Virtual monitors?

[Skillcap]

Does anyone know if it will be possible to add extra virtual displays without actually having extra physical monitors? If not we definately need to try to find a workaround to fake a physical monitor, whether its with hardware or software.

[Badacid.Velox]

Great question. I wondered exactly the same thing earlier.

[Dragonbait]

I have a plug in HDMI dongle that emulates a 4096x2160 (4K) monitor, it also enables the GPU acceleration, it's great!
If you are wondering I use it so that I can TeamViewer onto our server as if it had a 4K display.
It should work great for this :)

[Dragonbait]

If anyone's interested they are $20 and can be purchased from https://www.headlessghost.com

[Skillcap]

That's awesome, I did some reading and saw this online a little while ago, the only problem I can see is that most graphics cards only support one hdmi, perhaps there are similar plugs for display port? I'll post back here if I find anything, but if it turns out the software supports some kind of emulation that'd be great as well.

[Skillcap]

Do you know if headless ghost supports different kinds of adapters? Such as DP to HDMI?

[Dragonbait]

My cards have 2 HDMI. I haven't tried it, but theoretically a DVI->HDMI converter could also be used with it?

[Dragonbait]

I must emailed them to ask about DP and DVI converters, will let you know what they say!

[Sp4m]

This guide can help you make cheap dummy plugs:

https://rumorscity.com/2013/12/06/how-to-create-dummy-plugs-for-your-graphics-cards/

[Dragonbait]

Got a reply from Headless Ghost:
DVI should be no problem at all. DP does work too but I have had some reports that some resolutions are not supported over the DP interface; these instances are rare but It's worth mentioning.

More information on that can be found here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/devjoshi/headless-ghost/posts/1035927

[Dragonbait]

@spam, the Headless Ghost is far more advanced than the home made variety, it actually emulates a monitor and so reports available resolutions etc to Windows.

[Skillcap]

Alright so another discussion brought up one way to fake it without an adapter: http://steamcommunity.com/app/382110/discussions/0/385429091862933902/
but it doesn't seem to work in windows 10. Right now it looks like the best option other than actually buying extra monitors is to use Headless Ghost (maybe with some adapters depending on your gpu.) Not sure how well the homade adapter would work out but definately worth a try. So it seems that for the time being you have to use a hardware solution. Still, its awesome you can experience a multimonitor setup without spending full price on a few high resolution monitors, although some extra investment is involved.

[Dragonbait]

Be great if the developer could add virtual screens in the future.

[Skillcap]

One other thing that anyone might find useful, (this is all in theory but should work fine), you can run resolutions and refresh rates unsupported by your monitor or headless ghost by creating a custom resolution. You can do this fairly easily in the Nvidia/Radeon control panels or with the Custom Resolution utility here:
http://www.monitortests.com/forum/Thread-Custom-Resolution-Utility-CRU
Usually the utility is used for monitor overclocking however if you use an unsupported resolution your screen will just display "unsupported resolution" however windows will treat it as a normal display at that resolution, so if you have a headless ghost you could create a custom resolution for it (even something unsupported by today's formats, like 5k@90hz or an ultra-wide resolution) and windows should still treat it normally in virtual desktop, I have no way of testing this ATM however it would be interesting to setup.

[Trekimann]

If you set a custom resolution using say nvidia control panel that was not supported by your actual screen I know the screen would complain but would it still show up ok in virtual desktop? For example I could set up a secondary screen with 3840 x 1080 to get it to wrap around further and although it would not work on my physical screen it would show up as a big wide screen in VR.

[Skillcap]

In theory yes, Windows will recognise whatever resolution you set, your monitor wouldn't show anything but if I understand how virtual desktop works correctly it should show up just fine. You'd just have to select the okay button after setting the resolution so it doesn't revert back. I have no way of testing it but I think its definately worth a try.