those that doubt the pure awesomeness of multi-monitor gaming, all you have to do is play games across 3 screens and you'll get it. You don't notice the seems, you just get a greater immersion within your game. Games like this are hit and miss, I agree. The problem is indeed the UI, and with my example of Terraria, the UI can be a problem and it's a shame that it's not centred. BUT that being said, it's not game breaking - game breaking is the likes of RTS games etc, that stretch the UI across 3 screens. Looking left and right is a pain and can cause neck strain (depending on how far away you sit from your computer). RTS and adventure/sim games like these even with the 'simple' art form, still look great. I could supply numerous examples - but it would appear that it's a case of trying it.

I merely wanted to get some feedback from the dev's, and maybe hopefully bring to their attention the usually problem of the UI not being centred, AND if at all possible have that fixed for their game. Terraria actually requires a 3rd party program to work in surround, which is unfortunate - but I'm hoping Starbound can lead the way.

Oh and please don't downvote this purely because you don't use the technology. Most times this isn't hard to implement properly, so it will not take too much time from development - subsequently not taking anything away from the players that won't use it.

 

Hopefully it has support for it. But it probably does, devs take screenshots of an expanded screen, so that probably indicates it's possible.

 

I'll let you guys know in two days time if it supports it or not But in reality, so long as they aren't restricting the resolutions, or doing some sort of scaling then it should work, although, expect the UI to be a little all over the place if they haven't centred it.

 

I remember them confirming this a while ago. I believe Tiy posted a screenshot of a 2 monitor display.

 

Your half right, they didn't outright confirm Eyefinity and Surround support (triple monitor setups), but they did test to make sure the game doesn't crash when rendering beyond 4K, (think they set the window to 6000 something), they also posted screenshots from the game spanned over 2 monitors. So the likely hood is it'll be fine, bar the UI stuff which looks like it'll be scaled correctly but spanned, in which case I can suggest one of the easiest ways to fix that, but it'll still take them a bit work so I don't expect they'll have the time to look at it for a while, probably going to be bogged down with fixing bugs and finishing existing content, which is fine. The basic idea of the fix is how Frostbite 3 implements customizable UIs, it lets you define a UI safe area, basically the game uses that area rather then the side of the screen to render the UI that should be at the side of the screen, if that makes sense, basically allows you to add offsets from the edges of the screen to say where the UI should render.

But basically it looks like Starbound will natively render like Terraria does when I used the third party launcher (Terraria is locked to 1080p resolutions without the third party launcher, see video at the top of the page).

 

Almost works out the box:




To replicate, launch the game once, go to the opens, set the ingame resolution to a single monitor resolution, and select fullscreen. Navigate to %SteamInstallDirectory%\steamapps\common\Starbound\ and open in a text editor, starbound.config.

Find:
"fullscreenResolution" : [ xxxx, yyyy]
and replace the xxxx and yyyy with your correct fullscreen resolution, mine being 5040x1050.

 

Resolution isn't "multimonitor support" Things like movable UI would be support. Or, having things like the ui scale only the the resolution of a single monitor, so be in the same place as if you had just one, but have the other two screens full of the world. But yes, at least the resolution will scale to my 5760x1080 without a problem. Better out of the box than some games.

 

OK, maybe I'm just completely dense or missing something here, but hopefully you can help. I open the game and set it to a single monitor, full screen resolution. But every time I alt+tab to open the config file, the game automatically reverts to windowed mode, so there is not "fullscreenResolution", only "windowedResolution". I've tried manually adding in the fullscreen resolution and taking out the windowed all together but nothing seems to work.

Thanks for all your help in advance!

(P.S. Trying to set it to 6080x1080 for bezel compensation.)

 

The game returns to windows mode if you alt tab, you have set it to fullscreen, then to close the game first, then edit the file, then load the game again.

 

Finally got it. For some reason when I was trying to find fullscreenResolution with ctrl+f it would not find anything, But when I sorted backward instead of forwards, it found fullscreenResolution!

Now it's up and running and beautiful!

 

Hey dev's, thanks for the game - kinda just waiting for it to become a little more complete because I don't want to ruin my experience - But I would love to know whether it's possible at looking to make all GUI menu/items moveable?

 

I thought they were right now, they just don't remember where you moved them to so they open in a default location.