[SOLVED] Extended desktop using dissimilar monitors?

[lesthegringo]

A while back I tried to set up my flight and race sim rig with triple screens to see how it would go. At the time I borrowed a couple of Benq 24 inch 2560x1440 QHD resolution monitors to add to the one I used for my desktop, and used that to try, and it was OK , but a bit underwhelming for me due to the size of the monitors. However all three monitors were identical and so worked fine.

I had just bought an LG 32 inch superwide curved screen, which for flight sims was great, but I also tried using that as the central monitor, and the Benq ones for the sides. The super wide monitor resolution is 2560 x 1080, the two Benq's resolution 2560x1440.

When I I tried it I found that dissimilar monitors are not properly supported, at least by the Nvidia 1070 card I was (still am) using. Essentially, either you squeeze the view of the side monitors or you compress the central monitor, as it would not allow different resolutions, only 3 identical ones.

I gave up on it as it gave me no benefit, and left it at that.

However I would still like to be able to use the large central monitor with either a couple of 1980 x 1080 23 in monitors at the sides, or find a way of making the 2560x1440 monitors work without distortion. So I would like to know if there is any way to make the system accommodate dissimilar monitors so that I could have all the screens running without distortion at their native resolutions

Cheers

Les

 

[hang-the-9]

As long as you don't try to run them as one single wide display with a large resolution like in games, you can do this easily. When you extend the displays you can set them all at the native resolution. My monitor and my laptop screen run just fine on different resolutions.

 

[lesthegringo]

That's the problem - that is exactly what I want to use it for. If I use it as is, the image is spread so the three screens are all either compressed or stretched so none of them look OK. Outside the sim game, they work fine, but it is to allow the desktop to 'talk' to the game so that it observes the resolution of each monitor.

I heard that maybe the ATI cards can do it?

Les

 

[hang-the-9]

That's the problem - that is exactly what I want to use it for. If I use it as is, the image is spread so the three screens are all either compressed or stretched so none of them look OK. Outside the sim game, they work fine, but it is to allow the desktop to 'talk' to the game so that it observes the resolution of each monitor.

I heard that maybe the ATI cards can do it?

Les

The issues is that the LCD displays have a fixed number of pixels, so if you take less, to fit in the full screen they will be stretched out to fill the screen, and the other way they will be compacted to fill the screen.

AMD has Eyefinity, nVidia has Surround, both are made for configuring multiple monitors but nothing will fix the fact that the physical pixels and size of the screens are not the same. Go through those options and see what you can do with them.