Tracking shortcuts and the early history of multiple monitors

re: Tracking shortcuts and the early history of multiple monitors

Karan — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 20:49:24 GMT

"Raymond, you're not reading carefully enough. The question you were actually asked by Comedy_Gaz is "Why can you not rename *in* Recycle Bin in Windows XP?" (Note the *in* there.)

I also wonder why, actually."

re: Tracking shortcuts and the early history of multiple monitors

Gabe — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 04:25:40 GMT

JamesJohnston: When you have large arrays of monitors, you probably configure your graphics cards to combine all outputs for a given card as a single "monitor". If you had enough slots and the drivers to support it, you could theoretically use 10 Eyefinity cards with 6 monitors each, for a total of 60 monitors on one computer!

If I were making a large flight display at an airport, for example, I would use a 9x2 array of monitors in portrait format by using 3 Eyefinity cards. Each card would be configured to control one 3x2 segment of the displays as a single 3240x3840 "monitor".

Since this is a custom app, I would just create a way to configure it to know where the physical monitors are located within the virtual monitors. Even if each physical monitor were individually selectable to change its resolution, color depth, and location, you wouldn't want to manage them that way. You'd probably be asking for a way to combine them to simplify configuration.

re: Tracking shortcuts and the early history of multiple monitors

JamesJohnston — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 14:08:25 GMT

"And what the hell would you do with 18 monitors then? As soon as someone comes up with a real world example where they would really benefit from it and would want to run Windows on it, I assume MS would think over their limitations (and that then also means testing Windows with up to 18 instead of 9 monitors.. great) - but since that's quite unlikely, why bother?"

Personally, I don't even have room for them. But there are millions of Windows users out there, and I'm sure there are some more well-heeled customers who would take advantage of the increased limit - especially for more specialized applications. So to summarize some ideas, both from me and also mentioned by others in this discussion:

* Video wall for high resolution display

* Monitoring lots of IP security cameras

* Flight simulators, other simulators

* Data monitoring (flight times at airports, financial information, etc.)

Give people the tools, raise the limits, and they will come up with applications. Microsoft, of all companies, should know this very well by now. There's probably many more we haven't thought of. (Unfortunately, I worry that Microsoft has lost sight of this with Windows 8 in the senseless chase for controlled, closed, limited software markets... It's concerning to me to see key APIs for desktop Windows development being marked as "legacy", such as the GDI APIs. How else are you supposed to respond to WM_PAINT to render your window? One could reasonably conclude that desktop development is now considered obsolete, and we are supposed to rewrite everything in Metro, where a limit of two apps at a time on the screen is therefore supposedly an improvement over the desktop?)

"Another example: You can trivially buy thousands of CPUs per amazon, so by your logic MS should have to set the limit for their OSes to something like 100k CPUs - because hey, someone could want to buy all those CPUs. In practice nobody would and people with special needs that really need so many CPUs will run RHEL anyhow."

Except that there isn't a motherboard that will accept 100k CPUs. My logic is assuming that you can hook all that up to a single PC, but you can't hook up so many CPUs. You can reasonably hook up a dozen monitors, though.

In the future, if my PC does have 100k CPUs (thousands of cores per CPU?), I will expect Windows to support that. (Or should Microsoft recommend I just start using RHEL in my living room?)

[As they say in the legal system, "Dismissed for lack of standing." Again, these are theoretical, not actual, scenarios. "Let's spend millions of dollars to raise a limit nobody has actually encountered." -Raymond]

re: Tracking shortcuts and the early history of multiple monitors

640k — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 08:51:49 GMT

"10 monitors is enough for everyone."

re: Tracking shortcuts and the early history of multiple monitors

A. Skrobov — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 08:36:04 GMT

Raymond, you're not reading carefully enough. The question you were actually asked by Comedy_Gaz is "Why can you not rename *in* Recycle Bin in Windows XP?" (Note the *in* there.)

