Dual monitors, no display in AO

**_________Electronaut** · Oct 5th, 2003, 02:59:02

I'm having problems with my MSI Geforce 4 ti4800 card and dual monitors. AO won't display anything when i have the secondary monitor (well, tv) enabled. I have to disable "extend desktop to this monitor" in display properties everytime I'm going to play.

Very annoying. This doesn't happen to me in other games. Any pointers? Is this a bug?

**da_fixah** · Oct 10th, 2003, 22:48:07

I get the same thing... kind of

i have a asus 95660 (fx 5600) with dual dvi out. and some old pos pci card (3 outputs in total)

when i have the 2 monitors enabled on my 5600 ao starts and runns but the window is BLACK. i can hear music, and footsteps when i run but no picture.

and when i use the nview software to span the monitors, i can only play at lame resolutions...

eg;
(using nvidia software to control dual head)
my current desktop is 3200x1200
best res i can get in game is 1600x600
(but it would sure be nice to play at 1600x1200)

or
(using Windows xp to controll dual head)
i have 2x monitors running at 1600x1200 each, and can run AO in 1600x1200 windowed mode, but with no video (just a black screen)

if anyone has any ideas i would be eternally greatfull

**hhj** · Oct 11th, 2003, 03:22:55

My video card supports dual (triple with S-Video, and now that I think about it, I could wire S-Video into my octane and make neat movies of playing in AO) monitors, and wouldnt mind getting AO on two monitors either. Possible to do?

**Istrikeit** · Oct 23rd, 2003, 21:08:04

Originally posted by 10100110010
I get the same thing... kind of

i have a asus 95660 (fx 5600) with dual dvi out. and some old pos pci card (3 outputs in total)

when i have the 2 monitors enabled on my 5600 ao starts and runns but the window is BLACK. i can hear music, and footsteps when i run but no picture.

and when i use the nview software to span the monitors, i can only play at lame resolutions...

eg;
(using nvidia software to control dual head)
my current desktop is 3200x1200
best res i can get in game is 1600x600
(but it would sure be nice to play at 1600x1200)

or
(using Windows xp to controll dual head)
i have 2x monitors running at 1600x1200 each, and can run AO in 1600x1200 windowed mode, but with no video (just a black screen)

if anyone has any ideas i would be eternally greatfull

Any luck with resolving this? I never had a problem with windowed mode, until today. I installed the 52.16 ForceWare drivers (new name for Detonators) and now I get the exact same prob.... Game runs, but won't render anything.

**Dudicas** · Oct 23rd, 2003, 21:25:28

I picked up a FX 5200 yesterday and tried to setup the dual monitor stuff. I eventually managed to get it to work by changing my primary display to the other one. That got AO to render, but it borked my sound all to hell. I wasted about 6 hours of play time messing with it trying different driver sets, tweaking with rivatuner, direct3d, hardware control, it came down to I could either have borked sound and AO running on one monitor with desktop on the other(which i still had to run in windowed mode which defeats the purpose of having dual monitors) or i could have good sound, but have what I guess I would call input lag. It was mouse lag but not just the mouse, i could press any movement key on the keyboard and get about a half second delay, just long enough that i wouldn't start moving until after i released the key and would keep moving after i released it. We all know that is a quick trip back to RK in the shadowlands so I couldn't deal with that. The sound problem was wierd, it made the AO sounds all scratchy, and winamp would play in slow motion. Winamp wasn't causing it btw, AO sounds were still scratchy and staticy with no apps but AO running. So eventually I just set everything back to single monitor. I guess it wouldnt be so bad if I actually got some performance increase off the new card, but its not any better than my G4 ti4400.

**Istrikeit** · Oct 23rd, 2003, 22:18:50

Originally posted by Dudicas
I picked up a FX 5200 yesterday ... if I actually got some performance increase off the new card, but its not any better than my G4 ti4400.

Not to be an ass, but you'd most likely get better performance out of the 4400. the FX 5200 is a sorry excuse for a card.

**DrGrov** · Oct 31st, 2003, 12:37:59

Ok, dual monitor setup used to work for me as well.
NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600 driving one digi and one analog monitor.

Now I just get the black screen if a second monitor is hooked up.

Is it just me, or did FC nerf Dual monitor capability by accident?

Any word from FC on this?

**lilnymph** · Oct 31st, 2003, 12:45:03

Seems to be a problem with Dual monitor cards. I have dual monitors (one ati Radian 9600, and one through a pile of **** pci card

) and that works just fine.

hugs

lilnymph

**DrGrov** · Oct 31st, 2003, 12:51:06

I would have agreed if I did not have it working until either the SL patch or when I had one monitor turned off when I booted (once). Hard to tell since they were at almost the same time on the same day.

