Hello everyone!
I'm relatively new to the world of multi-monitor widescreen gaming. I have to say that it definitely goes a long way towards increasing immersion in gaming, and is absolutely worthwhile. However, one big disappointment that I've had (particularly with NVIDIA's Surround technology) is that many of the nifty multi-tasking elements that make Windows a great productivity OS are broken when this type of setup is enabled. I know that NVIDIA's Surround offers hotkeys for disabling the setup quickly as a way to address this. That's really not ideal, and moreover tends to have unintended consequences (specifically icons get moved all over the place, and sometimes re-enabling doesn't work right).
That's why I've taken advantage of Microsoft's push to bring gaming back into Windows 10, and their impressive efforts with user feedback. I've started a suggestion through their feedback application to get them to recognize and, hopefully, address this with their new OS.
That said, we are a niche audience - a minority of a minority, if you will. As such, we are easily ignored. My feedback has been around for 5 months without a single "upvote". That's why I've come here, in hopes of raising awareness of the issue.
So please, if you are a Windows 10 insider, launch the Windows Feedback app and upvote my suggestion. You're welcome to add any comments as you will. If you're not a Windows Insider, why not join in on the fun?
You can use the link below to get started:https://insider.windows.com/
I can't link directly to my feedback, unfortunately, but you should be able to find it by searching for the following text in the Feedback app:
"Multi-monitor "surround" should be natively built-in to Windows."
It will be listed in the "Hardware, Devices, and Drivers" section, under "Display drivers".
Thank you!!!
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Here's the full text of my suggestion
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Multi-monitor "surround" should be natively built-in to Windows. Currently, if someone has a setup with more than one monitor (say, a 3x1 or 2x1 setup) Windows recognizes each monitor and permits the user to "expand" the desktop to use the additional real-estate. However, when an application is launched in full-screen (like a video game) it only functions using the main monitor.
For productivity, this is usually not a scenario people would run into, but gaming is another story. NVIDIA and AMD both offer solutions to this with their respective Surround and EyeFinity setups. They essentially trick the OS into thinking that the multiple monitors are a single monitor with a really wide resolution. In turn, full-screen applications are able to use that wide resolution if programmed for it.
The problem is that because the solution isn't native, it's actually rather difficult to get this to work right with a lot of applications. Even worse, the productivity joys of Windows multi-monitor management are all thrown out the window (pun intended). This is made even worse by the Full Screen mode of Modern apps in Windows 8 and Windows 10, since there's no easy way to assign an app to a single monitor and wind up with really stretched applications with tons of negative space.
Please include a native solution in Windows 10 that maintains the multi-monitor awareness in the OS, but passes the resolution to certain full-screen apps (games in particular) as a single monitor so that we can enjoy our games in all of their pixels!
. I'd love to see this functionality in OS someday.