I also wonder why, actually.

re: Tracking shortcuts and the early history of multiple monitors

Danny — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 20:38:41 GMT

Those monitors aren't being used for displaying UI. They're just screens. (Unless you think you're going to take your mouse and go drag drag drag drag drag all the way to monitor number 35.) You probably don't want to be pumping pixels to all of them - just let them be screens hard-wired to the cameras. -Raymond

You're missing the point here Ray, it's economics. Those venues that pays a LOT (as in tens of thousands) for that special hardware only to have those monitors directly connected to a high resolution camera could save a lot of money - and they KNOW it!! - only if Windows would raise the limit to at least 100 monitors. And did I mention it in the process of doing so they would buy Windows licences? Is a win-win situation for both those venues and Micro$oft. In today world of economics none cares if you would use the microscope as nut cracker? As long as the microscope is cheaper than the hammer everybody would buy a microscope to crack the nuts. So they would use a monitor ("15 are max $100) and a high video processing PC with a Windows (~$2500) is a lot cheaper then their current set-up which at minimum is $20,000.

[You seem to think that increasing the number of monitors is as simple as changing a #define and recompiling. "It will just work! No need to test it or performance-tune it." Remember the twenty-foot-long computer. It was totally unusable because of the latency. -Raymond]

re: Tracking shortcuts and the early history of multiple monitors

voo — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 18:26:06 GMT

"I just did: two Eyefinity six-display cards would do the job; certainly three would. The hardware is commercially available - I can order it from NewEgg right now if I felt like blowing close to $1000 just on video hardware."

And what the hell would you do with 18 monitors then? As soon as someone comes up with a real world example where they would really benefit from it and would want to run Windows on it, I assume MS would think over their limitations (and that then also means testing Windows with up to 18 instead of 9 monitors.. great) - but since that's quite unlikely, why bother?

Another example: You can trivially buy thousands of CPUs per amazon, so by your logic MS should have to set the limit for their OSes to something like 100k CPUs - because hey, someone could want to buy all those CPUs. In practice nobody would and people with special needs that really need so many CPUs will run RHEL anyhow.

re: Tracking shortcuts and the early history of multiple monitors

Danny — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 15:54:40 GMT

@Kai

Usually in each shift is like 2 guys watching 2 matrixes of 4x5 monitors (40 points of interest) with ~30 degree between them so one can still have with his peripheral vision his partner matrix but his main vision onto his matrix. So I am talking about the real life scenarios that exists even before word "Windows" was referring to software. And how to connect 40 monitors to one PC? Well, above comments already made it clear. And why not imagine 200 monitors connected to the same PC? And who said DVI? Do you think current hardware implementation will last too long? A dozen years ago DVI didn't even exists on the market, they barely started to exists on drawing boards! So, by the time SP1 for W8 will get issued the hardware guys from industry will change it again :D

[Those monitors aren't being used for displaying UI. They're just screens. (Unless you think you're going to take your mouse and go drag drag drag drag drag all the way to monitor number 35.) You probably don't want to be pumping pixels to all of them - just let them be screens hard-wired to the cameras. -Raymond]

re: Tracking shortcuts and the early history of multiple monitors

Kai Schätzl — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 15:35:18 GMT

So how do you plug all these monitors to your PC? Imagine a PC with 200 DVI connectors on the back ...

re: Tracking shortcuts and the early history of multiple monitors

Danny — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 14:29:20 GMT

Buuuulshit Ray buuuuullllshhhhiiiittt, OK!

There are plenty of security systems for closed video circuit who would LOVE to switch from their "high resolution cameras -> long cable with several signal repeaters to keep the signal power -> video monitors for each camera" to "high resolution camera -> internal network -> one freaking windows system with more then 10 monitors connected to it" setup. And I say they stick with this very expensive hardware setup because Windows has such a low limit. Increase the freaking limit and you'll suddenly sell millions (yes millions!!) of more licenses - there is your real life scenario and also the economics behind. Chop chop Ray!! go increase it now you got both scenario and clients motivations for Micro$oft to start implementing it in the next SP for W8 :D