Quote from Scawen :

No, if you have two monitors, you just can't select a "real" desktop size of 2*width x height. You sort of have one screen as the main desktop and the other screen is an extension of it. Actually in normal use, as a desktop, this works well, because there is the concept of a "main" screen, so for example you can have the start button on the left of the screen in front of you, while your second screen is on the left and is an extended desktop with no task bar. However, there is no option to select the full double width as a real, single desktop as you could in XP, and also DirectX does not offer that double width resolution to LFS as a full screen option.

Let's go.
I do not have a second monitor.

Quote from Scawen :

I am shocked that you can't go full screen, using two monitors as a single surface.

yes you can you just have to set up eyefinity or nividia surround

Quote :

And someone cannot, for example, use 3D mode (SBS, full) on a double screen setup, sent to twin projectors with polarising filters, unless they have XP.

again eyefinity or surround

Quote :

Now, no, you cannot do that, you must use Windows 7's automatic driver installation system.

of course you can manually install printer drivers and it works just fine
also at least at work getting printer drivers from out printserver for win7 works a million times better than manually installing that crap for the xp64 i had before

Quote from Scawen :

There is absolutely no possibility that we will release a version of LFS that doesn't work well on XP at any time soon while it is still commonly used. So let's not consider that ridiculous possibility, that would alienate 90 thousand users for no reason whatsoever. We aren't jumping on the rampant capitalism bandwagon.

why not offer multiple rendering paths like the majority of games do?
its not like the dx8 rendering (or possibly dx9 with about a days work according to kegetys whom im inclined to trust in all things code) path that currently exists and works fine will stop working if you add something more modern

Quote :

Windows 7 is just weird. For example, "Sorry, you can't overwrite that file because you would need administrator privileges. Would you like to give yourself administrator privileges so you can overwrite that file?"

sudo is a great idea actually

Quote from Scawen :

I don't like that "sleep" causes a blue screen crash and the only advice I can find on the internet is "that's how it is on 7, just don't use sleep".

i only use sleep on laptops but on all the laptops ive tried with win7 it worked just fine
sounds to me like theres a hardware or driver issue
have you checked that the sleep states your bios offers are correct?

Quote from cargame.nl :

Unfortunately DX10 is not the same as DX11. I don't know why you add these ones together. Furthermore, Scawen already said he personally prefers XP for an unknown period of time and a friend/ex-colleague recommends DX9 to work with. I don't know how people can think it's possible to convince here on the forum to do something different, the last five years show that is pretty much impossible.

I add 10 and 11 together, because 11 includes 10 in the same way that 9 includes 8. I have a DX10.1 GPU, but I have DX11 installed, not DX10.
The difference is that 9 and 10+ are fully incompatible - 10 is unique in that it was a rewrite, rather than an upgrade (10.1, 11, 11.1, 11.2 are all upgrades). Vista/7/8 have both 9 and 10+ installed separately, but they don't have individual versions of 10, 10.1, 11 etc installed at the same time, because they are all part of the same thing.

Also, I was not suggesting that Scawen move to DX11 any time soon; I said there's no point. I just wanted the statistics to be represented properly.

Quote from Scawen :

I am shocked that you can't go full screen, using two monitors as a single surface.

Yeah, that sucks and I have no idea why they removed that feature.
However, the GPU manufacturers came to the rescue eventually - every 5000 series and later AMD GPU supports at least 2 monitors as one screen ("Eyefinity"), and nVidia began to support 3+ ("Surround") soon after.
So you can do it in W7, but you need the right hardware (the situation still sucks compared to XP, but at least it's not impossible)

Quote from Scawen :

Also, what happened when I tried to install a printer? ...

That one was HP's decision, nothing to do with W7. HP do provide full, separate W7 drivers for some printers, but for many (especially simpler or older ones) HP only bother to provide simple, feature limited, often broken ones via Windows Update.

Wow Scawen. You talking about Windows 7 is hilarious.

Quote from bose321 :

wow scawen. You talking about windows 7 is hilarious.

+1

Nerdddds

Quote from Shotglass :

yes you can you just have to set up eyefinity or nividia surround[..]

Quote from Degats :

[..]Yeah, that sucks and I have no idea why they removed that feature.
However, the GPU manufacturers came to the rescue eventually - every 5000 series and later AMD GPU supports at least 2 monitors as one screen ("Eyefinity"), and nVidia began to support 3+ ("Surround") soon after.
So you can do it in W7, but you need the right hardware (the situation still sucks compared to XP, but at least it's not impossible)[..]

Actually I did a quick test yesterday evening. I have a 3screen setup and a nvidia 670 GTX, on Win7 x64. I couldn't setup surround with only 2 screens, it was 3 or nothing.
I underline quick test though, as I haven't had time to try to physically disconnect the 3rd screen and see if it behaves the same. Shall come back with the info after work.

You need to have only two physical connections, then it works. Thats how 4K screens also currently work, they simulate a single screen with two internal "screens" by using surround/eyefinity.

