[How To] Run Assetto Corsa on a dual-monitor setup

Firstly, I acknowledge that 3 screens (triple monitor) are better than 2 (dual-screen). But not all of us either have the desk-space or perhaps money to buy more screens (or potentially a gfx card/s that can support multiple monitors) - and I believe the experience on 2 screens is more enjoyable than on 1 screen alone - it just feels more immersive, and also allows you to see a bit more of your peripheral vision (useful for overtaking or defending manoeuvre). So for those of you getting by on 2 screens, here goes.

NEW:

YouTube video guide added here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGxpUIoyyiI

Intro

Hey all,

So a few people have been asking me how I achieved my dual-monitor setup running Assetto Corsa.



Rather than continue to repeat myself over, I figured there would be some value in creating a quick 'how to' guide thread in order to share the love and also potentially allow for further troubleshooting if anyone requires.

Firstly, I acknowledge that 3 screens (triple monitor) are better than 2 (dual-screen). But not all of us either have the desk-space or perhaps money to buy more screens (or potentially a gfx card/s that can support multiple monitors) - and I believe the experience on 2 screens is more enjoyable than on 1 screen alone - it just feels more immersive, and also allows you to see a bit more of your peripheral vision (useful for overtaking or defending manoeuvre). So for those of you getting by on 2 screens, here goes:

Step 1: Download and install SRWE

i. Download and install a small freeware tool called 'Simple Runtime Window Editor' or 'SRWE' for short. I obtained the file from this location: LINK[github.com]. If the above link is ever removed, you should (hopefully) be able to Google for it.

ii. There may not be an installation process if you used the direct link above, its just a single zipped exe. If that was the case, unzip it to a location of your choice. There is no installation process - it is a standalone *.exe file that you run. It should consume about 19MB of ram when running (negligible).

Step 2: Configure Assetto Corsa gfx settings

i. Load up Assetto Corsa. Goto Main Menu -> Options (cog) -> Display (tab).
ii. Set the following options:
iii. Resolution = Native resolution of your main screen (e.g. mine was 1920x1080 @ 60Hz)
iv. Rendering Mode = Single Screen
v. Fullscreen Rendering = Unticked
vi: QUIT Assetto Corsa, and then go and edit the following file: C:\Users\<yourUsername>\Documents\Assetto Corsa\cfg -> "video.ini".

NB: There are TWO video.ini files. One in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\assettocorsa\cfg and one in C:\Users\<yourUsername>\Documents\Assetto Corsa\cfg . Make sure you edit the latter, i.e. the one in your Users, Documents etc. folder, NOT the other one.

vii: Change the "width" value under the category to triple the width of your main monitor (e.g. I set mine to 5760 which is 3*1920). viii: Save and close this file. You can now re-launch Assetto Corsa. Note, re-saving the in-game video options may undo your manual edits to your video.ini file.Note: Many thanks to 'bofu' and 'Project WHaT' who provided some helpful debug information as well as alternate solutions - please refer to the 'Comments' section.

Step 3: Load up a race / or single-player in Assetto Corsa

Most of you should have realised by now, that when you load up a race in Assetto Corsa, a second separate 'window' is opened in addition to the main menu or launcher, called "acs.exe". This acs.exe is the actual game engine and what you have in the foreground while you are actually racing. This acs.exe window is what you will be wanting to modify in terms of size and positioning, to 'stretch' it across your dual monitor setup. The steps that follow, walk you through how to do that.

Load up and start a race, and then while you're in the pits, continue with the steps below.

Step 4: Point SRWE to the Assetto Corsa game window runtime exe

i. Alt-Tab or minimise Assetto Corsa acs.exe, and run the 'SRWE' tool that you downloaded and installed earlier in step 1.

