Multi-monitor, also called multi-display and multi-head, is the use of multiple physical display devices, such as monitors, televisions, and projectors, in order to increase the area available for computer programs running on a single computer system. Research studies show that, depending on the type of work, multi-head may increase the productivity by between 50 and 70 percent. [1] [2] [3]
Multiple computers can be connected to provide a single display, e.g. over Gigabit Ethernet/Ethernet to drive a large video wall. [4]
Measurements of the Institute for Occupational Safety and Health of the German Social Accident Insurance showed that the quality and quantity of worker performance varies according to the screen setup and type of task. Overall, the results of physiological studies and the preferences of the test persons favour a dual-monitor rather than single-monitor setup. Physiologically limiting factors observed during work on dual monitors were minor and not generally significant. There is no evidence that office work with dual-monitor setups presents a possible hazard to workers. [5]
One way to extend the number of displays on one computer is to add displays via USB. Starting in 2006, DisplayLink released several chips for USB support on VGA/DVI/LVDS and other interfaces. [6]
In many professions, including graphic design, architecture, communications, accounting, engineering and video editing, the idea of two or more monitors being driven from one machine is not a new one. While in the past, it has meant multiple graphics adapters and specialized software, it was common for engineers to have at least two, if not more, displays to enhance productivity. [7]
Early versions of Doom permitted a three-monitor display mode, using three networked machines to show left, right, and center views. [8]
More recently, games have used multiple monitors to show a more absorbing interface to the player or to display game information. Various flight simulators can use these monitor setups to create an artificial cockpit with more realistic interfaces. [9] Others such as Supreme Commander and World in Conflict can use an additional monitor for a large scale map of the battlefield. [10]
A large number of older games support multi-monitor set-ups by treating the total screen space as effectively a single monitor to the game, a technique known as spanning. Many games without inherent multi-monitor support such as Guild Wars and World of Warcraft can also be made to run in multi-monitor set-ups, with this technique or in conjunction with addition of third-party software [11] A larger list of games that support dual/multi-screen modes is available at WSGF. [12]
The concept of "multi-monitor" games is not limited to games that can be played on personal computers. As arcade technology entered the 1990s, larger cabinets were being built which in turn also housed larger monitors such as the 3 28" screen version of Namco's Ridge Racer from 1993. Although large screen technology such as CRT rear projection was beginning to be used more often, multi-monitor games were still occasionally released, such as Sega's F355 Challenge from 1999 which again used 3 28" monitors for the sit-down cockpit version. The most recent use of a multi-monitor setup in arcades occurred with Taito's Dariusburst: Another Chronicle game, released in Japan in December 2010 [13] and worldwide the following year. [14] It uses 2 32" LCD screens and an angled mirror to create a seamless widescreen.
Nintendo demonstrated the feasibility of playing multi-monitor games on handheld game consoles in designing the Nintendo DS and its successor, the Nintendo 3DS, which both became successful consoles in their own right. Games on these systems take advantage of the two screens available, typically by displaying gameplay on the upper screen, while showing useful information on the bottom screen. [15] There are also a number of games, mostly for the Nintendo DS, whose gameplay spans across both screens, combining them into one tall screen for a more unique and larger view of the action. [16]
Vertical monitors are usually added as a secondary display to the left or right of the main landscape oriented monitor. They are useful to display more information vertically down the page, computer programmers use this configuration most often to see as many lines of code on the screen as possible without having to scroll a lot. [17]
Ordinary software does not need special support for multiple screens even if it uses the graphic accelerator. At the usual application level, multihead is presented just as a single larger monitor spanning over all screens. However, some special approaches may increase the multithread performance.
