Widescreen Gaming Forum

I was wondering if it is possible to set up an application profile (using the Nvidia control panel or some other software package) that changes the display resolution between a normal multiple display set up and a spanned display automatically, depending on the application I have launched?

For example; for normal everyday usage, I have three 3 Acer S231HL monitors and an Asus GeForce 650ti and have them set up as a multiple displays (3 displays at 1920x1080). I then feel like playing a game that supports surround displays (like MS Flight or Deus Ex). Can I create a profile (or a "launcher") that will automatically switch the display mode to surround mode (5760x1080 after creating a custom resolution using bezel correction) when I launch the application and then switch it back to the normal display mode when I close the game?

I can do this manually but it is obviously extremely inconvenient. Any help would be extremely appreciated. I found a few threads that sort of touched on this but nothing really definitive (or the hardware setups were significantly different). Thanks in advance.

I know this could be done with AMD profiles, I had written a batch/script that would switch profiles when loading games.

Sadly I have no hands on experience with nvidia surround so im not sure how it switches the profiles, or if profile are saved as files or registry data.

A quick switch method between single mon, multi-mon and surround modes would be to press and hold the windows key + P.

This will bring up a display mode menu...
Computer Only = Single monitor mode
Duplicate = Surround mode
Extended = Multi-mon mode.

Quicker than loading the nvidia control panel and switching modes that way.

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I had tried that and it's better than opening the NVidia stuff and having to switch modes that way, but frame rates do seem to take a little bit of a hit. I guess it'll have to do for the time being; not exactly optimal but definitely better than the alternative. You'd think that manufacturers would have made this more seamless by now.

Thanks for the suggestions (and for the welcome to the community). If anyone else has any other tips, I'd love to hear them.

tymbrwlf, instead of having application defined profiles that switch between working (independent/non surround) and gaming (span/surround) modes you can use Windows Key + P. At least, that is, if you are in windows 8. If you are on Windows 7 or Vista you can tell us if it works for you under your OS.

See win + P switching in my recent post Windows 8 and NVIDIA Surround2D - Working V Gaming Modes, the section under "Switching between working (independent/non surround) and gaming (span/surround) modes".

Sorry for not clarifying John. Yes, the Windows + P method seems to work under Windows 7. However, there does seem to be a small performance hit (i.e. slightly lower frame rates) when doing this. My guess is that this is because doing it this way is not offloading the rendering to the PhysX engine (I'm not an engineer or a software developer so I'm just making a educated speculation here). It's a minor hit at most so nearly at the point of being insignificant. I did see your post and found it very helpful (great job!).

Ideally, it would be great to be able to set up application profiles within the NVidia Control Panel to automatically switch to this mode based on a specific application (if it supports surround mode of course), but the Windows + P method seems to be a very adequate method of achieving the same end result. I'm just a bit surprised that this functionality hasn't been implemented yet seeing as how you can set other parameters (AntiAliasing, vSync, etc) at the application level so why not the display mode?