Quad Display and OpenGL with Matrox Graphics
Dear Max/Jitter Users,
I am preparing an installation with 4 projectors in stretch mode, and I have purchased a Matrox Mseries 9140, 512 MB graphics card, in order to output 4 DVI signals. However, the specific card does not support OpenGL mode. In the system I use jit.gl.videoplane and jit.gl.render to create some video windows on the main screen. This is not displayed as there is no OpenGL support from the Matrox card. What are my options to avoid this problem?
a) Make some sort of a fix of gl objects in Max and trick the program?
b) Install a second card which supports OpenGL, and send the output to Matrox 9140 and then to the projectors which will work as a simple splitter?
c) There is nothing I can do. Throw the card, and get another one.
I would appreciate any help as I have invested a lot of money both on software and hardware units, and I would like to make this work.
Thanks a lot
as has been suggested in the past, the best/cheapest solution for quad display is a powerful nvidia or ati card with dual outputs and a matrox triple head to go.
or two graphics cards with dual outputs.
as has also beens said (and you seem to finding out for yourself) the matrox graphics cards are not for opengl rendering.
as for your options:
a - not really sure what you mean by "fix", but if you don't use opengl, you might be ok with just jitter objects.
b - no idea how that would work.
c - probably you're best bet, although i would recommend selling the card rather than throwing it out.
do a search on quad output to find more info on this list
Thanks for the reply robtherich.
As I suspected. I just wanted a confirmation. Although I hoped that maybe I could trick somehow the program not use OpenGL just do a matrix transformation and output it as a video signal. I guess it is complicated in my head, and to make things easier and not too messy, my best solution is to go with Mac Pro which gives me two NVidia Geforce 120 with four outputs.
However, I have another question: How can I create a fullscreen mode of jit.window and same time have a screen with the interface? Is there a way to configure this from Mac or can I define this somehow in my program/max patch?
Thanks.
jit.displays is your friend.
however if you want to output to four projectors, and you have a card with four outputs, then you don't have any left for your monitor.
one possible solution is to create a separate patch as a gui, load it on a separate laptop, create a network between the two machines, and pass messages to your video machine using networking utils (mxj net.maxhole is probably the easiest to use).
if you are using two macs with 10.5, you can also setup screen sharing, which is quite useful.
Of course, you are right.
That's the only way to go - multiple graphics cards.
And in order to recap: always make sure your purchase is 100% compatible to your needs, and never trust sellers too easily!!!
Cheers...