RealTick MultiMonitor Issue

B

BullFighter

I just subscribed to RealTick. I am using 3 monitors - setup as 2-1-3 on my desktop. I can not draw trendlines on my left monitor (2) in this configuration. RealTick tech support says that the monitors must be setup as 1-2-3 on my desktop. This corrects the problem, but it is a major inconvenience. (The left monitor must be used as the main monitor)

Every other application that I have used in the past that spanned across the two monitiors drew correctly in the 2-1-3 configuration - including esignal.

I'm curious if anyone else has expierenced this problem and if they found a work around. Personally, I think that taking into consideration the software charges, that RealTick is supposedly the best in the industry, and that this is a common problem according to RealTick tech support, that the RealTick software engineers would put some effort into correcting the problem.

Mike
 
Not sure I follow you. Here's my situation, maybe there will be some tie-ins with yours. I run Realtick across three monitors. Since I only use one monitor for all computer work when the market is closed I picked my best one (sharpest, no moire, best color, etc.) and put it in the center. I have an ATI Radeon VE (dual) for my first two monitors (left and center) and an nVidia (single) for my third (on the right). I'm running Win2000.

In the morning I must first setup the ATI software to activate the second monitor attached to it (the monitor on the left), and I do it as 2-1 since, as I said, my "#1" monitor sits in the middle (if I did it as 1-2 then my first two Realtick screens would be reversed, it's doable but it's awkward because you would have to move the mouse counter-intuitively). So I guess my setup is 2-1-3 and everything works perfectly, left to right.

BTW, I could have done this as a normal 1-2-3, putting my best monitor on the far left instead of the center (so that when I "reduced" down to one monitor I would be using the best), but I didn't want to have to always look to the left to use it. That's why I placed #1 in the center.
 
Bullfighter -

I have seen that happen as well - I have 4 monitors as 2-1-4-3, but everything works fine.

I'm running Windows XP, but the problem I think was with Windows 2000 - are you running that?

mbg
 
Magna,

You have a similar setup to me. I like my middle monitor as the main monitor. This is because it is connected to my KVM switchbox and because I like to work on the monitor right in ftont of me when I require only 1 monitor (most of the time except for trading). I believe that your setup is working because your monitors 2-1 are working from the dual ATI card.

My main monitor (1) is connected to an ATI RAGE PRO AGP and the additional two are connected to NVIDIA RIVA TNT PCI. At least I know that I can get the DUAL ATI card that you have and it should work in the 2-1-3 configuration. I'm runing win2K as well.

Thanks for the input. As trivial as it seems, using my left monitor as the main one is a major pain. I'm off to ebay for a new dual video card. What I really don't understand is why RealTick is the only program that I've seen this problem with.

Mike
 
I'm running a Matrox G450 AGP card, and a G450 PCI card - I can arrange them any way I like, and Realtick draws on any monitor - fwiw
 
Originally posted by BullFighter
I believe that your setup is working because your monitors 2-1 are working from the dual ATI card....As trivial as it seems, using my left monitor as the main one is a major pain....Are you using the model 7500 or 8500 RADEON VE 64 ?
More...
You're probably right about my setup working properly because monitors 1 and 2 are connected to a dual card....it's not trivial to me, twisting my neck to look at the left one is no fun, I did that for a few days before I rearranged things....I'm using the first one, just called the Radeon VE (no numerical designation), and it's "only" got 32mb ram instead of the current 64mb.
 
I would like to add a 3rd and maybe 4th monitor to my setup. I have a Matrox Millenium dual card now. What are the ways that I could install a 3rd or 3rd and 4th monitor. Can I get a second videocard?. Do I need a 2nd computer?

And do you use more than one data provider or do you get your entire setup across the 4 monitors and draw data from one provider? Right now I use RealTick and have two 17" monitors and spread the app across both monitors with 4-6 charts, 2-5 tables an order entry box,etc. but I have 20 different realtick pages and I am constantly scrolling through them to monitor the market. I need more constant data display area.

I use a few other apps,like TC2000 eod I occasionally refer to in the day and fibonaccitrader realtime (which is great), and I could use other displays.
 
dgabriel,

I can only answer to the hardware aspect. Just add additional video cards. Make sure that the cards are in the Windows hardware compatability list on your original setup disk. Cards that worked on 98 don't all work on 2000 or XP. I have forgotton the name of the file. They are listed in a seperate section - not the regular display adapter section. If you are using a dual AGP card already, then you will have to use PCI cards.

