cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Multi-monitor setup not playing nice with the Rift

Clavus
Protege
Right now I've got one 1080p Samsung monitor (= set as main display), and one older Dell 1280x1024 monitor. If I plug in my Rift, it's recognized as a third monitor, however it isn't actually 'activated'. If I try to clone either my Samsung or Dell screen to it, even after changing the res to 1280x800, it just says it "can't save the screen settings" (translated, since my Windows is in Dutch).

In order for the Rift to actually work I unplug my 1080p monitor, then I can clone my Dell display to my Rift display and I'm ready to rock. I know the Unity guide mentions you have to clone your main display, but it seems you can't have a secondary display plugged in at the same time. Known issue?
7 REPLIES 7

cybereality
Grand Champion
Can you post more about your hardware and what OS you are using?

Also, many video cards only allow 2 active monitors at one time (although you may have more plugged in). I don't think it's necessary to unplug the physical cable, you should be able to just enable or disable the particular display.

This is not an issue unique to the Rift, there are many problems with multi-monitor setups like this.
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X | MSI X370 Titanium | G.Skill 16GB DDR4 3200 | EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 | Corsair Hydro H110i Gigabyte RX Vega 64 x2 | Samsung 960 Evo M.2 500GB | Seagate FireCuda SSHD 2TB | Phanteks ENTHOO EVOLV

Clavus
Protege
Windows 7 x64. Graphics card is an AMD HD7950. Dell monitor is plugged into the DVI-out (it's analog DVI I think), Samsung in the mini-Display port, Rift in the HDMI-out (the card has DVI, HDMI, 2x mini-DP).

jjerald
Honored Guest
I had the same issue as I was frantically trying to mirror a display at a conference this morning (I have been using a third monitor as a work window before but not mirror). It said it could not save the settings. Ended up just not using that larger display so people had to watch on my workstation laptop. I am using Windows 7 Professional on a Sager Laptop with a Nvidia GTX 680m.

Jason
-- Jason Jerald, PhD Consultant NextGen Interactions http://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonjerald

zwickarr
Honored Guest
I have 2 dvi and 1 hdmi port on my gfx card. when I want to play games through my dvi i would hit "windows key + p" to go to the "projector" this would turn off my main display on my hdmi and turn on my hdmi to my tv.

Now with the rift I wanted to have both dvi monitors for developing and the rift so I got this:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001IYFZA2/ref=oh_details_o02_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

this device mirrors which ever dvi port you want. work great. glad i bought it, Valve approved. 😉

-z

mparrett
Honored Guest
I stubbornly defied the Unity integration PDF and set the Rift DK as the secondary monitor.

If you create a shortcut to the built executable and use "-adapter 1", you can run on the secondary display.

From here:

http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/8153/fullscreen-on-a-second-monitor.html

cybereality
Grand Champion
The -adapter command is a nice trick, but I think it only works on Windows 7.
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X | MSI X370 Titanium | G.Skill 16GB DDR4 3200 | EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 | Corsair Hydro H110i Gigabyte RX Vega 64 x2 | Samsung 960 Evo M.2 500GB | Seagate FireCuda SSHD 2TB | Phanteks ENTHOO EVOLV

Anonymous
Not applicable
The cannot save settings error is actually the ATI Catalyst reporting that it cannot complete the configuration you requested. This generally occurs when you have, for example, 2x monitors hooked to the DVI ports and 1 monitor hooked to the HDMI port. You can enable two at once, but not all. This is of course subject to card capabilities, but the error in Windows 7 could at least be generated by the driver. It may as well say unknown error.

As for multiple monitor support, I am running 2x ATI Radeon 6xxx Series with four monitors plus the rift plugged into the HDMI port of the primary card when in crossfire mode mirroring my primary display. The rift works fine for the most part, but when Unity full screens it goes out of range. Yes, I am using the correct resolution and the refresh rate seems to default to 60 hz. If TF2 is set to full screen mode the rift also goes out of range with the -vr switch (when TF2 worked..) and I was forced to play in windowed mode.

Lastly, TF2 stopped working and turned into a full screen split (it was fine as of 2 AM PST this morning) but I think that is a different issue -- relating to Vale updating something and breaking rift support. It also may be my excessive monitor setup, but all other demos are functioning fine in windowed mode, UT and Unity.

I have yet to simplify the configuration and assess how many confounding variables there could be.

Edit: Full screen torque 3d also sends my rift out of range. Any ideas?