Well actually, not multiple monitors, but rather multiple 3D accelerators.
There appears be MUCH confusion (and little support) in the industry on what to do if a machine is hosting multiple 3D accelerators.
The most common solution is to only use one (the primary) accelerator - even if there are many available.
(((Ironic Note: In days past, you would have to DISABLE the other cards in order to run OpenGL apps on the primary display - this appears to be fixed nowadays - and now Vendors are using this bug-fix to claim “Multi-Monitor OpenGL Compliance”. Geeze, this just means that they fixed that bug, it does NOT mean that OpenGL can be accelerated across the multiple monitors. This is way confusing.)))
Another solution is spanned displays (i.e. Parhelia) that uses one accelerator to drive one large “logical” display that spans across mutliple “physical” monitors. However, this approach slams that single accelerator with a huge mount of work.
Call me naive, but it seems like it would be better to take advantage of any and all 3D acceleration hardware that is available in a system. But this is not done. Why?
Is this a problem that can NEVER be solved?
What are the technical issues involved here?
Is this an OpenGL issue, or an ICD issue, or simply an application issue (doubtfull)or is it a wacky combination of these?
Would solving this problem require some sort of new “Industry Standard”?
Is there anyone out there interested in finding a solution to this issue?
Comments?