As far as the applications go, you just stretch the apps accross the additional monitors. You could of course run a totally different application and devote one or two moniotrs to it. Hope this helps.

Mike
 
I had the same problem on two different systems last year (one with 4 monitors the other has 6 monitors.) After lots of tinkering and thinking and no answer of help from RealTick support on what the problem or solution might be a friend and I hit upon the combination of things that cause the problem and what needs to be done to work around it. I sent this to RealTick support last September as well as to my Realtick broker. I'll post parts of that message here even though it's a little old as it might be helpful to someone else. I realize I may not be addressing all your problems with this but hopefully it will prove to be useful.

-----------

I have found a workaround for problems I was having with utilizing various tools in your RealTick platform. I'm sharing it with you here so that you can help others that might complain of similar problems. Perhaps you can also pass this information along to your software development department so they might better be able to locate the source of the problem and fix it someday so people won't encounter the problem at all.

I'll briefly describe the initial conditions, the problem and then the workaround.

---------------------
Initial Conditions:

Multi-monitor Windows 2000 Pro systems. One system with 4 monitors sitting side by side in a row. Second system with 6 monitors - a row of 3 monitors on top of a second row of 3 monitors.

Like so:

x x x x (for the first system)

x x x
x x x (for the second system)


Running Realnet 7.2.32.0 X86-20010411-008 (I know - this is now ancient history but that's the version I was running when I figured this out.)

I don't think the video card hardware or software matters as between these two systems we are using a variety of different card products including Appian and Matrox and another. The problem shows up on all our cards and the workaround appears to work independent of the cards as well.

-----------------------
The Problem:

A user with a multi-monitor system may complain that they cannot use the trend drawing tool, select tool, crosshairs or zoom tools of the RealTick application on some or most of their monitors. They may discover that those tools work only on one or some of the monitors but not all.

Similarly a user may notice that they cannot successfully get the following behavior to happen on all monitors: right click mouse on a candle in a chart and hold the mouse button down and move the mouse across several other candles on the chart and see the various hi, low, open, close, etc. numbers being reported and changing for each candle as one slides across each candle. Instead they may report that they only see price and related information for the ONE candle stick that they first clicked on and that moving the mouse over other candles does not change the price and related information.

Another related problem which the workaround will also 'fix' is the use of the 'No Captions' default setting. A user may report that with 'No Captions' selected that they have a hard if not impossible time moving and resizing the windows within the RealTick application in some of their monitors.

And lastly the user may report that when they expand a chart beyond the region of a single monitor that in some cases the video appears to not be drawing or refreshing the chart and the chart becomes a total mess as they are resizing and when it's finished being resized beyond the boundaries of the monitor.

--------------------------
The Workaround

Determine which monitor is your Windows 'Primary' monitor. Your primary monitor is the one monitor that Windows 2000 Pro displays the logon box when it first starts up. You can also determine this by opening up Control Panels > Display > Settings and click on each of the monitors and see which one is selected as "Use this device as my primary monitor". The monitor that is set to this may have this selection grayed out and unselectable. I found that your Primary monitor must be the monitor that is furthest to the left and in the upper row (so it's the upper left most monitor in the array of monitors.)

To fix this on my system I actually first made RealTick small (small enough to fit into one monitor) and moved that window into whatever the current 'primary' monitor is. I then shut down RealTick. You may not need to do that but that's what I did. I then shut the system down and changed the monitor cable to video card hook up so the video card port that was running as the 'primary' display was the upper left corner monitor. I then restarted windows and had to tell windows the position of each monitor after the change. I later learned that there is a software selection in the Display control panel to tell Windows that you want a certain monitor to be the primary monitor ("Use this device as the primary monitor".) This probably works and would save you a lot of hassle doing what I did! But I haven't personally tried it. You may want to restart your system after changing which monitor is known to be the "Primary".

Once my Windows system was up and running with the upper and left most monitor as the 'primary' monitor and the other monitors positioned to the right and/or below that monitor I then opened up RealTick (which opened up small since that's how I closed it). Once RealTick was running I repositioned and resized the RealTick window so that it's upper left most corner of the RealTick window stayed within the Primary monitor screen space and that any other resizing was dragged down and to the right so that all of the RealTick windows application was in positive X and positive Y coordinate space (so far as the Windows graphic system is concerned.)

Voila! All the problems I had above are no longer problems for me!

Enjoy!

- David
 
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