Using two screens

[PyongYang]

A lot of the time, when the game is busy doing lots of building/waiting etc, I like to alt-tab to Firefox and do internetty stuff, and flick back to the game when I hear an alert etc.

Today, I had the bright idea to plug a second monitor into my laptop. I now have the game running in an external monitor, while I type this on the main screen.

The problem I have is, when I am using the main screen for firefox etc, the game (on the external monitor) appears to freeze (it's still running, but the game screen doesn't update). This kind of defeats the object, as I wanted to be able to glance over at the game to keep one eye of stock/production etc whilst doing other things on the other screen. Does anyone know a way to get this setup working properly?

[SGTscuba]

might be the fact that your laptop simply doesn't have a good enough grapics card to power 2 screens.

[PyongYang]

might be the fact that your laptop simply doesn't have a good enough grapics card to power 2 screens.

It's not that. When running windowed mode on just one screen, I've noticed the same thing happen (as soon as a alt tab out of the game, game screen freezes where it was). I want to stop this happening.... it doesnt happen with other programs.

[gavco98uk]

might be the fact that your laptop simply doesn't have a good enough grapics card to power 2 screens.

It's not that. When running windowed mode on just one screen, I've noticed the same thing happen (as soon as a alt tab out of the game, game screen freezes where it was). I want to stop this happening.... it doesnt happen with other programs.

The game does not appear to render when it is not "active", regardless of whether this is on a single screen or multiple. This is not due to lack of graphics processing power, but appears to be the way the game has been designed.

As I also have a dual screen system, I would quite like this to be changed so that I can continue to do other things while the game progresses...

[sparky282]

the game using alot of processing power i guess its been done like that tho save on it abit?

[Ragu]

I have a dual monitor setup here. Have done for many a year. Alt-tabbing out does cause the screen to not refresh. It's just the way things work. It's nothing to do with processing power or grafix card use. I run this game on one monitor, and do 3d effects/modelling on the other. Just have to jump back in the game every now and again to make sure that everything is fine. Not much of an issue, as if you was at war, you wold be concentraing on the game and not the interwebs.