2x th2go, i wonder?

[G3]

an idea i have been wondering about for some time,

can you run 2x th2go from one pc?

 

i recently picked up a second th2go,

currently i have them set up for myself and my good buddy for racing rfactor,

th2go and race sim = heaven.

 

point is:

this opens up a whole new set of possibilities with up to 6 screens

with the idea of spanning the 2 vertically, (3 across x 2 down)

 

so with any luck dcs might do a res of 3840x2048

similar to Urze setup but using 2x th2go

 

might get a few complaints come race day though :D

 

will be testing with monitors in current location for now,

should be more info along shortly.

Edited February 21, 2011 by G3

[CyBerkut]

It should work with your specs, although you may want to get out of SLI mode (not sure). I'm sure a number of us will be looking forward to reports on your experience with it.

[Allo]

I was thinking about doing this myself and e-mailed Matrox to see if it was possible before I purchased the second TH2G.

Here is the reply.

"We just support one GXM (DH2Go or TH2Go) per system. In order to support 6 monitors, in your case, you need to consider other Matrox products, like a graphic card."

I suppose "We just support one GMX per system" doesn't mean it won't work. Might work.

Tell us how you go.

[G3]

update:

 

woke up today and was on a mission so to speak,

plugged in the second th2go,

now both units are connected to one videocard thru 2x dvi outputs via D-sub adapters

(we are talking analogue th2go's)

 

display properties:

went into win display prop and enabled the second screen and

positioned them one above the other.

 

nvidia control panel:

took it out of sli mode in nvidia cp as suggested above by CyBerkut,

(as it will not let you span across 2 cards non sli, why i do not know, it would be ideal)

went to multi monitor and spanned it vertically, i feel sorry for that gpu.

 

new max desktop res was 3840x2048 :) so far so good.

 

dcs:

so i fire up the shark thru dcsmax

went to in game options to find the new res detected and in the list ready for picking.

obviously the menus screens etc were right in the middle but not too bad

 

that is were things went down hill a bit,

the top th2go screens all went very very dark, image still there but very dark

were as the bottom th2go screens were normal brightness.

 

unplayable but i could see it was working, all six moving with tracker.

but why has the top th2go gone dark?

 

ok, so i went back to single screen desktop res,

shutdown and disconnected the second th2go.

rebooted and holly crap it was still dark, panic in the air.

tried booting in safe/vga mode and resetting things that way, nope.

ended up removing the nvidia display driver and installing the latest ones.

rebooted and then it was all back to normal, few.

ok so now back to where i was before plugging in the second th2go.

hell of a process but all part of the fun.

 

i took a few screenshots,

but they are of little value as it just looks like a normal screenshot :D.

you can only tell due to the tiny info bar along the bottom.

awesome with the hud just filling the top centre,

and potential for the bottom centre to be touch.

didn't check actual frame rate but it seemed to still be running ok,

chopper not all choppy so to speak.

and the horizontal split of the bezels isn't in that bad a position.

100% better than a single th2go, having to look down to see instruments.

 

summary:

it seems to work other than the top 3 screens went dark.

will keep at it and post results using the freshly installed 185.85 drivers.

Edited June 25, 2009 by G3

[Inrptrn]

Good luck with this!

Is it not possible to do this setup with 1x th2g0+softTH?

[G3]

guess it would be, but i have no experience with softth,

others may be able to offer some input there.

 

update:

 

today with the 185.85 drivers i hooked up both th2go units again,

this time only a minor brightness change from the centre top screen,

bordering on un-noticable so not a problem, off to a good start.

 

this time setting it all back to using only one th2go thru nvidia cp,

everything went back to normal, unlike the previous attempt.

 

realised that the image on the top monitors would have to be brought down

and visa versa for the bottom 3 to compensate for the bezel across the centre,

but that was after these shots were done.

also the second th2go using the 17" screens would only let me bring the sides in

about half the width of the side bezels so they to look a bit wrong.

but it works, it works very well, and the performance hit is there but nowhere

near what i thought it might be, flight was smooth and very playable.

(as per normal, when i first start up using the tracker is a bit jerky

but that goes away after looking around the joint for a few seconds before take off)

 

now just to clear the mud, i do not have these screens in a 3x2 layout,

it is 2x th2go set up on seperate desks, one with 19" and the other with 17"

i just ran a vga cable from one desk to the other desk,

all from one videocard on my pc.

