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schmeggahead
Guru
Joined: 25 Feb 2003
Posts: 314
Location: Columbus, Ohio
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 Posted: Sat Nov 03, 2007 2:55 am Post subject: running two games at once |
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Is it possible to run two x sessions at once on the same computer (two keyboards, two displays, two mice)?
I'm thinkin' it is realistic.
I haven't yet got to the wine w/starcraft stage yet.
I know unix was an multi user system at one time.
So from an X standpoint, I should be able to define two complete systems (maybe use the front channel / back channel for separate sound?
So with a core 2 quad, a nvidia 8800 gtx, 4G and 2T disk, should be able to do for two users the best of 1996, right?  |
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teidon
Apprentice
Joined: 22 Apr 2005
Posts: 195
Location: Finland
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| Posted: Sat Nov 03, 2007 8:34 am Post subject: |
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That should be totally possible. The only thing is that with one display adapter I think it's only possible to run one 3D accelerated game at a time in that setup. Atleast the performance wouldn't be too great. But if you install another display adapter (in case your computer's motherboard has 2 x PCI-e 16x slots) or if your computer's motherboard has a display adapter built in, you could configure the X server's to use different display adapters and thus be able to play two 3D accelerated games at the same time.
You just need to edit xorg.conf to get those two separate X sessions, it should be rather self explanatory what to do in that file (mainly copy pasting and doing some little editing), but if you haven't edited xorg.conf file before you might need some help with that. And to get the sounds for each X session you need to modify/create .asoundrc for the user using the second X session. Something like this might work (there's probably other ways to do the same thing):
| Code: | pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "hw:0,0"
ttable.0.2 1
ttable.1.3 1
} |
This will (read: should) make one of the output jack on the sound card to output left and right channel from programs the second user is using. Every program should be affected without needing to change any settings. You'll ofcourse need multichannel sound card for this.
With this setup your Linux box basicly turns into two separate computers. So two users at the same time, both are able to use their own software, one could use KDE and other one could use GNOME etc.
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When Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck, they make a vacuum cleaner. |
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vputz
Guru
Joined: 16 Mar 2005
Posts: 310
Location: Oxford, England
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| Posted: Sat Nov 03, 2007 9:18 am Post subject: |
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I can verify that for a very short time I was able to run Eve Online and World of Warcraft in Wine, on two different sides of the Beryl "rotating display cube", which was a pretty impressive-looking feat (to be able to just rotate between a web browser, WoW, and Eve), certainly not something you could do on Windows! Although it did lock up after a while, unfortunately, but I don't know what the problem was there (X, Wine, whatever).
So I would imagine you could do the same just fine with older games, and just use a multihead display on a single X server. Not sure if two X servers would be better or worse. |
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schmeggahead
Guru
Joined: 25 Feb 2003
Posts: 314
Location: Columbus, Ohio
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| Posted: Sat Nov 03, 2007 11:12 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | (in case your computer's motherboard has 2 x PCI-e 16x slots) |
Yep, it does. It has 3 PCI-e slots (2 PCI-e 16x slots that can be bridged - don't know if bridging is important)
OK, so it looks like I have two options for display / xserver setup (options in Gentoo? what a shock  )
1. add another 8800 and with that it would make sense to use two xServers
2. don't have a motherboard video on this board. The display does have two DLI outs, so I might be able to use two displays on one xServer.
(thanks for the tips - working to just get one instance in place of starcraft - goal -1)  |
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teidon
Apprentice
Joined: 22 Apr 2005
Posts: 195
Location: Finland
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| Posted: Sat Nov 03, 2007 3:28 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | So I would imagine you could do the same just fine with older games, and just use a multihead display on a single X server. Not sure if two X servers would be better or worse. |
The benefit from using two X session is that both can have separate keyboard and mouse and thus two persons can play two different games at the same time on the machine. I'm not sure if it's possible to use two keyboards and mice on one X server, and how exactly would it work (how do you tell games that aren't programmed to take into account that the machine could have 2 keyboards (that's pretty much every game out there) to use the other keyboard?).
| schmeggahead wrote: | | Yep, it does. It has 3 PCI-e slots (2 PCI-e 16x slots that can be bridged - don't know if bridging is important) |
That's SLI (nVidia) or Crossfire (Ati) support, meaning that two display adapters can be used to render one game like they were one adapter. For this project of yours you don't want to bridge them as you want two separate adapters.
| Quote: | | The display does have two DLI outs, so I might be able to use two displays on one xServer. |
I think you could setup Xorg so that one "screen" gets full 3D acceleration support and the other screen (other X session) only 2D support. So both X session could be used to play games, the other one would just be limited to software rendering, but your CPU does have a CPU cycle or two to spare for software rendering. ; ) UT2004 for example has quite good software renderer and Linux client too.
If you happen to have some ages old PCI display adapter you could try that two X sessions on two cards setup before wasting any money on another 8800. Though if you do buy one and find that you don't have any use for it, I'd gladly take it from you. ; )
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i92guboj
Bodhisattva
Joined: 30 Nov 2004
Posts: 10315
Location: Córdoba (Spain)
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| Posted: Sat Nov 03, 2007 3:34 pm Post subject: |
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| schmeggahead wrote: | | Quote: | | (in case your computer's motherboard has 2 x PCI-e 16x slots) |
Yep, it does. It has 3 PCI-e slots (2 PCI-e 16x slots that can be bridged - don't know if bridging is important)
OK, so it looks like I have two options for display / xserver setup (options in Gentoo? what a shock )
1. add another 8800 and with that it would make sense to use two xServers
2. don't have a motherboard video on this board. The display does have two DLI outs, so I might be able to use two displays on one xServer.
(thanks for the tips - working to just get one instance in place of starcraft - goal -1) |
Option 1 is completely viable, and as said above, just editing xorg.conf -which is trivial enough- would suffice to get this working.
In any case, even with option 2, you would need to run two servers, unless you use xinerama or twinview, and that would be a big pain, because as stated above, there might be no trivial way to make a game aware of what input device should it be using. In any case, I reiterate the other comment above: at the current state of drivers, I don't think you can certainly use two 3d accelerated displays at a given time, so, only one will use 3d acceleration. That might be ok if you just want to run old games. If you need 3d acceleration, you will need two cards. Xorg.conf can still handle that ok in the same trivial fashion. |
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benneque
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 01 Dec 2007
Posts: 134
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| Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 10:53 am Post subject: |
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EDIT: sorry, i thought it was german.. ^^ i'll write it in english!
my question was simply: DOES IT WORK ??
i've seen a website with ONE computer, that had 1agp and 5pci cards and had 6 displays with 6 people surfing the internet.. i don't think that's a problem
but, how is it with 3d-acceleration ? i read somewhere that it isn't possible with pci-e cards.. don't know why ?! |
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i92guboj
Bodhisattva
Joined: 30 Nov 2004
Posts: 10315
Location: Córdoba (Spain)
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| Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 2:30 pm Post subject: |
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| benneque wrote: | EDIT: sorry, i thought it was german.. ^^ i'll write it in english!
my question was simply: DOES IT WORK ??
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And the answer was "the question is not that trivial". You have been given the options you have above, so, reread and digest the posts above again.
| Quote: |
i've seen a website with ONE computer, that had 1agp and 5pci cards and had 6 displays with 6 people surfing the internet.. i don't think that's a problem
but, how is it with 3d-acceleration ? i read somewhere that it isn't possible with pci-e cards.. don't know why ?! |
And that entirely depends on your hardware and drivers. If you are using separated cards for each display, you shouldn't have any problem to get acceleration on both X servers. |
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