Software Orbiter 2006 not defaulting to my primary display

[gedaliah_atl]

Hi quick question.

I use multiple displays on my laptop, with a separate LCD monitor as my primary display.

I am using a Dell XPS M1530 with Vista Home Premium and a NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT video card).

In Orbiter, on the video tab, I have two instances of 3D device for "Direct3D T&L HAL (NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT )". Every time I change to a new scenario I have to manually go to the video tab and set it to display on my primary (external) display --- otherwise it displays on the laptop's display.

How to I get Orbiter to default to my primary display when launched for all scenarios? FYI I am trying to run full-screen, not Window.

Thanks!

Don

 

[Hielor]

The problem is that Orbiter defaults to the first device in the list that has the name it's looking for -- in cases where the devices have the same name, it just picks the first one. AFAIK there's no way around this--if you were on a desktop I'd say to switch your monitor outputs, but on a laptop that's not an option

 

[dbeachy1]

I had the same problem on my desktop: Orbiter insisted on using the right-hand monitor because that was the first device it found with the matching name. The key thing to remember with dual-monitor setups is that the device in windows is tied to a given port on the video card. So the fix was to just swap ports as follows:

BEFORE:
Left Monitor -> plugged into top port on video card
Right Monitor -> plugged into bottom port on video card

AFTER:
Left Monitor -> plugged into bottom port on video card
Right Monitor -> plugged into top port on video card

Then when Windows booted my right-hand monitor was marked as the primary display, so then I simply went into display properties and switched the left-hand monitor (which is now on the bottom port) to be the primary display again. Voila! Orbiter comes up on the left-hand monitor now.

The only side-effect to this is that your BIOS boot screen will now appear on the other monitor, but that's a non-issue, at least for me. Unfortunately, as Hielor said, that won't help on a laptop, though.

 

[gedaliah_atl]

I think I got it. If I select simply "Direct3D T&L HAL" from near the top, change my screen resolution to 1680 x 1050 with Colour depth 32 ... it seems to stay between sessions and changing scenarios.