I had dual monitors way back in the win98 days, but never since then. I was wondering in modern times how beneficial this is to your productivity? I recently downloaded UE4 and noticed how cramped the editor was, anyone with experience could you tell me if the UE4 editor is multi-monitor "enabled"? But basically any experiences with multi-monitor would be appreciated, please share. (also I was looking at some point to get into D3D12 explicit multi-adapter and was wondering if I need a monitor plugged into my integrated to enumerate it so I can use it)
Two or more monitors
There was a similar topic recently: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/673441-3x2560-x-1440-or-1x3840-x-2160/
In my experience 2x monitors are a standard part of any office desk -- I would be very surprised if I arrived at a new job and found only a single monitor on my desk.
Author
Thanks for the link, I took a look and it seems to contain impressions... I was looking more for a list of productivity improvements with multi-monitor. If I go multi-monitor I'm going to have to make big changes to my current setup so I trying to see if its worth it or not.
I was looking more for a list of productivity improvements with multi-monitor
It's pretty subjective, and hence varies from person to person. Some people work very comfortably on a 13" laptop, others need 3x 27" monitors to be productive.
Generally artists, musicians and designers get the most mileage out of additional monitor real-estate in terms of productivity gains (because those applications require displaying a lot of information at once), but programmers also tend to benefit from just having more space to put up source code and documentation.
Personally, I recommend one giant monitor over several smaller ones, but anything is an improvement over the single 1080p monitor so many people still seem to be using...
I don't have any objective points for this but I sure know how much less effective I feel when going from duel 24" to a single 19". A lot of the time my second monitor does go unused but those times when you do need it it's great and I really miss another monitor when I have to work on a single screen setup.
Much of the time I try to get what I am working on onto one monitor so I agree with what Swiftcoder says in that respect. If a 4k is an option that may be an idea and I know with some you can have it split up and act as 4 individual screens.
Objectively - When coding, I put 2+ code files up at a time. e.g. the CPP that I'm writing on one screen, and two headers on the other.
When debugging, you can also lay out all your watch/memory/threads/breakpoint/output/find windows to cover half a screen, and still have the other clean to show just code.
You can also comfortably debug a game that's running in full-screen.
If you're using reference documentation, it's nice to have that, and the GDNet chat room, and your music player, etc open one screen, and your code on the other.
In Unity, you can drag the game window onto one screen and leave the rest of the editor on the other, allowing you to visualise the game view while moving rhe scene about in the editor. I haven't tried with UE4, but I imagine there'd be similar use cases.
When debugging, you can also lay out all your watch/memory/threads/breakpoint/output/find windows to cover half a screen, and still have the other clean to show just code.
You can also comfortably debug a game that's running in full-screen.
If you're using reference documentation, it's nice to have that, and the GDNet chat room, and your music player, etc open one screen, and your code on the other.
In Unity, you can drag the game window onto one screen and leave the rest of the editor on the other, allowing you to visualise the game view while moving rhe scene about in the editor. I haven't tried with UE4, but I imagine there'd be similar use cases.
I had two old 19" 1280x1024 display for many many years until I replaced them with a single 23" Full-HD display 2.5 years ago. Just a couple of weeks ago, I had enough of it, bought another 23" Full-HD and went back to dual-screen.
Personal tastes are different, but I clearly prefer multiple smaller displays over one huge one. First, the pixels-to-cost and screen-size-to-cost ratios are *way* better. Second, you can position them at different angles to have an optimal viewing angle at both. And for work, the gap/bezels don't bother me much.
The thing that finally made me buy a second display again was editing of UV texture coordinates with Blender. On a single screen, there's just not enough space for a reasonably sized 3D view, 2D texture image view and a couple of other property editing sidebars. Of course, it has advantages for many other sorts of work, too, but these have already been mentioned.
"It depends" is sadly the answer. I've gotten to work with a lot of different layouts, but prefer 2-3 monitors in most cases. But if I have access to more monitors, then odds are I can probably find a use for them. (And with digital KM switches like Synergy I find I can get even more monitors 'doing something useful' in front of me. Linking up a few old monitors with raspberry pis can be a neat thing if you have some monitors kicking around with VESA mounts and a decent arm system to keep the monitors themselves up off your desk.)
There of course are exceptions based on what is actually going on and what the actual needs of the project are. For awhile I did some work that required me to quickly move around and deal with some robotics hardware, and my preferred tool was an old 10" or 11" netbook from when they were first a thing. One of the other guys working with me had this monstrous 17" desktop replacement thing that barely got an hour on battery, if that, and it seemed like he spent more time fiddling with things and clearing a large enough space to put it down safely that he got to spend actually working.
So the question you need to ask yourself is: What information do you need displayed, and how much do you want displayed at a time?
Objectively - When coding, I put 2+ code files up at a time. e.g. the CPP that I'm writing on one screen, and two headers on the other.
When debugging, you can also lay out all your watch/memory/threads/breakpoint/output/find windows to cover half a screen, and still have the other clean to show just code.
You can also comfortably debug a game that's running in full-screen.
If you're using reference documentation, it's nice to have that, and the GDNet chat room, and your music player, etc open one screen, and your code on the other.
That's almost exactly the same as my setup :) I love having the .h file on one screen and the .cpp on the other.
Cramming the build output, or callstack into a small sliver on the main screen is just torture.
I always feel a bit lost using just one screen, though it helps if that one screen is big enough.
With three screens I have email and Skype on the right side, web browser, Visual Studio and the running programs I work on on the middle screen, with file browser and Delphi on the left. Other applications are used on specific screens as well, most of the time.
One thing I like a lot in Windows 10 is snapping a window to one side of a screen, giving even more useable desktop space without having too many free floating windows (something that distracts me).
The benefit to my productivity is that I can easily watch multiple things without having to bring them to the foreground all the time.
I agree with Luckless, decide what you want to see and if you want to see it at the same time. Also, do you maximize windows, snap them together, let them overlap ... whatever feels best to you determines if you would work better with multiple screens or not.
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