ii. Note: You will need to run SRWE as an administrator, otherwise you will not be able to pickup Assetto Corsa in the process list window in the steps that follow (Shout-out to [FDA]Ocaña for the tip) :) . To do this, goto the 'SRWE.exe' file in Windows Explorer, right-click on it and select "Properties", then in the popup goto the 'Compatibility' tab, and right near the bottom you will see a checkbox for "Run this program as an administrator". Tick it and click OK to save changes. When you run SRWE.exe, expect a prompt from windows if you are running UAC (User Account Control) - if you do, select 'Yes' if you trust the app. Note - I am not liable in the event the app goes rogue - but it is open source on github so should be trustworthy :)

iii. In the SRWE tool, click the "Select running Application" button in the top left. A list of running processes should appear. Find and select 'acs.exe' in the listing. You can sort the columns if needed to find it quicker.

iv. Double click 'acs.exe' in the process list, or single-click select it and hit 'open'.

v. That should grab the window information and populate the left hand tree together with the right hand fields. You should see a whole bunch of information populated in these fields.

vi. By default, the 'width' and 'height' will be the native resolution of your main screen (e.g. width=1920 and height=1080) in pixel measurement. The X and Y position if you recall your highschool math refer to the x-pos (horizontal) and y-pos (vertical) on a 2-dimensional plane. In PC pixel co-ordinate terms (x,y), the coordinate (0,0) refers to the upper left most position of (in this case the main) screen.

Step 5: Configure SRWE to modify the Assetto Corsa game window runtime dimensions and position

Right so here is where you want to make changes to actually do the 'stretching' across the multiple screens. There are 4 main variables: Width, Height, X and Y position.

Width:
The theory is that you make the width of the acs.exe window to mimic a triple-monitor setup's width. So for example, if your native resolution width is 1920 (refer to Step 2, point iii. above), multiply that by 3, and you get 5760. So go ahead and enter 5760 into the width position instead of 1920. You can try see what happens if you only use a 2x width (e.g. 3840) - it will probably look squashed.

Height:
You can leave the height as is (assuming your screen resolutions are identical). Otherwise you may want to experiment with making the height either the dimensions of the shortest, or tallest screen - depending on your preference.

Note, as you change the width/height/x/y-pos, the acs.exe game window should update in real-time, so you should see immediate results.

Note: I have experienced Assetto Corsa crash if you enter the width value too slowly. I assumed this was because there is a short delay before SRWE implements the dimension and position changes - and if you perhaps make the width '19' for example (instead of 1920), it may be the source of the crash. If this happens to you, don't panic, load up and try again.

X: (horizontal position i.e. left/right)
Now because you've essentially just made your Assetto Corsa window a triple monitor width, over a dual monitor setup, you will be missing some elements 'off-screen' either to the left or right hand side (where the 3rd monitor would have been). This is why we need to modify the x-position accordingly.

For my setup, I subtracted a 3rd monitor's width, i.e. 1920 pixels, from the 5760 pixel width I specified. I.e., I specified: -3840 (negative number, i.e. shift the setup to the left). If I had used a positive number, it would have shifted it accordingly to the right. This is due to the (0,0) pixel coordinate references the top left point.

Y: (vertical position i.e. up/down)
Much like the height variable above, you probably won't need to modify this if your monitors are identical in resolution.

Step 6: Modify the positioning of screens quickly

You may find that certain Assetto Corsa apps or widgets (like your speedo, map, other HUD elements) are no longer visible. This is likely due to the fact that they are now 'off-screen' on the 3rd virtual screen. Fortunately, SRWE provides a quick workaround solution for that.

In the SRWE tool, hit the 'Left' or 'H.Center' or 'Right' buttons underneath the 'Align Window' grouping. This will quickly 'jump' the entire stretched window to either be on the far left (e.g. 0 x-pos), center (e.g. -1920 x-pos), or right (-3840 x-pos).

What I find myself doing is bouncing between those 3 buttons, to 'pull over' the apps from the left or right corresponding, to where I want them.

Note: I believe it should be possible to 'save' the position of your app / widgets so you don't have to repeat this every.single.time! Or otherwise, program a macro to achieve a 'one click' solution.

As an example, refer to the 3 screenshots below, where I have selected 'Left', 'Center', and 'Right' in SRWE respectively. Note how the image across the two screens changes.