With multiple monitors present, each screen will have its own graphics buffer. One possible scenario for programming is to present to OpenGL or DirectX a continuous, virtual frame buffer in which the OS or graphics driver writes out to each individual buffer. With some graphics cards, it's possible to enable a mode called "horizontal span" which accomplishes this. The OpenGL/DirectX programmer then renders to a very large frame buffer for output. In practice, and with recent cards, this mode is being phased out because it does not make very good use of GPU parallelism and does not support arbitrary arrangements of monitors (they must all be horizontal). A more recent technique uses the wglShareLists feature of OpenGL to share data across multiple GPUs, and then render to each individual monitor's frame buffer. [18]
Android supports an additional monitor as of version 4.2 [19] but additional software is needed to multi-task/use both at once. [20] [21]
A second display or second displays is a common term describing the multi-monitor setup with just one additional monitor attached. Today it is particularly common to have one workstation with two monitors connected where the second monitor is referred to as the second display. Many tablets will serve as a second display connected to a laptop. [22] Many modern shops use cash registers with two screens, one facing the cashier and a second display facing the shopper.
Today's second display has evolved from a multi screen personal computer monitor to having multiple technical features such as a touchscreen, web cam or even a barcode reader in stores. [23] When a simultaneous touch input is performed on two devices simultaneously there will be a technical solution required to solve the dual input.
The European Union Intellectual Property Office rejected a trademark application for "second display" by LG Electronics, citing that the term was not distinctive. [24]
Shop and IT-support staff can use the term “second display” when referring to the second monitor in a multi-monitor setup. [25]
Retail and hotel businesses have a professional meaning for a "second display", also known as interactive customer display or dual-screen for shops. The term is used in retail and hotel environments when referring to a customer facing display that is connected to the point of sale (POS) system. Normally a second display solution contains both hardware and interactive software allowing the shopper to perform certain actions. The second display is most commonly used to show the total purchase amount and the purchase list. Some advanced systems contain functionality relating to loyalty and member data. In an article from 2021 the Swedish retail magazine Dagens Handel mentions the provider of second displays ID24 [26] and their published survey among retail and hospitality companies. [27]
The second display can draw shoppers' attention to new products, advertisements, charities, or special offers. The displays can also be used for different kinds of user input – for example entering an email to receive an electronic receipt, give feedback or sign up for loyalty to the customer relationship management (CRM) system.
A graphics card is a computer expansion card that generates a feed of graphics output to a display device such as a monitor. Graphics cards are sometimes called discrete or dedicated graphics cards to emphasize their distinction to an integrated graphics processor on the motherboard or the central processing unit (CPU). A graphics processing unit (GPU) that performs the necessary computations is the main component in a graphics card, but the acronym "GPU" is sometimes also used to erroneously refer to the graphics card as a whole.
In computer science, multiple buffering is the use of more than one buffer to hold a block of data, so that a "reader" will see a complete version of the data instead of a partially updated version of the data being created by a "writer". It is very commonly used for computer display images. It is also used to avoid the need to use dual-ported RAM (DPRAM) when the readers and writers are different devices.
A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit initially designed for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics, being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal computers, workstations, and game consoles. After their initial design, GPUs were found to be useful for non-graphic calculations involving embarrassingly parallel problems due to their parallel structure. Other non-graphical uses include the training of neural networks and cryptocurrency mining.
The RIVA TNT2 is a graphics processing unit manufactured by Nvidia starting in early 1999. The chip is codenamed "NV5" because it is the 5th graphics chip design by Nvidia, succeeding the RIVA TNT (NV4). RIVA is an acronym for Real-time Interactive Video and Animation accelerator. The "TNT" suffix refers to the chip's ability to work on two texels at once. Nvidia removed RIVA from the name later in the chip's lifetime.
A KVM switch is a hardware device that allows a user to control multiple computers from one or more sets of keyboards, video monitors, and mouse.
In computing, hardware overlay, a type of video overlay, provides a method of rendering an image to a display screen with a dedicated memory buffer inside computer video hardware. The technique aims to improve the display of a fast-moving video image — such as a computer game, a DVD, or the signal from a TV card. Most video cards manufactured since about 1998 and most media players support hardware overlay.
The ATI Rage is a series of graphics chipsets developed by ATI Technologies offering graphical user interface (GUI) 2D acceleration, video acceleration, and 3D acceleration developed by ATI Technologies. It is the successor to the ATI Mach series of 2D accelerators.
The Matrox Parhelia-512 is a graphics processing unit (GPU) released by Matrox in 2002. It has full support for DirectX 8.1 and incorporates several DirectX 9.0 features. At the time of its release, it was best known for its ability to drive three monitors and its Coral Reef tech demo.
