Poster: Rte at 4/6/2006 7:25:08 AM PDT
Subject: HOWTO: dual screen setup. |
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Hey.
So, you have decided to use that second monitor you have sitting on your table (in closet, whatever) to play wow? Then this topic is for you.
First you will have to decide how you want to use the second monitor. There are 3 option, at least that I see:
1) Have game screen on one and IE/ventrilo/or any other software on the other.
2) Have game on both with rendered graphics on both of them.
3) Have game screen on both with rendered graphics on one of them and various UIs(chats, casting bars, maps etc) on the other.
Now lets see how to set up your pc for each one of these cases.
Before you attempt any of these make sure that: both your monitors are hooked up to your PC and working and you have latest drivers for your video card, those can be downloaded from manufacturers web sites (2 major v-card manufacturers: www.ati.com , www.nvidia.com ).
1)
This is the simples case.
What you need to do is:
- go to your video driver settings and enable "extend desktop" for the second monitor. For ATI: right click on panel icon in system tray, mouse over secondary monitor entry, click extend desktop.
- start WoW.
- go to Main menu/ Video options.
- check windowed mode and maximize checkmarks.
- click Ok.
Done.
2)
This option is quite more complicated then a first one, but still quite doable.
Note: if you choose this option you will have your game screen split betwean two monitors, meaning your character, which is in the middle of the screen, will be split over two monitors aswell.
- go to your video driver settings and set your display option to split screen. For ATI: double click on panel icon in system tray, this should bring up ATI control center window. Go to Display manager and click wizard. This should bring up a new window. Choose first option (applications), then 3rd option (split screen), click apply. This should stretch your desktop over both screens.
- start WoW.
- go to Main menu/ Video options.
- Set the correct resolution (eg 2048x768 for 2x1024x768).
- click Ok.
Done.
3)
Now, this is the hardest option and will require some more in-depth knowledge.
This option has 2 suboptions a) You want game screen on left monitor, b) You want UI screen on left monitor. Even though these two options look very similar they are not and option b) is much-much harder to set up and will most likelly give you problems with various UIs, so think twice before choosing to go that path.
Also be aware that your login screen and map will be still split over two screens (at least I have not found a way to fix that yet).
a)
- first you will need to install addon called viewport from ctmod www.ctmod.net
- go to your video driver settings and set your display option to split screen. For ATI: double click on panel icon in system tray, this should bring up ATI control center window. Go to Display manager and click wizard. This should bring up a new window. Choose first option (Windows desktop), then 3rd option (Horizontal Stretch Mode), click apply. This should stretch your desktop over both screens.
- start WoW.
- go to Main menu/ Video options.
- Set the correct resolution (eg 2048x768 for 2x1024x768).
- click Ok.
- Open ViewPort window.
- Set the rendered are to your liking, usually just restrict it to one monitor by halving the horisontal size. This will shrink the rendered area.
- Make the following macro: /script UIParent:ClearAllPoints();UIParent:SetPoint("TOPLEFT",0,0);UIParent:SetPoint("BOTTOMRIGHT",-1070,0); This macro will shrink the UI frame. You can still drag chat frames and others outside the restricted area, that is done only for orientation, since alot of mods tie coordinates to center of the screen or it's righthand side. Now, the number -1070 is not neceserelly right, this number will most likelly be unique for every one, since it depends on number of things, like UI scale, resolution etc. Play around with it untill you find an optimal one. -1070 worked for me with UI scale of ~0.9 and resolution 1280x1024x2.
- Some of the frame may disapear off the screen during all of these manipulations, to reset their location you need to delete the following file, while WoW is not running: WoW/WTF/Acounts/<Account name>/<Char name>/layout-cache.txt
- the macro you created will need to be executed every time you log into game. If you know enough about writting addons you can make it into one.
Done.
b)
K, this is the most complicated case and you eally should not attempt this without at least some knowledge of WoW insides and Addon coding. For this reson I will write it out in more technical terms ... it is really not that easy (well at least for now).
As per Slouken some of these issues(at least tooltip part) should be fixed come 1.10.2, see post on page 2
First of all you will need to repeate all the steps for part a) except when writting a macro to reposition UIParent you need to change rightmost location instead of leftmost.
Now the fun part begins.
If any mod that you are using uses it's own methods for placing frames on the screen you are going for quite a ride.
At this point wow ui engine will return position of the frame relative to the screen, not the UIParent and thus placing frame on this location with this setup will place the frame off the screen and every time addon tries to update the position of the frame it will push it further and further. I had this problem with ItemRack for example. What you will need to do is eather rewrite these addons to acount for this shift ar stop using them untill (and if) Blizz's code changes.
Also, another problem I found was tooltips that are anchored to the cursor. They appear one screen to the right for exact same reson. This I still have not found a fix for.
Well, good luck if you are going this way and post here if you find any nifty tricks on handling all these issues.
Done, well almoust :)
If someone did this with Nvidia drivers - plz post instructions below on how to use them to set up stretch mode and extended desktop, thanks[ post edited by Rte ]
http://geocities.com/mods_rte/
| | | http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-interface-customization&t=355343&p=#post355343 | | | Poster: slouken at 4/24/2006 11:30:46 AM PDT
Subject: Re: HOWTO: dual screen setup. |
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Q u o t e:
As per Slouken all the issues with this setup should be fixed come 1.10.2
Not true. I fixed the tooltip issue. Other frames which are anchored relative to UIParent will still remain anchored that way.
| | | http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-interface-customization&t=355343&p=#post366418 | Poster: slouken at 4/24/2006 11:50:52 AM PDT
Subject: Re: HOWTO: dual screen setup. |
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No, the mouse position is relative to the screen. The problem with the tooltip was that even though it was "cursor" anchored, it was actually anchored relative to the UIParent. I just fixed the anchoring.
| | | http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-interface-customization&t=355343&p=#post366425 | Poster: slouken at 4/24/2006 12:04:09 PM PDT
Subject: Re: HOWTO: dual screen setup. |
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If your frame is unparented, then setting points without a parent specified will anchor it relative to the screen:
e.g.
frame:SetPoint("TOPLEFT", 300, -200);
I can make it so passing nil as an anchor parent will anchor relative to the screen, for 1.11.
| | | http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-interface-customization&t=355343&p=#post366437 | Poster: slouken at 4/24/2006 12:12:58 PM PDT
Subject: Re: HOWTO: dual screen setup. |
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Q u o t e:
Please do (If nil ends up difficult, some other magic string value like "UI_ROOT" would be fine)
Done. :)
| | | http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-interface-customization&t=355343&p=#post366446 |
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