Eyefinity and Watchout

[Thomas Leong]

I visited a venue today that had a centre LED installation. The source materials were from a Watchout 5.5.2 Display PC with W7100 that had been configured with Eyefinity into a 2x2 single display with a resolution of 3840x2160, and it seemed to work!

 

I forgot to check the Production PC's Stage centre Display specs for 'Width and Height same as Display Resolution'. There were also side LED panels and these were all set to a different Width and Height from the Display Resolution of 1920x1080, so at a guess, the centre would be disabled for this option as well.

 

So question is: How is it that WO5 can work with a Eyefinity configured display, when all this time, we have been informed that Watchout does not use/work with Eyefinity?

 

Thomas Leong

[jfk]

WATCHOUT does not use Eyefinity.

That does not mean that WATCHOUT will not work in conjunction with Eyefinity.

Pretty sure it always has.

Prior to virtual displays, the downside to Eyefinity was the loss of WATCHOUT functions

like blending, etc.

[Thomas Leong]

WATCHOUT does not use Eyefinity.

That does not mean that WATCHOUT will not work in conjunction with Eyefinity.

Pretty sure it always has.

Prior to virtual displays, the downside to Eyefinity was the loss of WATCHOUT functions

like blending, etc.

 

Then, if a Display PC is already setup with Eyefinity (for other software, eg. vlc), and user wants to install and use Watchout, is there a solid reason to disable Eyefinity when blending is not required (as in the case when the projectors have built-in blend facilities? I shall be doing my own tests later, but would like to know of opinions on this. Thanks.

 

Thomas

[jfk]

Had another user contact me about this, so maybe I was not clear.

 

WATCHOUT does not use Eyefinity to set up multiple outputs defined in WATCHOUT.

WATCHOUT uses an older generic DirectX method which is compatible with cards

from any vendor conforming to the full Microsoft DirectX specification.

 

On the other hand, if you want to spoof WATCHOUT and setup an oddball size single display,

as long as the graphics card does not complain, WATCHOUT does not care.

So if you set up Eyefinity outside of WATCHOUT and all WATCHOUT knows

is it is writing to a single display, it should be ok.

That said, if something pops up that is not OK, WATCHOUT

does not specifically support Eyefinity,

so you are still on your own if Eyefinity issues arise.

 

The user who contacted me tried a three screen setup (blended by the projector)

both ways,

i.e. one very wide display in WATCHOUT, split up by Eyefinity

vs 3 displays setup in WATCHOUT without Eyefinity,

and he reports performance under Eyefinity is significantly better than

using WATCHOUT's standard method for three outputs (with blending turned off).

 

Then, if a Display PC is already setup with Eyefinity (for other software, eg. vlc), and user wants to install and use Watchout, is there a solid reason to disable Eyefinity when blending is not required (as in the case when the projectors have built-in blend facilities? I shall be doing my own tests later, but would like to know of opinions on this. Thanks.

 

Thomas

 

Nope, no solid reason other than you are on your own if something goes awry.

[Thomas Leong]

Sounds promising. Allows exploration into alternative auto camera-based alignment systems versus the one that presently works with Watchout.

 

Most of these others require an Eyefinity setup first before the camera calibration and alignment is deployed. My hope is that one of these others will work with Watchout thereafter without having to import the alignment data into Watchout because Watchout sees the Eyefinity display as one big canvas pre-aligned by the camera-based system. Theory, at the moment .