Multi Monitor Civ3?

[drfish]

First time poster, long time Civ fan... Civ was my first gaming love and forever will be, my first copy of it came bundled with the CD-ROM drive one my friend's parents bought for their computer, a long time ago... Anyway...

Is there a way to run Civ3 on a triple monitor system without being able to span all three screens? I know I can do a dual screen game with one card but I want to use 2 cards to power three screen Civ3 goodness... Has it ever been done?

If not I think I'll buy a Matrox P750 or something and give it a whirl...

Thanks in advance!

 

[drfish]

Well, I couldn't wait for an answer, so I threw Civ2 on the machine and this is what I came up with, it's quite possibily the most beautiful thing I've ever seen...

Civ2 3840x1024

Please help me do this with Civ3!!!

 

[Turner]

I don't think it would work. Civ3 runs under the 4:3 aspect ratio, and you can't increase one without increasing the other. Civ3 was never designed to run in a windowed mode, only full screen.

 

[drfish]

If you use KeepRes=1 it works fine on widescreen and dual monitor setups... Why wouldn't it work on three screens?

In fact, I'm sure it would work on three screens if you had a card like the Parhelia or P750... I'm wondering if there's a way to do it with 2 cards...

 

[Turner]

The problem as I see it is a matter of perspective.

If you have a normal screen, it looks something like this:

XXXX
XXXX
XXXX

Now, that's meant to show one screen. Civ, AFAIK, keeps the aspect ratio. If you have a 1280x1024 monitor, Video Mode=1024, and KeepRes=1, you get something like this:

CCCD
CCCD
CCCD
DDDD

Where C=Civ3 and D=Desktop.

If you were to stretch this across three monitors, you would have to have a resolution that supports 4:3 aspect ratio. The problem I'm seeing is that you could conceiveably stretch it across all three with KeepRes=1, but you're going to lose the lower part of the screen.

But to be honest, I don't know. All I can suggest is you check out the .ini file parameters and see if you can get it to work.

And if you can, great! Post back so others can do so.

 

[drfish]

It doesn't keep the aspect ratio, it works just fine on 16:9 and 8:3 and I assume 12:3 (errr, I guess that's 4:1) as well but can't try it without being able to span all three screens with a single resolution...

Check out this thread in the widescreen gaming forums for proof... And this thread in your own archive. My gut feeling is that it won't work unless I can span all the screens, but that's why I came here to ask first, before I blew some cash of a triple head video card... Anyway, three screens would be vastly superior to 2 since when the menus and windows get centered they will still be in the middle of the screen.

 

[Turner]

Well, if you want to do like the archive thread you posted here, you could do that.

i'll have to check my settings, but I run my laptop with civ3 on one monitor (the built in one) and desktop on another. I've never tried to span them, simply because one's a 1280x1024 monitor and the other a 1024x768 monitor.

Also referring to the archive thread here, I wouldn't want to run it part on one and part on the other. Seems annoying to me. I have a hard enough time with one extra monitor, and civ3 on one screen, desktop on the other.

The problem as I see it is you can't set the side to side resolution. If you could, something like this would work great. But look at this:

Video Mode=1280
Can be 1024, 1152, 1280, 1600, 1792. Changes the game's resolution to the value specified (instead of the default 1024x768).
Only the following resolutions are supported with this command:
1024x768
1152x864
1280x1024
1600x1200
1792x1344

Setting the Video Mode to 1792 automatically sets the res at 1792x1344. You can't set it up as something like Video Mode 1280x2048. You set it to the one, you automatically get the other. And I think that's where the hang up is for using three monitors.

Now, if you had four, and could set the desktop res to something like 896x777 on each monitor, and put them in a square, then what you'd want to do would probably work. But with the three monitors you get a widescreen effect, and Civ3 doesn't like the widescreen effect, as I understand it. (That's also for a single widescreen monitor.)

 

[drfish]

One of us is missing something... I think it's you, but I could be wrong... Oh well... I'm not trying to use the videomode command, I realize that those are preset values... I'm using keepres=1 and my goal is to get my screen res to be 3840x1024, Civ3 should like that just fine... I know you can run it widescreen, I know it can run dual screen, and I assume it can run tri screen IF your computer's resolution is set to span across three screens instead of controlling res/refresh/color individually...

How could you not want to run it on a giant three screen setup? You can see so much more of the map, no more clicking all over the place when you want to move your units... Your entire field of vision could be Civ3...

Anyway, this is how I have my screens setup now. You don't think that would be awesome to Civ on?

Well, I guess I'll report back here after I've saved enough cash to get a P750...

 

[Turner]

Okay, here's what I did.

Hooked up External Monitor.

Set up Extended desktop.

Loaded Civ3:Conquests.

Monitor Resolution is 1024x768, Laptop same. no spillover to the second monitor.

Set monitor resolution to 1280x1024. Laptop will remain 1024x768 (doesn't go higher).

Loaded Conquests again. Still no spillover to laptop monitor.

Set Video Mode to 1600. Ran Civ3 again. Spilled over to second monitor, but I lost the bottom portion of my screen. I'm guessing the bottom 400 pixels.

Set Video Mode to 1600 before KeepRes=1. Some have to do this to get civ into a 'windowed' mode, but generally the Video Mode is lower than the desktop res. Same results as before.

So my guess is that Civ3 does indeed keep the aspect ratio, and running it in wide screen won't work.

 

[drfish]

You're missing the most important step! You have to setup your computer to think that your two physical 1024x768 screens are indeed one screen running at 2048x768... ATI can't do this, only Matrox and Nvidia... It's called "horizontal span"

Here's the first result on a quick Google...

 

[Turner]

Well, the laptop has an Intel graphics chip. I didn't see an option for horizontal span.

See, if I had known about this, I wouldn't have tried to do it with this laptop.

 

[drfish]

Sorry, I guess I should have specifically mentioned it eariler... But I guess this means that if I do it I will be the first... So, anyone want to sponsor me on this endeavor?

I'll dig up this thread at a later date...