Thanks for the discussion and tips on Windows 7, although off topic it has been helpful. At least I learned that you can have some text descriptions in the task bar (i.e. making it more like XP).

I'm also pleased that it is allegedly possible to use dual monitors as a single surface if you have the right hardware. No good for me though as my graphics card (9600 GT) isn't supported apparently, though I thought it was pretty good (and I'm sure that even 10 year old hardware supported multiple screens as a single surface on XP). Anyway, good that others can use it, as I did work quite hard on the multiple monitor support a few years back.

As you can see I'm not the sort of person who reads up on all the latest gadgets and how many pixels per second they can draw, so I had no idea until now that my graphics card is outdated.

Quote from Shotglass :

yes you can you just have to set up eyefinity or nividia surround

Quote from luchian :

I couldn't setup surround with only 2 screens, it was 3 or nothing.

Quote :

Please note: NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround and NVIDIA Surround does not support a two display surround configuration. Both NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround and NVIDIA Surround require three supported displays as defined in the system requirements above.

http://www.geforce.com/hardwar ... ogy/3dvision-surround/faq

Basically there is no solution at all, even with a state of the art recent videocard.

Quote from cargame.nl :

http://www.geforce.com/hardwar ... ogy/3dvision-surround/faq

Basically there is no solution at all, even with a state of the art recent videocard.

Thanks for the info.

By the way, LFS *could* support dual or maybe multiple monitors by separately supporting each device.

So you create two (or more) "devices" (on the single graphics card) then you have to duplicate everything. I haven't researched this fully but my understanding is that all calls to create vertex / index buffers and textures and so on must be sent to both (all) devices, so they are on the card twice (or several times) so that each of its devices can draw those objects.

It would be quite a bit of work restructuring the code and I'm not keen on that at the moment, specially as it's a poor solution to something that graphics card manufacturers or MS could easily support if they weren't more interested in sabotaging perfectly good functions in order to force you to buy the latest devices. It's kind of disheartening to have to do loads of work to fix what they deliberately broke.

Anyway conversion to DX9 is a higher priority than that (after this 3d support) and I obviously haven't forgotten the tyres.

Quote from cargame.nl :

http://www.geforce.com/hardwar ... ogy/3dvision-surround/faq

Basically there is no solution at all, even with a state of the art recent videocard.

Well that's strange, because I tested dual screen surround (Edit: actually, it was propably on eyefinity now that I think of it) with my old 20" dells and it worked just fine. It was un-usable in gaming due to the bezels being in the middle of where you're looking at, but it did work.

And like I said above, it's the only method you can currently use 4K PC displays, as they use older connections that don't have enough bandwidth for a single 4K image using a single cable. HDMI 1.4 and DP 1.2 fix that issue thankfully.

I do have to warn about AMD eyefinity if anyone is thinking about jumping in to it. The way AMD does multi monitors, is by using software composition, so if you enable eyefinity, you're going to get screen tearing even in 2D desktop. Nvidia does it with their hardware based composition, so you won't be getting any screen tearing when moving windows around for example.

Quote from Scawen :

[..]something that graphics card manufacturers or MS could easily support if they weren't more interested in sabotaging perfectly good functions in order to force you to buy the latest devices.[..]

^^THIS ^^

Sorry for the no-added value post, but had to express my frustration..
It is also true for 3D.. with nvidia hardware one has to purchase additional software..

Quote from Degats :

[...]
Either way, there's not a lot of point aiming for optional DX11 components in the near future. DX9c/Shader Model 3 would be a much bigger step than tessellation IMO, and should take a lot less effort to target. Also, you are correct in that 37% can't run the DX11 specific features anyway (but the game would still run for 90-96% if those features are optional).

Sorry for quoting something a couple of pages back but I agree and feel that it's an important point. DX9 + Shader Model 3 is a huge improvement over DX8 and along with higher fidelity textures and models it would be a big boost to how LFS looks. Of course DX11 has new features and optimizations that make use of the latest hardware and ideally you'd want it but not at the expense of XP support.

Also going on a bit of a tangent it looks like there's a real possibility for Linux gaming to pick up, especially if Steam OS is successfull so perhaps considering OpenGL + SDL2.0 for a moment would be interesting.

Quote from SpooSH :

Also going on a bit of a tangent it looks like there's a real possibility for Linux gaming to pick up, especially if Steam OS is successfull so perhaps considering OpenGL + SDL2.0 for a moment would be interesting.

Linux does pop into my mind once in a while. Because it seems to me that MS seems to be going down this Apple style route of trying to subtly lock you in and force you to buy expensive upgrades every few years, when really just a couple of software functions could have done the job.

I'm wondering if in the long term, free operating system software might be the winner because it propagates only by good ideas being better, simply for the good of it, rather than trying to please shareholders and so on. So things sort of sell themselves rather than marketing departments hyping up tiny things as if they are new technology.