 

to simulate a 3x2 stack i have edited photos i took of the 2 seperate th2go

setups, to show what it would look like if they were indeed setup that way.

 

that should explain why the screens do not quite line up etc,

and my photography skill are also somewhat lacking also.

 

below you will see an in game screenshot, along with the edited photos

i took of the six screens of the same in game image, you'll see :)

i have reduced the screenshots in size from the original 3840x2048.

 

the classic full frontal

 

 

 

hud filling the top centre

 

 

 

looking down a little, messing around with zoom too

 

 

and then a look to the left

 

 

 

look out

 

 

had to sneak in one of the race sim rfactor and our v8 factor league

 

 

 

a basic th2go selecting the default shkval-camera-abris option via the in game options menu

 

and a nice little sunset shot i thought looked pretty good

 

so that's it folks, 2x th2go from one videocard.

Edited June 26, 2009 by G3

[CyBerkut]

Nice. Thanks for the update on how it has turned out!

 

I'm still pondering what I'm going to do when I finally put together a new desktop rig, etc. I'd really like to have a touchscreen as the center of 3, or the bottom center of 6, displays. I haven't decided if I'd like it enough to warrant the $$$ though...

[G3]

not using it at present but i have a touch overlay for the centre screen and

i can assure you it is worth it, direct from hong kong for sub $200 for a thin

glass panel to usb, perfect for what u describe.

[Inrptrn]

You are powering all that off of 1 gtx280??

Looks awesome btw

[G3]

yes 1x gtx280 and thanks, was worth the effort to see it working.

 

next i want to set up 1x th2go below a proj, that was my intention all along.

so stay tuned for those pics, but don't hold your breath.

i have the proj but still don't have a screen,

although it has now reached the top of the list :)

Edited June 28, 2009 by G3

[G3]

good news,

it seems that matrox is now supporting and use of 2x digital th2go :D

 

next idea is to try and have 5 screens wide for racing.

(not 6 as you want the centre to be in the middle screen, not a bezel)

 

will post the story and some screens if i get it working.

[BHawthorne]

good news,

it seems that matrox is now supporting and use of 2x digital th2go :D

 

2x TH2G has always worked as long as it didn't exceed 8192 pixel width on the resolution. Noone was willing to try it though until around 2008. Frankly at the moment, 5x1P Eyefinity is better for an LCD setup.

Edited February 18, 2011 by BHawthorne

[G3]

hi Bhawthorne,

i think i have seen you around the widescreen forums?

judging by you nthusim avatar i would say i have the right guy.

 

a better way to put it is that, remembering mine are the old analogue units.

originally matrox did not officially support the use of more than one th2go,

but now it's a feature :) and still only for the digital editions afaik.

 

something of interest is that i finally got around to testing out the 5 screens setup

running on the tri-sli rig using 5 dvi outputs each with a 1280x1024 19"

with sli disabled and all monitors layed out in a horizontal line.

all 5 monitors extended in windows 7 display properties for a total res of 6400x1024

making the left most screen the primary display

(important step otherwise it only showed up on 3 of the 5 screens for some reason)

 

FC2 worked without any modification other than manually entering the resolution in the options.lua

no bezel correction but it still looked pretty dam good.

 

the latest softth 2.04 for win7 is simply a single dll file that u place in the games root folder.

run the game, it configures the monitor layout straight from you windows 7 display properties

nothing more to do other than edit a few numbers to allow for your bezel widths.

 

as for rfactor i had to use softth in order to get the game to recognize the res in the rfactor config window.

without softth rfactor only offered the 1280x1024 res,

but with softth installed rfactor also allowed me to run it at 6400x1024

 

then i added the bezel correction of 4x 100 pixels and adjusted the softth config to suit,

which left me with a total bezel corrected res of 6800x1024

and perfect alignment between screens.

Sadly the performance hit dropped the fps down to 45,

where in comparison the th2go in tri sli on 3 screens fps is in always in the hundreds.

 

not knocking the softth, it is wonderful, but would be vastly improved if only you could harness

the power of those other gpu's.

Edited February 21, 2011 by G3