Oolite Bulletins

Yesterday I did an upgrade - replaced video-card and added a second display.

First start of Oolite (1.77) ended with gasping for air - game took two displays as one big canvas and I flew for a while with a cross-hair exactly in the middle between two screens.
When I opened options menu, I saw "Full Screen mode: 3840x1080" well, that was to be expected. 3840 - exactly two screens.
One stroke of the right key and it switched to the "Full Screen mode: 1920x1080". One screen - game draws itself on the primary screen only, secondary went to sleep. And all lesser resolutions - primary screen only.

So I now have two question:
- Why the screen detection does not recognize that there are two actual displays and use them as a single screen?
- Why does it turn off the secondary display for normal resolutions?

WhiteOwl wrote:

First start of Oolite (1.77) ended with gasping for air - game took two displays as one big canvas and I flew for a while with a cross-hair exactly in the middle between two screens.

Heh.. that's the way I play all the time.. doesn't take long to get used to it..

WhiteOwl wrote:

When I opened options menu, I saw "Full Screen mode: 3840x1080" well, that was to be expected. 3840 - exactly two screens.
One stroke of the right key and it switched to the "Full Screen mode: 1920x1080". One screen - game draws itself on the primary screen only, secondary went to sleep. And all lesser resolutions - primary screen only.

So I now have two question:
- Why the screen detection does not recognize that there are two actual displays and use them as a single screen?
- Why does it turn off the secondary display for normal resolutions?

For your first question, I think that's exactly what it was doing when it spanned across both monitors.. on my machine, screen0 is 2560x1024, spanned across a pair of 1280x1024 monitors. I suspect if I assigned one monitor to screen0 and one to screen1, I might end up with something like you describe..

Not sure I can help with the second question.. I'm not too keen on messing with my current configuration to experiment.

WhiteOwl wrote:

- Why the screen detection does not recognize that there are two actual displays and use them as a single screen?

Well, judging from what you have commented, the game does recognize the two screens and uses them as a single one, when you select their combined resolution option from the available resolutions list.

- Why does it turn off the secondary display for normal resolutions?

Why would it span across two screens for a resolution of e.g. 1920x1080 or less, when one of the two screens is capable of handling that resolution on its own? Do you suggest that the game should enlarge / rescale pixel sizes so that 1920x1080 spans over two monitors? Not sure what you are asking here, if you can elablorate on this it would be great.

I was expected to see the game in full-screen mode on one display only. On the second display I want to see normal WM with all windows I brought there.
After all, that was the whole point of the two-display system for me. One display for monitoring of long-working processes, another one for "other" staff.
As of now, I can only play Oolite in a windowed mode, the full screen mode is "too" full screen.

At a guess, your monitors are both currently assigned to screen 0. I haven't tried it myself, but I've suspected for some time now that setting the primary monitor to x-server screen 0, and the secondary one to x-server screen 1, would result in the effect you're looking for.

One way around this would be to play Oolite in a window and not to use full screen mode? That way you could resize the window to fill one monitor and still have access to your desktop etc on the other one.

JazHaz wrote:

One way around this would be to play Oolite in a window and not to use full screen mode? That way you could resize the window to fill one monitor and still have access to your desktop etc on the other one.

He's already doing this.. the question now is how to take it to the next level..

WhiteOwl wrote:

As of now, I can only play Oolite in a windowed mode, the full screen mode is "too" full screen.