Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hi all,

I've hooked up my fourth monitor and enjoying using it while in game.



In some games, like Civilization V, I can simply move my mouse from the game to the 4th monitor and use the desktop. In other games, though, like FPS or SimCity, the mouse is locked to the surround 3-screen component. I cannot 'unlock' my mouse and move it to the 4th monitor unless I alt-tab, which I could have done without a 4th monitor.

Is there a hot-key or something to release my mouse while in-game?

Cheers.

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i5-2500K @ 4Ghz ° Asus P8Z68 ° GTX670 Windforce OC ° 8GB DDR3 RipjawsX ° 4x Viewsonic VA2703 ° Logitech G15 / G5 / G27 ° Razer Vespula ° TrackIR 5 ° Thrustmaster Warthog HOTAS

I'm not sure on that one.
I hooked up my 4th, saw what a frame rate hit I got and decided not to bother. I have SLI 680GTX FTW 4G and I saw at least a 15-20% drop with it, but that was quite awhile ago, have you noticed anything with your set-up?

Not substantially, although I haven't benchmarked it so it may well do so. I mean, I'm driving another screen and having to process the desktop at the same time as gaming now, so I expect it to have a performance hit. I do find it handy for monitoring things while gaming. I guess I don't push any extreme games to the bitter end performance wise and I am not a huge FPS person so absolute performance is not a huge issue for me. I've never noticed any slowdown in game so it's still trucking along fast enough for me, but yeah I would expect some sort of performance hit to be running an extra screen.

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i5-2500K @ 4Ghz ° Asus P8Z68 ° GTX670 Windforce OC ° 8GB DDR3 RipjawsX ° 4x Viewsonic VA2703 ° Logitech G15 / G5 / G27 ° Razer Vespula ° TrackIR 5 ° Thrustmaster Warthog HOTAS

AFAIK DirectX doesn't allow the mouse to leave the Screen in Fullscreen mode. If you start a game in Windowed mode that works, but you still loose Focus on the game i.e WASD doesn't work anymore.
The best way is to start a Game in Maximized Window Mode. Then you can move the mouse to the 4th display and back without interception. Tough i'm not sure if Crossfire works in Maximized Window mode... in normal window mode it doesn't.
I've stopped using my 4th Monitor.... mainly because AMD messed up their driver and all games tried to maximizied on the accessory monitor instead of the eyefinity setup
But even before i didn't really use it. Was nice to have Chat there and some Hardware statistics. but OSD shows temperature also.

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We gonna send it to outa space!

Well that's weird because I can semmlessly move my mouse between Civ V running in DirectX and the 4th mon, but not SimCity which is a similar top down style game.

Who knows... it's really for monitoring now as you say, and alt-tab if I need to.

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i5-2500K @ 4Ghz ° Asus P8Z68 ° GTX670 Windforce OC ° 8GB DDR3 RipjawsX ° 4x Viewsonic VA2703 ° Logitech G15 / G5 / G27 ° Razer Vespula ° TrackIR 5 ° Thrustmaster Warthog HOTAS

]-[iya guys..

I have been using multi monitors from the very begining. Even ran Duke Nukem 3D with triples a ways back. Required 3 computers networked, the sides were run with -L and -R. Temporary fun at LAN parties, but got me hooked!

..best "Utility monitor" setup is always via a 2nd vid card, some cheapo thing or a left over from previous build.

But the latest darlings are USB monitors. I tripped over one a coupla years back, a Samsung 226ux, had a wee ROM code for SW instal on the USB port for XP. Sort of a virtual screen shipped out the USB port, not real fast but fast enough for movies and any number of monitoring utils. The main vid' cards never saw it or noticed a thing. I got the newer software for Win7 a long time back, still working fab'.

Displaylink has all kinds of adapters for this now ..USB to DVI or whatever, multiports too. My early one was a tad more costly with a monitor built in. Mine would chain 6 more through the USB, one to the next but never tried or ever saw one.

Switching access has always been a fudge and as mentioned either a desktop mode game the mouse slides to util screen easily or fullscreen mode requires ALT TAB. I've not ever seen anything else. Displaylink might have something in thier new stuff. Dunno.

Yuppers, its great having utils, monitoring, cheat sheets, walkthroughs or whatever online with games and other apps.

Works grand w/Eyefinity as it dosen't know a thing, only eating CPU cycles but any decent quad...

<wave>

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- AMD 965 @3.8 - Gigabyte 790fx ud5 - AMD 7970 Ghz - OCZ Reaper 4GB - OCZ Vetex - Eyefinity 3x Asus vw266h - Samsung t260hd + 226ux - (soundcard) - Sony 5.1 ~700w - PC P&C 750w - Corsair K60 -

Interesting, thanks for the post Chainmale.

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i5-2500K @ 4Ghz ° Asus P8Z68 ° GTX670 Windforce OC ° 8GB DDR3 RipjawsX ° 4x Viewsonic VA2703 ° Logitech G15 / G5 / G27 ° Razer Vespula ° TrackIR 5 ° Thrustmaster Warthog HOTAS

hum.... from this perspective i wonder if an Tablet would work. there are some Apps/Software that let you use your Tablet as a Monitor extension.
Gotta try that out sometime.

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We gonna send it to outa space!

When I play windowed games on my triple setup I find the mouse only leaves the screen in poorly coded games. Far Cry 3, for example; a few times I was killed because I accidentally launched GP Legends or something similar mid-outpost assault...

If you're playing Steam games I find if you shift-tab to bring up the overlay you can move the mouse outside of the window without having to actually alt-tab, but in most cases if you were to actually click on the desktop it would alt-tab out anyway and you'd have to alt-tab to get it back. So there's that.