I know that is a woolly post, but I feel a little angry at being pushed around by corporations. Obviously it's not personal, they just want the money to keep coming in. Some sort of capitalism / growth addiction thing they and too many others have.

Quote from Matrixi :

I do have to warn about AMD eyefinity if anyone is thinking about jumping in to it.

Thanx.. I was looking to replace my Nvidia MXM at some point in time for an ATI but I can scrap that idea, too risky. Cheaper, more powerful but requires different cooler and HP's RSA encrypted BIOS might block it after all. Talking about corporations who force to use specific hardware otherwise the system simply refuses to start in ultimate effect ... And what you explain isn't really motivating to take this risk.

Quote from Matrixi :

I do have to warn about AMD eyefinity if anyone is thinking about jumping in to it. The way AMD does multi monitors, is by using software composition, so if you enable eyefinity, you're going to get screen tearing even in 2D desktop. Nvidia does it with their hardware based composition, so you won't be getting any screen tearing when moving windows around for example.

Thanks for that. I was considering a 280X against a GTX770 for my race rig with a triple screen setup, but seems like AMD is no longer relevant for me then.

I'm sick and tired of their shitty drivers anyway...

It does worth continue supporting windows XP because as Scawen said it's the best OS ever made , despite it's old.
As for the DX levels , some people get lags even on the DX level LFS supports (DX7/8 , can't really remember) so imagine moving forward to DX 10 or 11 , some people just won't be able to play LFS anymore.

Quote from luchian :

Actually I did a quick test yesterday evening. I have a 3screen setup and a nvidia 670 GTX, on Win7 x64. I couldn't setup surround with only 2 screens, it was 3 or nothing.
I underline quick test though, as I haven't had time to try to physically disconnect the 3rd screen and see if it behaves the same. Shall come back with the info after work.

Quote from Matrixi :

Well that's strange, because I tested dual screen surround (Edit: actually, it was propably on eyefinity now that I think of it) with my old 20" dells and it worked just fine. It was un-usable in gaming due to the bezels being in the middle of where you're looking at, but it did work.

I can confirm (if still needed) that on nvidia you cannot enable surround for only 2 monitors. I have just tried on my sistem, by phisically disconecting one of the screens (I've tried all combinations) and the surround config option is greyed out. So you'll have to pass to something like SoftTH to get a game working, should you be interested to do it.

Anyways, this is only for clearing out this doubt; regarding DX version, I would assume that DX9 at this point would be enough. The visual difference will be more than noticeable. Nothing will block finally making the step to DX11 later, at some point in time, when the context will be appropriate.

Another thing that is not good about Windows 7 is that I can't share a folder so that other computers can see it. I've only got a home network, and I'd love to click "share" so the other computers can see it. But there are all these different views on permissions and groups, none of which have any meaning to me at all. Clicking things like "share with homegroup" has no apparent effect.

So... I'm guessing it is possible to do, but after 10 minutes of trying to figure it out and getting nowhere, I'll just do it the other way round. Fortunately I am allowed to use the shared folders on the XP computer, from the Windows 7 computer.

Quote from Scawen :

Linux does pop into my mind once in a while.

Love the idea of LFS for Linux. For me that would be the point to finally say goodbye to Windows. I'm very happy using LMDE and even my wife only uses Kubuntu because on her Notebook it is so much faster and stable than Win7.

At the moment I assume you can't tell if it is even possible to create a LFS Linux version?

By the way, it really disturbs me that i can't watch movies from xbox.com on Win7 or hardly can connect my WP8 smartphone. Why is it so much easier with Itunes? Gave Windows 8 a try but it sucks.

Quote from Major Pain :

At the moment I assume you can't tell if it is even possible to create a LFS Linux version?

Well, I haven't researched it at all. I'm sure it's possible, but not really easy, and there would be certain issues to overcome making the Linux version and Windows versions connect.

One thing bugs me, and probably someone can make it clearer, and this really disgusts me, there is a patent on Force Feedback which is somehow controlled by Microsoft, so there is no such thing as a FF wheel that works on operating systems other than Windows. Hopefully you can easily build drivers that allow FF on Linux but are they illegal?

Trying not to shout and swear... I hate patents.

Quote from Scawen :

I've only got a home network, and I'd love to click "share" so the other computers can see it.

That's exactly how it works...

Quote from Scawen :

so there is no such thing as a FF wheel that works on operating systems other than Windows. Hopefully you can easily build drivers that allow FF on Linux but are they illegal?

Trying not to shout and swear... I hate patents.

Don't know about the legality, but the G27 definitely works with force feedback under Linux. What's the patent?

Quote from Bose321 :

That's exactly how it works...

Maybe how it *should* work but doesn't work on my system. My XP just tells me I don't have permission. Trust me, it's not appearing simple here!

Quote from PeterN :

Don't know about the legality, but the G27 definitely works with force feedback under Linux. What's the patent?

Sorry, it's not clear to me, but a company named Immersion holds many patents relating to Force Feedback and they have deals with Sony and Microsoft and there has been plenty of suing going on.