At work, I have dual monitors and I was wondering if the BOINC Manager could ever support multiple screens?

Thanks in advance,
George :-)

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If you mean for the screen saver and/or graphics, then the answer is no. At least, not until Berkeley adopts OpenGL2.0 and above. But whether or not that's completely backward compatible with existing hardware is another question.

The graphics and screen savers are in Open GL1.2, which by default does not do multiple screens from one video card. Well, it can do it, if your video card has a RAMDAC for each VGA outlet. But most cards only got one RAMDAC, which means only one monitor can show OPenGL graphics.

Another way around this is by using multiple video cards = multiple RAMDACs.

BOINC 6.0 will have a new approach to the graphics, so perhaps that that can do multiple monitors.

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BOINC 6.0 will have a new approach to the graphics, so perhaps that that can do multiple monitors.

I've asked one of the developers about this. It's up to the project what they use, but in all the graphics should stay the same OpenGL version, backward compatible with OGL 1.1

BOINC 6.0 will have a separate program for graphics, though. But you can read all about that on http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/milestone/6.0

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Using a separate program means the project screensaver doesn't even need to use OpenGL. It can use anything that can produce fullscreen graphics.

If I'm not mistaken, the system I have at work is using 2 separate video cards. I'll check on Monday when I'm back to work...Thanks to everyone that responded...George :-)

Using a separate program means the project screensaver doesn't even need to use OpenGL. It can use anything that can produce fullscreen graphics.

But OpenGL is common to all platforms. You don't want to use DirectX if you also want your graphics to work on a Mac, or Linux (or non-Vista Windows).

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-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

But OpenGL is common to all platforms. You don't want to use DirectX if you also want your graphics to work on a Mac, or Linux (or non-Vista Windows).

Of course I'd never use DirectX (or even clutter my brain learning it). But for example, I could do 2D graphics with SDL. Or use SDL to open an OpenGL window and handle events, instead of having to deal with the BOINC graphics API or worse: GLUT.

... instead of having to deal with the BOINC graphics API or worse: GLUT.

I'm not sure why you don't like the BOINC graphics API, or GLUT.

Just about every graphics system has a similar structure. You (the programmer) have to write a routine to initialize things (whatever is needed for the graphics to be drawn), a routine to draw one frame of the graphics, a routine to handle the case when a window is resized, and one or more routines to handle input from mouse or keyboard or other devices. That's what the BOINC API does.

OpenGL provides a library of functions to do the drawing, but the one thing it does not do is handle the "getting started" part of setting up graphics, because that is system dependent. It's different on Windows than from X11 than from a Mac. So GLUT was written as a support library with system specific versions of the routines to handle that for you. It also includes an event loop so you don't have to write one yourself. So GLUT makes writing OpenGL graphics easier than it otherwise would be, and more portable.

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-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

... instead of having to deal with the BOINC graphics API or worse: GLUT.

I'm not sure why you don't like the BOINC graphics API, or GLUT.

Just about every graphics system has a similar structure. You (the programmer) have to write a routine to initialize things (whatever is needed for the graphics to be drawn), a routine to draw one frame of the graphics, a routine to handle the case when a window is resized, and one or more routines to handle input from mouse or keyboard or other devices. That's what the BOINC API does.

I don't like callbacks in general; means the only way to get things done is global variables (or static local variables). With SDL, I don't have a routine that gets called periodically where I render stuff. I render stuff whenever I want to, and call SDL_GL_Flip() to get it on screen. I also fetch events (like mouse movement, key presses, window resizing) whenever I want to and handle them.

Thanks, this thread helped me a lot