No hardware change and it just does not work anymore

**lilnymph** · Oct 31st, 2003, 12:56:14

hmmm, well all I can say for sure is that my set up still works. Perhaps something with shadowlands doesn't like dual monitor cards?

hugs

lilnymph

**DrGrov** · Oct 31st, 2003, 13:30:08

guess I might have to grab the second card then :|

**Pyle** · Oct 31st, 2003, 13:49:10

I'm running dual monitors off a Radeon 9700 pro with no problems. I had a similar problem a while ago with Elite Force, and it turned out to be a direct 3d or open-gl problem (can't remember which). Maybe you should try selecting hardware acceleration only, if AO supports it for your card. I just checked and that is how I have mine set.

**DrGrov** · Oct 31st, 2003, 16:03:12

odd. I dont have an option for HW accel only

**DrGrov** · Nov 6th, 2003, 06:11:16

added the PCI card as secondary and BINGO... no problems.
Now, if I could only jam in another proc...

**lilnymph** · Nov 6th, 2003, 10:21:54

Originally posted by DrGrov
odd. I dont have an option for HW accel only

That should be one of the option in AO, when you choose what video card you want to use to play on

hugs

lilnymph

**Disjunction** · Nov 19th, 2003, 23:35:42

This is a very simple solution that works for me. Start AO, and get to the screen where you can select graphics card(s). Mine was on RADEON 9800 PRO- Hardware T&L Device. I switched it to RADEON 9800 PRO SECONDARY- Hardware T&L Device, no troubles since.

**Rahz Zalinto** · Nov 19th, 2003, 23:50:26

very odd i just posted teh same topic

**Rahz Zalinto** · Nov 20th, 2003, 00:00:35

might i add, i still cant get it working

**_____~Pack Rollerrat** · Nov 20th, 2003, 01:05:20

Originally posted here. Too lazy to type it all up again, so I'll just quote myself.

Note if you happen to reboot with one monitor disconnected you might have to fiddle with the cables and settings again. And every time I reinstall Windows, guess what I have to do. Oh and sometimes when I upgrade drivers...

Originally posted by ~Pack Rollerrat
I've had the black screen/wrong monitor problem with my dual-head GeForce4 card. Solution was to get newer drivers and to switch which monitor is considered "Primary" in the settings. I logically picked my left monitor to be Primary (since it's bigger) and the right one to be the Extended but it would never work. By switching it around AO works! I always have the forums and a database site up for reference while playing.

Good luck.

Originally posted by ~Pack Rollerrat
BTW, physically switching the ports for each monitor did not work...

Originally posted by ~Pack Rollerrat
Just updated my drivers for my GF4 to 43.45 and got the black screen problem again (windowed mode). On left monitor I'd get the black screen with music but no picture. Would work fine on right monitor but that's not where I wanted it. Crash in full screen mode. Doing my usual tweaks didn't fix so finally swapped cables and have the Display Properties -> Settings like this now:

2 1
Left Right (using connector closer to motherboard)
Primary Extend my Windows desktop to this monitor.

And guess what, AO works again on the correct monitor! Swapping cables didn't work for me last time I reinstalled my computer, very strange...

**Purr** · Nov 20th, 2003, 11:24:28

Solution: I've been using dual (and now triple

) monitors for years now, so i've managed to experience all the joys and woes related. The problem you are having is related to DirectX. Basically an application chooses which "device" to use as its hardware. Once the device is chosen it then uses that hardware to do all the 3D graphics and display them. What is happening is that AO is using device Y but the window is appearing on the monitor plugged into device X. A graphics card like the FX 5600 has two outputs and tells windows that they are two seperate devices, which they kinda are. AO will always display on your PRIMARY monitor, which is set in the display properties settings. Now if you have the other device, which isn't primary, as AO's device you're gonna get a black screen.

The solution is to either change the device AO uses (which I don't think works???) or change which monitor is your primary monitor in the windows display settings. I say that changing the device in AO doesn't work because I can choose any of my devices from the device list and it still outputs on my primary monitor. Anyway just change ur primary monitor to a different one. Take heed though the GeForceFX 5600 (and very likely all cards using the NView application) can change which display is which in the nvidia settings as well. So goto the advanced tab for your FX and it has a picture of both ur screens, you can change the order of the screens here (they do it just to confuse you i'm sure). So in theory you will have 4 combinations to try out alternating between the windows and the nvidia settings, just change the setting and launch AO (no need to restart). And you have to shutdown AO each time you change the setting.

Also note that some applications use Overlay or DirectX to display video files so you may experience the same situation where by you can only watch videos on one of you monitors, however dragging the window to another screen usually works in this situation. I haven't had any problems with displaying video on all 3 screens for a while yet however, seems to be a thing of that past which rocks!! Shame about DX apps tho.

1 Other thing, this doesn't hold for ALL DX apps, so some may work on all ur monitors (confused yet?)

Thread: Dual monitors, no display in AO

Thread Tools

Dual monitors, no display in AO

Solution (For Radeon Users, might work for others)

Posting Permissions