So I finally hooked up my second monitor...

[ainmosni]

Dear god they're ALL TRACKBALLS HOW DO YOU DO ANYTHING WITH A TRACK BALL


I knew a guy in PS that used to use a trackball, dear god he couldn't hit the broadside of a barn

I have a thumb trackball at work and used to have one at home... They game a lot better than you expect, they used to be quicker than any mouse on the market... Also more precise if you knew how to use them. Now the trackballs which are meant for other fingers... Yeah those are fail...

[rumsfald]

It's more like, attention usually stays bound within confines of boundaries, whether these boundaries are within a window or within a monitor.  It takes more time to saccade, or shit attention, outside a boundary than it does within a boundary, even if these two locations are equidistant.

With a larger field of view (i.e., multiple monitors with FOV>90), you have larger boundaries. Let's say 3 monitors. You can remain on the central monitor, which itself is FOV=90, and have the same attentional efficiency of a single-monitor user. However, with 3 monitors set to a greater FOV (~180), you can saccade to the left or right monitor to scan for threats MUCH MUCH faster than a single-monitor-user can mouse-left and mouse-right to scan the equivalent horizon.

There is no question that the ocular muscles are much faster at focusing gaze than the muscles of the arms/hands. Said otherwise, the neurocogitive attentional loss of time incurred in switching between out-of-boundary and back-within-boundary are far outweighed my the time differential between ocular and arm/hand muscle responses. Otherwise, pilots would use periscopes.

[broonor]

But yes, TF2 is kind of fail, though seeing the full side of my rockets/flamethrower is win.  3 monitors would be ideal, but I can't afford any more tweaks on my systems

[Blues]

I am a twitch gamer and have been since CS days. With my sensitivity set so high, and my constant view shifts, having more than the default 90º POV really threw me off when I tried it. Neat idea, but just so much easier to twitch game than get used to a whole new movement.

[rumsfald]

so, I finally got off my lazy ass to hook up the 2nd monitor today. Both are dell 20" 1680x1050 monitors.

I really don't know what to do with all the desktop space.

The primary (head on) is for firefox or gaming, while the secondary (angled to the left) is for IRC/Steam/winamp/etc.

Since I'm not dual-monitoring for gaming, I have PS / TF2 set in windowed mode, but they still minimize when I alt-tab. lame.

[Ianki]

The primary (head on) is for firefox or gaming, while the secondary (angled to the left) is for IRC/Steam/winamp/etc.

This is what i do with my second monitor.  It's nice to see who is speaking on vent while i'm playing a game of planet side, and not have irc hiding in the background as i'm doing my day to day work stuff.

[Fail Medic]

Since I'm not dual-monitoring for gaming, I have PS / TF2 set in windowed mode, but they still minimize when I alt-tab. lame.

(scratch head) Not sure about PS, but for TF2, when the game has hold of my mouse, I Shift+Tab to bring up Steam Overlay.  The game lets go of the pointer and then I can mouse outside TF2 without any minimizing occurring.  Click back in game, shift-tab overlay away, game on!

[Wedge]

[quote author=rumsfald link=topic=2360.msg69467#msg69467 date=1235950414]
Since I'm not dual-monitoring for gaming, I have PS / TF2 set in windowed mode, but they still minimize when I alt-tab. lame.

(scratch head) Not sure about PS, but for TF2, when the game has hold of my mouse, I Shift+Tab to bring up Steam Overlay.  The game lets go of the pointer and then I can mouse outside TF2 without any minimizing occurring.  Click back in game, shift-tab overlay away, game on!
[/quote]

Yeah this works with TF2 quite well, you don't even need to bring up the overlay, just hitting esc to bring up the menu and have a mouse pointer works too.  Planetside constrains you mouse to the window, however it doesn't minimize for me when alt-tabbing...