Dispaly

[Neville D]

Am using FM4 & 4.1 on win 2000 server & 6 users, operating real estate system. Use it for recording properties, photos, produce window cards, strip lists, preparing contracts, sales reports etc GREAT!.

We have a simple window display rnning on a screen at night with a simple script behind it that steps through the properties and displays photos and text. Works fine.

Want to go upmarket and in our new office (in by christmas) have say 4 displays (multiple video cards on a PC) with 4 separate "scripts" or whatever running showing 4 different properties at a time.

Assuming I can install 4 video cards in one PC to drive the 4 screens, how can I address them individually from FM or run 4 scripts "similtaneously" on the different screens??? Am I asking too much? maybee for FM4? would later FM have facilities like this??

Any suggestions appreciated

[BobWeaver]

I don't know if Windows maps the video the same way a Mac does when you add monitors, so this may not work for you. On a Mac, the multiple monitors are simply treated as sections of one big chunk of graphics space. So, you could create a single layout that spans across all the monitors with 4 container fields so that each container field lines up with one of the monitors. Then have your script change the photos in each container.

[kenneth2k1]

That's pretty innovative and tricky, Bob! Nice. That would work.

A couple of things to add:

Yes you can have multiple video adapters in one PC. Just remember that the one that's in there is probably in the AGP slot. Or its built in and you might have an AGP slot. If your AGP is taken up, you will need a PCI video card. You might already know all this, but just in case you don't let me know and I can help with that.

Bob: nVidia GeForce cards have an app called nView which controls multple monitors in chunks of one desktop or you can have multiple desktops like you are talking about with Mac (I just don't know if the Mac equivalent is called nView).

[BobWeaver]

On Macs, the video mapping is all built into the hardware/firmware and OS. The system automatically recognizes when an additional video adapter is added and the Monitors control panel allows you to configure the physical layout of the monitors (vertical, horizontal etc.).

[kenneth2k1]

Oh. Can you have multiple desktops w/ Mac? I remember when Macs were using ATI cards, and they gave a little more functionality, but they were mostly PCI, and ATI started falling behind nVidia. Apple switches to GeForce video cards, but switches from SCSI HDDs to ATA100. Go figure.

Neville: You might want to look into getting two dual-head video cards. Not sure how you would span the desktop between two adapters with different video drivers, but it might be worth a shot.

[BobWeaver]

I'm not really sure what you mean by multiple desktops. It really becomes one big desktop that spans the multiple monitors. In a two monitor setup, dragging the mouse beyond the right side of the left monitor causes the cursor to appear on the left side of the right monitor. However, in the setup control panel, you can specify which monitor is the primary one (where the menu bar, etc., appears).

[Vaughan]

"Want to go upmarket and in our new office (in by christmas) have say 4 displays (multiple video cards on a PC) with 4 separate "scripts" or whatever running showing 4 different properties at a time.

Assuming I can install 4 video cards in one PC to drive the 4 screens, how can I address them individually from FM or run 4 scripts "similtaneously" on the different screens??? Am I asking too much? maybee for FM4? would later FM have facilities like this??"

I don't think any version of FMP can do this, not on one machine... unless you could run four independent copies of the FMP program, each with its own copy of the database (opened as a guest).

Might be easier and cheaper (or at least not much more expensive) getting four old computers (iMacs would be fine) and running each independently.

As a last ditch suggestion, you might be able to create one huge extended desktop with the monitors and create a layout in the file that spans the whole area (the monitors would have to be the came pixel area and be arranged side-by-side or vertically). Then break up the single huge layout into four parts and work out how to display a different image in each part.

[kenneth2k1]

That's what bob suggested

[Vaughan]

Yeah, so it is... but my main suggestion was to use four computers.