Duplicating game play on two monitors of different resolution

[Tarvaln]

I'm trying to duplicate game play on two different monitors that have different resolutions. The PC and TV are connected by HDMI

For example:
I want to play Far Cry 4 on my main monitor that is 2560x1080. I want my game play to also show on a TV that is 1920x1080.

Duplicate displays in Windows 10 will not work because it will change my resolution on the monitor to 1920x1080.

I haven't found a way to accomplish this.

Thanks.

 

[bystander36]

You either need to play at 1080p, or you might be able to make a custom resolution for your 1080p TV, so that it will run at 1440p, then downsample back to 1080p.

With Nvidia, just go to the Nvidia control panel and create a custom resolution for your TV. AMD might require you to download a 3rd party app to do it (they used to require a 3rd party app at least, it might have changed).

 

[PrincessFrosty]

It depends on a few things, does the TV and/or monitor have internal scalers which can take non-native resolutions and display them as native, in the case of most TVs they can do this but it's less common with monitors.

If yes, you can create a custom resolution for the TV which is 2560x1600 and the video card will spit this out and the TV will down sample it given the cable you're connecting with supports a res this high and the TV tuner can down sample something that big. With Nvidia you just need to set a custom res for the monitor. You can also disable GPU scaling and select let the TV itself deal with scaling.

As bystander36 said that's fairly easy to do with Nvidia cards because they support it in the driver control panel but I see you have AMD cards and I've not used their kit for ages so I can't say if they do it directly or need 3rd party software. Another AMD user might be able to help.

 

[Elcs]

Wouldn't VSR/DSR solve this?

I usually run 1440p on my 1080p TV but often run 1800p

 

[bystander36]

Wouldn't VSR/DSR solve this?

I usually run 1440p on my 1080p TV but often run 1800p

Does VSR/DSR even work at the desktop?

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Just wondering what is the purpose of doing this OP?

Is it so friends can watch something?

 

[Sabrewings]

Does VSR/DSR even work at the desktop?

DSR does. It simply creates a new higher resolution the OS and games sees as available. When that resolution is selected, it applies its downsampling to the resulting frames and pushes them to the display at its natural resolution. Should work with anything that selects resolution as full screen (be it a desktop or a game).

 

[Elcs]

DSR does. It simply creates a new higher resolution the OS and games sees as available. When that resolution is selected, it applies its downsampling to the resulting frames and pushes them to the display at its natural resolution. Should work with anything that selects resolution as full screen (be it a desktop or a game).

AMD VSR also does this. I have a 1440p desktop on my 1080p screen, which is why mostly I play at 1440p.

390X can chug at 1800p.

 

[Tarvaln]

I've tried a few of these suggestion without much success.

I used VSR to change the TV res. I tried settings from 1920 x 1200 to 2560 x 1440. There was no option for 2560 x 1080. I assume due to the aspect ratio. I also set the monitors to duplicate display.

Every time I would start a game (Far Cry Primal) the TV signal would drop out and only my main display would show the game. Also, the game would play in 1920 x 1080.

I tried to set a custom resolution but it would fail when I tried to apply it.

@Fanatical Meat: My wife wants to watch what I'm playing as she knits.

Any other ideas?

 

[Sabrewings]

Then you're going to have to compromise somewhere. The two displays you're trying to push to aren't even the same aspect ratio, so something is either going to have to crop it on the fly or distort it. The only way to make the image display appropriately on both is if the engine can be configured to render each frame twice at different resolutions and aspect ratios, but this will effectively halve your frame rate.

The most likely way would be to pick up an HDMI splitter and push 1080p out to it. It would then forward the same 1080p signal to both displays. Unless you can make the video card push the same image to both on its own.

Getting a different resolution image on each doesn't seem like it's going to work out. I just don't think driver programmers have thought of having a second rasterizer that crops the output of another. There may be some trickery out there that would push the 2560x1080 image to the TV once it was rescaled, but it will be distorted. Everything would look taller and skinnier.

 

[Tarvaln]

I don't need it to be that complicated. I was looking for a "zoomed in" or "cropped" version to display on the TV where it is bottom-center aligned with the main monitor not upper left aligned.

 

[Tarvaln]

Any one have any more ideas? I'm still looking for a way to display my game on my monitor and TV. My monitor is 2560x1080, the TV is 1920x1080. I'm looking for a crop or zoomed image for the TV, aligned center-bottom.

Thanks.

 

[digitaldurandal]

Any one have any more ideas? I'm still looking for a way to display my game on my monitor and TV. My monitor is 2560x1080, the TV is 1920x1080. I'm looking for a crop or zoomed image for the TV, aligned center-bottom.

Thanks.

Stream it and put your stream on the second monitor.

 

[JeffMD]

You cannot. Unless one of the device is able to scale the video down, the video card MUST render at at least the max resolution used, and currently there is no way to tell it to re-render at a different resolution for a second display. You would need to do this on a different device, a scaler.

 

[Sabrewings]

Stream it and put your stream on the second monitor.

I think this is the winner right here. This should work with the right software for what you want. Try OBS.

 

[Tarvaln]

I did try OBS and it works well. I don't have to stream or record because OBS does a preview in it's main window. I only wish it had a full screen preview mode. I did set up a Twitch account while testing all this stuff. I may be the only guy with a twitch account just for his wife.
Thanks for all the advice.