Good 5 Box Maximizer Layout - 1440x900 Widescreen

[Greythan]

Read a few posts on the topic, and I'm not sure I am using the best set up.

I currently have my main window on the left part of the screen, with my four slave windows stacked on the right side. Main window is at 1081x897 and slaves are all stacked equally at 360x225. Obviously, I'm using the "snap to screen" element.

Wondering if anyone 5 boxing on a similar overall resolution (1440x900) can tell me what they've used? I'm also concerned with keeping my layout when I single box in a full 1440x900 intact.

Thanks in advance for responses to this newbie question! Also, first time poster and LOVE this site. You all are great. Also loving keyclone.

Started a 5 box team of paladin, priest, shaman, and magex2. (Yeah, probably not the best team to start, but level 5 and having fun.)

[spannah]

I tried it like that on my 19" monitor (exact same clone dimensions I think) and hated it - windows way to small. So i decided to also use the other 19" monitor which I was going to use for web browsing and other tasks.

To run all 5 instance in one screen I think at least a 22" monitor is needed.

As for single-boxing, I run 1440x900, but windowed mode ... the frame around doesn't bother me.

[Greythan]

Yeah, two monitors would be awesome, but my wife would kill me for how it would make our office look. ;)

Any other thoughts on best layout with my limited viewing space? Performance has been just fine so far with an 8800GTS, 5600 dual core AMD and only 2 gigs of RAM. Going to upgrade RAM another stick (using XP, so should I consider a fourth stick?).

Too much fun so far. Best I ever did in EQ1 was triple boxing and that took three machines.

[Maz]

If you want five windows with identical aspect ratios and want to use all of your screen, you'll need either:

Main window 1152x900 on one side and four alt windows of 288x225 stacked on the other side, or

Main window of 1440x720 across the top and four alt windows of 360x180 across the bottom.

I'm currently using a second screen (second computer in my case) for my alts but I might try putting all five on the one screen so that I can use PiP.

[Molt]

On layout I do use when five boxing on a single screen is to have two main identically-sized windows for my tank and healer across the top of the screen and then three small follower windows across the bottom of the screen. I like having the larger window for the tank to see general position, and on the healer as I sometimes fall back to click-cast for healing whilst using the keyboard fro DPS. This also does keep the aspect ratio the same as your normal screen too which helps keep your UI looking sane when you change to single window.

I'll say now that I'm not sure if this'll really work at your resolution or if the DPS will be too small but if you want to try it here's the window details to use for your maximizer:

Tank window at size 720x540 and position 0,0
Healer window at size 720x540 and position 720,0
Dps1 window at size 480x360 and position 0,540
Dps2 window at size 480x360 and position 480,540
Dps3 window at size 480x360 and position 960,540

[Maz]

Ooh, I hadn't thought of that. Scaled to 1680x1050, that works out at:

Two times 840x630
Three times 560x420

I'm gonna try that tonight.

[Djarid]

And on a 24" - 1920x1200

2x 960x720
3x 640x480

on this res though I prefer 1536x1200 and 4x 380x300

[Greythan]

I've been using the following layout based on input from this thread. I do, however, notice some times using PiP where my framerates degrade so bad I have to reboot. I'm wondering if I'm not using the full capabilities of the current version. Looking for some input.

Version of Keyclone: 1.8i

Windows: 5 (main on top 1440x720, four slaves across bottom of screen at 359x179 each)

Each "resolution" set to: 1-to-1

Also, my overall framerates on my main window seem to have been no better than 30'ish since upgrading versions. Not sure if that's related. When I first went to this set up I was hitting 50-60 fps in my main window.

Thanks in advance for any set-up suggestions. I'll say it again, GREAT piece of software Rob and well worth the investment!!

[Toned]

My 1440x900 setup is 4 small screens on the top and my main the the remaining portion. Also when I do 3 monitors 1 in the main window and 2 on each side of me.

[Greythan]

Toned, what are your settings in Keyclone? (Window sizes, locations, and do you use KC to force a resolution)?

[Toned]

Top 4 boxes run across the screen 1 after another they are 360,248
Then the main window is : 1440, 649 right below them.

[SonyUSA]

Yeah, two monitors would be awesome, but my wife would kill me for how it would make our office look. ;)

Any other thoughts on best layout with my limited viewing space? Performance has been just fine so far with an 8800GTS, 5600 dual core AMD and only 2 gigs of RAM. Going to upgrade RAM another stick (using XP, so should I consider a fourth stick?).

