quote:
Originally posted by may73alliance
ive got 2 pc screens, what i want to do is have a game playing on one side and windows normally on the other (for msn obviously 
)
is it possible? noramlly when i try anything fullscreen it has half on each. 
Start by configuring you two screens as seperate screens for starters:
* clone mode: both screens show exact the same.
* span mode: both screen form 1 desktop; the desktop is thus split in half. The windows taskbar starts on the main monitor and ends on the second. Maximizing programs will maximize the program across both screens. There is no middle edge as far as Windows is concearned. (I suspect you have it in this mode atm)
*
dual mode: both screens have there own area. Nothing is split in two (unless you drag a window over the border of course). The windows taskbar starts on the main monitor and ends on the main monitor. Both area's (screens) can have their own taskbar or only one screen can have a taskbar. Maximizing programs will maximize the program only across the screen which it is running on. There is a virtual middle edge which split the desktop in two parts. This is the most interesting and usefull mode and the one you should use...
quote:
Originally posted by may73alliance
i have t configured to have fullscreen video on one screen if a video is playing on the other but thats not much help because its a game not a video in wmp or whatever...
That is actually exactly what you must do... This kind of thing is called "
Video Overlaying*" and this must explicity be set and configured in your graphics driver. Some games support this type of video showing and thus do exactly what you want... But note that the game must support this too!!!
*Video Overlaying means a program overlays a video channel above the normal Windows "graphic" channel of your monitor. Everything in Windows is normally shown in the "graphical" channel. But with DirectX and the likes a program can show things on the overlaying video channel. The "black hole" you sometimes see when you take a screenshot of a video is this effect in action. Windows can't normally screen grab the "overlaying" channel. You need special software to do it. If you see the black whole on a screen grab, you know the video (or whatever which was shown) was shown on the "overlaying" video channel.
Another possebility is playing the game in a window, but drag the window as big as possible across 1 screen. This will have slightly the same effect.
Of course, for whatever option you choose/try, as soon as you ALT-TAB (or any other way) out of the game, the game will loose focus and dodgy things cuold happen. Again, this depends on only the game and how it supports all this.
But I wonder how you are going to steer your game car around corners while you're typing in MSN Messenger. Because gaming and working in another program (eg: chatting) at the same time is of course physically impossible. Only 1 program can have the focus at any given time and you can only give input in one program at the time. For only video's this doesn't matter of course, the video can still be playing (and you see it full screen on moni 2 for example) while you're working on moni 1 in Excel as a video doesn't need any input.
Of course you can do it the other way around. Viewing what is said in mIRC on moni 1, while you're shooting your enemies down on moni 2...
But as said, the biggest problem is which program has (or steals!) the focus. And there is nothing you can do about it, as this is simply the way Windows work. (The only thing that can solver this is if your game can detect it is loosing the focus and goes in pause-mode or something like that)...
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