Left:


Center:


Right:

Step 7: Save the SRWE profile

Once you are happy with your tweaking, you should save the SRWE window sizing and positioning so you don't have to repeat step 5 above again.

i. Select the 'Save Profile' icon in SRWE from the toolbar.
ii. Save the profile to your desktop or somewhere else easy and quick to get to in future.
iii. For future loads of Assetto Corsa and SRWE, just hit the 'Load Profile' icon from the toolbar, navigate to the profile file you saved, and double click it.

Step 8 (optional): Tweak Assetto Corsa 'Onboard settings'

With the dual monitor setup, you may find benefit in tweaking the seat position, pitch, and FOV (field of view). Activate this app from the right-hand-side bar in Assetto Corsa as you would with any other app, then modify to your needs.

If you do modify the onboard settings (camera), it is probably then advisable to 'save' your onboard settings so you also don't need to repeat this in future.

Step 9: Enjoy!

Once you are happy with your windows positioning, setup / camera angles etc, click into the Assetto Corsa game engine window, and the SRWE window should fall back into the background.

That should be it I think - hopefully I haven't left anything out. Enjoy your racing!

Notes

1. For the purposes of this setup guide above, I based it off my setup, which was 2x 1920x1080 23" screens (identical). However, you don't have to have identical screens (dimensions, resolution or otherwise) - the above should work for any setup. It may just require more fiddling with the positioning of elements, and fiddling with the x/y position of the window using SRWE.

2. The above basic steps should work on many other games that support running the game in a window, and potentially modifying the FOV (field of view). E.g. "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim".

3. Your mileage may vary.

Hopefully the above guide was easy enough to follow. If you get stuck - perhaps post a shout-out here - I can 'maybe' try my hand at troubleshooting.

If people are *really* stuck with the above, perhaps I'll make a YouTube video walkthrough :)

Ciao

[ColmHartin]

Handy configuration. Thanks for posting it.

[MASSBRED1988]

I USE EYEFINITY AND SET THAT UP. AND THEN JUST HOP INTO ASSETTO CHANGE RESOLUTION TO THE RES OF BOTH . AND SINGLE SCREEN NOT TRIPLE SCREEN IT AINT NEEDED. AND WORKS FINE. 2 . OR 3 SCREENS. IM SURE IT WOULD EVEN WORK IF YOUR PC CAN HANDLE 4 SCREENS LOL IM PRETTY SURE ITS JUST NVIDIA SURROUND OR AMD EYEFINNITY IS EASIEST SETUP FOR ME. WHEN PLAYING WITH SCREENS. FOR VR I CHOOSE LOWEST RES SINCE IT DONT MATTER THATS JUST ON SCREEN ON IN HEADSET

[Tebb]

results may vary, i havent tried it with differing screensizes. I'd say try give it a go

[vegaguy]

I have a 58 and two 50's triples. Can I match screen size?

[Tebb]

I think the consensus was that it will work, but won't look so great unfortunately. I'd say try it and see what your results are like

[abelhorvat7]

So at the end does this work on a diffrent res monitors, cuz i have 1950x1080 and 1680x1050?

[Tebb]

Hey TheUnknownSoldier, hmm yea it doesnt seem to work that well with differing resolution monitors. Unfortunately I'm not sure offhand how to crop or move an individual monitor :( I don't think its supported via SRWE or the game.

[TheUnknownSoldier]

Hi Tebb, great guide, really appreciate it. I just had a second monitor lying around and I thought I'd give it a try.

I got everything going quite easily, thanks to your guide. My only issue is that not only is my second monitor lower res (1920 vs 1680) but its at least 2" shorter from top to bottom. So my second display cannot line up with the center display as the image is smaller. Is there a way to crop the second monitor so that it lines up but just loses some of the image at top or bottom?

Hope that makes sense. Thanks again!

[80ne]

Thanks Man See on the Track

[Tebb]

Arguably I could also get VR. Although I have the minimum specs, so ideally would want to upgrade my main rig some more. My bank manager (aka wife) also has a say in the funds though haha so need to do some more incremental upgrades and stretch it a bit more. Good thing having a PC allows one to do that. For now I enjoy my triples, with TrackIR head tracker. I've also added a considerable amount of gear and swapped out my wheel pedals etc since I first wrote this post over half a decade ago enjoy the sim racing friend!