The G400 is a video card made by Matrox, released in September 1999. The graphics processor contains a 2D GUI, video, and Direct3D 6.0 3D accelerator. Codenamed "Toucan", it was a more powerful and refined version of its predecessor, the G200.
A multiseat, multi-station or multiterminal system is a single computer which supports multiple independent local users at the same time.
Matrox Graphics eXpansion Module (GXM) supports the use of multiple monitors over a single video source by splitting the output of a video source, providing an enlarged workspace or gaming environment. GXM is not a graphics card itself, and in fact requires a fairly powerful graphics card for playing games on multiple monitors.
A video wall is a special multi-monitor setup that consists of multiple computer monitors, video projectors, or television sets tiled together contiguously or overlapped in order to form one large screen. Typical display technologies include LCD panels, Direct View LED arrays, blended projection screens, Laser Phosphor Displays, and rear projection cubes. Jumbotron technology was also previously used. Diamond Vision was historically similar to Jumbotron in that they both used cathode-ray tube (CRT) technology, but with slight differences between the two. Early Diamond vision displays used separate flood gun CRTs, one per subpixel. Later Diamond vision displays and all Jumbotrons used field-replaceable modules containing several flood gun CRTs each, one per subpixel, that had common connections shared across all CRTs in a module; the module was connected through a single weather-sealed connector.
DisplayLink is a semiconductor and software technology company owned by Synaptics, acquired in August 2020. The company specializes in developing DisplayLink USB graphics technology, enabling connections between computers and displays via USB, Ethernet, and WiFi. Additionally, it supports the connection of multiple displays to a single computer.
The Cromemco Dazzler was a graphics card for S-100 bus computers introduced in a Popular Electronics cover story in 1976. It was the first color graphics card available for microcomputers. The Dazzler was the first of a succession of increasingly capable graphics products from Cromemco which, by 1984, were in use at 80% of all television stations in the U.S. for the display of weather, news, and sports graphics.
The Linux console is a system console internal to the Linux kernel. A system console is the device which receives all kernel messages and warnings and which allows logins in single user mode. The Linux console provides a way for the kernel and other processes to send text output to the user, and to receive text input from the user. The user typically enters text with a computer keyboard and reads the output text on a computer monitor. The Linux kernel supports virtual consoles – consoles that are logically separate, but which access the same physical keyboard and display. The Linux console are implemented by the VT subsystem of the Linux kernel, and do not rely on any user space software. This is in contrast to a terminal emulator, which is a user space process that emulates a terminal, and is typically used in a graphical display environment.
The Voodoo2 is a set of three specialized 3D graphics chips on a single chipset setup, made by 3dfx. It was released in February 1998 as a replacement for the original Voodoo Graphics chipset. The card runs at a chipset clock rate of 90 MHz and uses 100 MHz EDO DRAM, and is available for the PCI interface. The Voodoo2 comes in two models, one with 8 MB RAM and one with 12 MB RAM. The 8 MB card has 2 MB of memory per texture mapping unit (TMU) vs. 4 MB on the 12 MB model. The 4 MB framebuffer on both cards support a maximum screen resolution of 800 × 600, while the increased texture memory on the 12 MB card allows more detailed textures. Some boards with 8 MB can be upgraded to 12 MB with an additional daughter board.
The PlayStation 2 technical specifications describe the various components of the PlayStation 2 (PS2) video game console.
A stereoscopic video game is a video game which uses stereoscopic technologies to create depth perception for the player by any form of stereo display. Such games should not be confused with video games that use 3D game graphics on a mono screen, which give the illusion of depth only by monocular cues but lack binocular depth information.
AMD Eyefinity is a brand name for AMD video card products that support multi-monitor setups by integrating multiple display controllers on one GPU. AMD Eyefinity was introduced with the Radeon HD 5000 series "Evergreen" in September 2009 and has been available on APUs and professional-grade graphics cards branded AMD FirePro as well.
scrcpy is a free and open-source screen mirroring application that allows control of an Android device from a desktop computer. The software is developed by Genymobile SAS, a company which develops Android emulator Genymotion.