Hisstok

As of late, ive been running warcraft with too many addons, screen realistate(sp) is getting tight.

Now if I get an extra video card and monitor, how would that work?
If I extend the desktop to the additional monitor, My concern is a windowed warcraft wont extend "get wide enough" for the two monitors, (it wants to maintain aspect ratio for me) addon windows aren't detached from the main warcraft window so moving them to the other screen as independent windows individually isn't possible (though I wish it was)

Ideally I'd like misc interface stuff (bags, meters, chat, ect.) along with "outside of warcraft" things (firefox, trillian, music, ect.)

So I guess my question is, how is wow's multiscreen support? how do you use it (if applicable, maybe a screenshot of your "offscreen interface"?)

 

Quaunaut

I currently use 2 monitors, however World of Warcraft is only on one. Frankly, WoW's multiscreen support is second to none, allowing me to have it in 'windowed' mode, but maximized, so it looks like its full screen on only one screen. Every once in awhile I get a bit of a hangup, but usually it fixes itself quickly.

I run both screens from 1 video card, and the performance hit was negligible- barely 5 frames per second, if even that. Switching between the screens is as little as dragging the mouse over and clicking, and WoW's 3D processes are usually off on their own, making it so you won't get weird artifacts or slow performance(unless you run with CoverFlow in iTunes, but thats because of Apple's shitty programming on the Windows version of it). Flash, even movies of all codecs run just fine on the other, or the same screen.

Here is a screenshot of my setup:

 

Dollar

I used to run WoW with it stretched across both monitors just using Windowed Maximized and extended desktop (I think). I viewported the left screen and put bags and chat and all that stuff over there and I would just keep firefox on that monitor and alt tab a lot. I eventually got kind of sick of it and now just use one monitor for WoW and one for web/music/movies.

Lord, beer me strength.

 

Rannasha

I run WoW fullscreen on 2 monitors. What you need for it is 2 monitors with the same resolution connected to the *same* videocard (different cards might work too, but will probably take alot of tweaking to get going). Set your dual-screen configuration to "Horizontal Span", start WoW and select the combined resolution as your game resolution.

By default, WoW on 2 screens is not very playable, with your character in the center of the extended desktop, exactly at the split of your 2 monitors. You'll need an addon like Aperture to reduce the viewport to a single monitor. The other monitor can then be used for addons and frames you don't need that often. For example, i keep my minimap, chatwindows, damage meter, and some buttons on my secondary screen, cleaning up space on my main WoW-screen.

 

Hisstok

Ah HA! that's exactly what I was looking for, with my pseudo test setup I couldn't figure out how to get the screen to properly center and get addons onto the other one, thank you sir!

 

Sichosis

If you are running dual-monitors that are the same size and running both at the same resolution, then pending the monitor itself has a low profile (thin casing, like a lcd / flatpanel) you should have no problem "view-porting" it. One can serve as you playable area, and the other can house all your stuff like chatlog, dps monitor, etc.

To do this you need to have a very high quality video card that also supports dual monitors (most high end do). Also I would make sure you know the compatability of various cards with your motherboard etc.

 

Rannasha

Your videocard doesn't need to be *that* high-end. WoW is not very demanding after all. I use a GF 7600 GT (i think) and it takes the dual-screen setup just fine. The fact that half of the desktop is viewported to black with some 2D-addons helps.

You should also consider using an addon like MoveAnything, to move things like the zonename that pops up whenever you zone as well as error-messages. It annoyed me to no end when that was centered on the split between my 2 monitors (mostly an OCD thing, but still).

 

Cronax

If you still want to be able to see some other stuff besides your addons on the 2nd screen, I can reccommend a little program from curse called Maximiser. It takes a bit of fiddling but it will allow you to precicely position your WoW client, and also set the resolution for it manually as long as you don't change the ingame options. Using this it would be possible to free up a part of your second monitor for MSN/TS/Vent/whatnot. This program is used by multiboxers for instance to put multiple clients on one/two monitors but it should also be ideal for your purpose.

 

chase

The UI and macro forum is where I first heard about this and got it up and running. Used to use the second monitor for addons that I really didn't need to see in combat. Character panels, bags, dps meters, chat, etc.

You will want a mod that allows you to move things around easily. Back in the day I used moveanything and discord, but I'm sure there are other things to replace those.

WoW Forums -> HOWTO: dual screen setup [Mar 7]

I ended up scrapping it about a year later because I wanted to fraps things and it looked horrid.

 

Redbeard

I'm running dual monitor Wow at home, I've had it up for 2 years now. I followed the guide linked by chase at first. My os is WinXP and I have the desktop in stretched mode, 3200x1200. I run Wow in full screen mode and use a viewport mod called Aperture (ace) to narrow the rendered area to the left monitor.

On the right monitor I usually have Map open, several chat frames, Omen, SWStats, RaidBuffStatus for example. This leaves a lot more screen estate for various timer bars, unit frames, action bars etc for the left monitor. Frapsing is a no-no with this setup, at least until I find a frapser which can narrow the frapsed area to left monitor only.

 

Rannasha

Frapsing is quite doable with a dual-screen setup. The disadvantage is that you have to crop your movie file in post-processing, but i've not found this to be a big inconvenience (using Adobe Premiere, but i'm sure there's a whole arsenal of other applications that can crop the movies).