Too much fun so far. Best I ever did in EQ1 was triple boxing and that took three machines.I am able to run 5 WoW clients on my laptop and it works very well, use optimizer to throttle the background FPS on your other boxes to about 10, and active to 25 or so. You shouldn't really need to look at them at all. I have one big window for my leader and just make smaller windows for the other 4, the corners overlap by one 'square' in optimizer so that the only blank monitor space is in the bottom right corner of the desktop (widescreen).

No, don't add another stick of RAM. Because windows XP is (crappy) 32 bit architecture it cannot handle more than about 3.2 gigs of RAM and it will only do that if you COMPLETELY disable page filing/virtual memory. You'll need to go to XP-64 (CPU upgrade if you don't have 64b cpu) or Vista-32. The most you will get without disabling the page filing/virtual memory is like 2.8 gigs or something stupid like that. My laptop has 2gb of ram and runs Vista-64 with a medium end graphics card (GeForce Go 7800 I think?)

[Maz]

My laptop has 2gb of ram and runs Vista-64
You'd be better off with Vista-32.

[SonyUSA]

My laptop has 2gb of ram and runs Vista-64
You'd be better off with Vista-32.Uh, I'm better off with XP-32 but my laptop drivers aren't supported by anything but Vista-64 :p

[Maz]

I've come up with a new layout.

The idea is to have your main across the top of the screen, your healer occupying three quarters of the remainder of the screen, and your DPS sharing the remaining section. It does this whilst retaining aspect ratio across all five windows.

Here are the coordinates for a 1440x900 screen:

Window 1 (main):

Position: 0,0
Size: 1440x512

Window 2 (healer):

Position: 0,512
Size: 1080x384

Window 3 (DPS):

Position: 1080,512
Size: 360x128

Window 4 (DPS):

Position: 1080,640
Size: 360x128

Window 5 (DPS):

Position: 1080,768
Size: 360x128

[Djarid]

Each "resolution" set to: 1-to-1
One thing that might be causing your Frame-rate decay is that wow will not do resolutions below 800x600... if either dimension is set below these absolutes, wow will reset the res to 800x600

[Greythan]

Very old bump but I'm still wresting with my maximizer/resolution settings.

I have my main set above four slaves layed out across the bottom.

Settings:


#
# generated by keyclone on 08 AUG 2008 21:54:42 EDT
#
D,379,179
R,'region0','\\.\DISPLAY1',0,0,1440,720,(119.1),(1 440x720),0
R,'region1','\\.\DISPLAY1',5,721,364,900,(120.1),( 359x179),0
R,'region2','\\.\DISPLAY1',366,721,725,900,(121.1) ,(359x179),0
R,'region3','\\.\DISPLAY1',726,721,1085,900,(122.1 ),(359x179),0
R,'region4','\\.\DISPLAY1',1081,721,1440,900,(123. 1),(379x179),0

No matter what I do, when I swap one of my slaves into my main window it goes to what appears to be a stretched 800x600 resolution. Based on Djarid's explanation I can presume that's because they started out as little windows. I've also tried setting the smaller windows to "1-to-1" in Keyclone but that doesn't help.

So, any way for me to set things up so that when I swap a small screen to my main (i.e., region0) that I can get better resolution?

[phetish]

try changing the sections of (359x179) to match your main - (1440x720)

something like this:



#
# generated by keyclone on 08 AUG 2008 21:54:42 EDT
#
D,379,179
R,'region0','\\.\DISPLAY1',0,0,1440,720,(119.1),(1 440x720),0
R,'region1','\\.\DISPLAY1',5,721,364,900,(120.1),( 1440x720),0
R,'region2','\\.\DISPLAY1',366,721,725,900,(121.1) ,(1440x720),0
R,'region3','\\.\DISPLAY1',726,721,1085,900,(122.1 ),(1440x720),0
R,'region4','\\.\DISPLAY1',1081,721,1440,900,(123. 1),(1440x720),0



They might be distorted when in the small position but they will be correct when swapped to the large region with the PiP hotkeys.

[Greythan]

Tried that and I couldn't get the windows to swap (I use shift F8-F12). They flat out wouldn't switch.