Multi Screen Setup

vvvv gamma question
1

Hello

I would like to work in a multi-screen setup that would be sort of similar to this video:

As you can see, there are about three screens that sometimes work in sync to show a larger image.
Now I wonder how to approach this within a vvvv context. I think, that it should be possible to have some sort of a mixed-media approach in vvvv gamma with video content, skia content and possibly stride renders - that would work in some sort of a loop.

But how do I stage the different clips? In kairo?
and what would be the hardware setup? How do I connect - say- five screens to a laptop?

Thanks a lot!

Vincent

2

You can use signal splitters like Matrox triple head or some china alternative. They will appear as one Screen in the os. Then you need enough performance to generate all the pixels.

3

ah ok. So it’s a splitter with some sort of inbuilt GPU!? that helps, thanks!

4

It doesn’t really have any GPU inside, it simply pretends to be a very widescreen monitor to Windows, say 5760 x 1080px and then splits that signal into 3 outputs of 1920x1080px.

The 5760x1080px image is still rendered by your normal GPU.

1 Like
5

To clarify re the hardware setup: Desktop graphics cards typically have multiple outputs already so signal splitter are often not even necessary.

6

While that is of course true, it can be a little challenging to fullscreen an app across 3 monitors, while having 1 virtual monitor of 3 x the width does not have that complexity. If you want to span 3 monitors you have to manually set the window to cover them.

There might also be issues with being perfectly in sync across 3 monitors vs. 1 virtual monitor which is then split.

Lastly if you have say 3 TVs plugged into your graphics card I believe the 3-way splitter acts as a sort of EDID, so to the GPU there is always 1 large monitor, regardless if they are actually plugged in. If you plug them all in separately and turn them on one after the other, the arrangement of monitors in Windows might change a few times as devices are turned on.

So I think there is absolutely a use-case for those 3-way splitters, even if your GPU would support them all separately.

7

ps: the TripleHead by Matrox has reached EOL and is no longer supported. They now have the QuadHead2Go and PCI version:

Even comes with an API for advanced control.

Here is a studio from Ukraine using 6 x QuadHead2Go to power 21 full-HD projectors from 1 media server.