5 ms·

I don't understand how anyone could think dual screen is a gimmick that had a DS. There were a lot of games that put those two screens to good use. I am serio

I don't understand how anyone could think dual screen is a gimmick that had a DS. There were a lot of games that put those two screens to good use. I am serious.

cameronbrown 7y ago
I know it's not the same thing, but damn the Nintendo DS sold me on multi screen games. Wish there were more.
thedaemon 7y ago
It could have done the same with 1 larger screen. But the DS is a foldable device. It's not a gimmick, it's part of the operation of the device. I use dual screens at work, because they are smaller lower resolution screens. At home I have 1 huge high resolution screen. Not having a physical separation is amazing.
- rbanffy 7y ago
  Angular size is key. When I'm on my desk I have multiple screens that cover about twice as much as my laptop when I'm working away from my desk. Since the screen is closer, I can increase it's density and then I have almost as much real estate as on my desk. Not sold on this reasoning.
  - hug 7y ago
    Attaching a second monitor doesn't suddenly make your main display useless. One of the things I completely fail to understand is why most people I work with close their laptop displays when docked to secondary monitors. I have a 34" 3440x1440 ultrawide monitor at home on my desk, and I use that plus my Macbook's display. At work, I use 24x 24" 1440p monitors, and I use thoes plus my Surface Pro's 12" display. When I'm out and about, on my Macbook or on my Surface, I definitely miss the extended displays. A lot.
    - jon-wood 7y ago
      I’m trying to work out whether that 24x monitors is a typo, and if not what you’d use them all for. I’m a huge proponent of multiple displays but anytime I use more than three the mental overhead of trying to remember which display something is on (or even finding something for every display) becomes to much.
      - rbanffy 7y ago
        My dream setup is two 2x2 clusters of square monitors siding a camera. Sadly, it's hard to make the camera glow red and Douglas Rain is no longer available to do its voice. It's also probably not well suited for software development work, but it'd be a killer operator's console.
limomium 7y ago
Consider this: To gain any information from a screen, you must actually look at it. You can only look at one screen at a time. The entire functionality of a second screen can be replaced with a single button: While that button is pressed, the screen shows whatever else it needs to show. It is true that pressing a button is ever so slightly slower than moving your eyes. But considering all the benefits from saving a whole screen (double battery life! reduced manufacturing cost! smaller device size!), dual screenage is really just a gimmick. All you need is a button dedicated to "screen" switching in software.
- chacha2 7y ago
  This is how a robot thinks. It's much more intuitive to have two screens where you can see everything in your peripheral vision and dart your attention without any extra thinking.
- dirtyid 7y ago
  People with multiscreen setups knows about alt-tab. It's about removing friction.
- aidenn0 7y ago
  This is not true for several reasons: 1) Software screen switching is not instantaneous 2) Moving your head is lower friction than pressing a button (and more likely a key chord) 3) Humans have very good spatial awareness and multiple screens have this affordance that a button would not.
  - tanr54ok 7y ago
    1) False. Software screen switching is easily instantaneous. If you literally have two front buffers which, you must for a dual screen setup... there’s no reason you couldn’t flip between them at the refresh rate of your monitor (which is ridiculous but doable). Workspace switchers that run on shitty old X can be and many are effectively instantaneous. Not sure about Windows, but I assume something exists. There’s more to life than Mac OS X. 3) you can still have a spatial layout of workspaces even with one viewport.
Narishma 7y ago
I always thought it was a gimmick on the DS too. I don't remember any game that did anything interesting with it that couldn't also be done on a single larger screen.
- viridian 7y ago
  [spoilers] 999 relies on the two screens for the actual purposes of constructing the narrative(s), as well as for the big reveal at the end. The story is unfortunately a layer shallower on the PC port of the game (not to mention that you have to choose between one of two options for dialogue, neither of which is all inclusive).
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    > 999 relies on the two screens for the actual purposes of constructing the narrative(s), as well as for the big reveal at the end What does it do with two screens that couldn’t be done with one screen divided into two halves?
    - viridian 7y ago
      The screen being arbitrarily divided into two halves would give away a huge plot element pretty quickly, if you are paying attention, as well as some smaller stuff. You aren't actually controlling Junpei, as you are led to believe for the entire game, at least, not really. You are actually controlling a girl in the past named Akane, who is seeing the world through Junpei's eyes. The trick is that Akane's observations are actually happening on one screen, while what Junpei experiences happen on the other. You would be pretty crazy to see the observations made as coming from anyone but Junpei, given the context, except the whole screen thing, even though there are weird little issues of phrasing that don't quite make sense, but if the game was arbitrarily played on two screens, it'd give that bit away. There's also the part near the end where you play as Akane directly, and you play with the DS turned upside down in your hands, but that's more minor versus the fact that the entire game actually takes place on a meta level.
      - 7y ago

I don't understand how anyone could think dual screen is a gimmick that had a DS. There were a lot of games that put those two screens to good use. I am serious.

cameronbrown 7y ago

I know it's not the same thing, but damn the Nintendo DS sold me on multi screen games. Wish there were more.

thedaemon 7y ago

It could have done the same with 1 larger screen. But the DS is a foldable device. It's not a gimmick, it's part of the operation of the device. I use dual screens at work, because they are smaller lower resolution screens. At home I have 1 huge high resolution screen. Not having a physical separation is amazing.

rbanffy 7y ago
Angular size is key. When I'm on my desk I have multiple screens that cover about twice as much as my laptop when I'm working away from my desk. Since the screen is closer, I can increase it's density and then I have almost as much real estate as on my desk. Not sold on this reasoning.
- hug 7y ago
  Attaching a second monitor doesn't suddenly make your main display useless. One of the things I completely fail to understand is why most people I work with close their laptop displays when docked to secondary monitors. I have a 34" 3440x1440 ultrawide monitor at home on my desk, and I use that plus my Macbook's display. At work, I use 24x 24" 1440p monitors, and I use thoes plus my Surface Pro's 12" display. When I'm out and about, on my Macbook or on my Surface, I definitely miss the extended displays. A lot.
  - jon-wood 7y ago
    I’m trying to work out whether that 24x monitors is a typo, and if not what you’d use them all for. I’m a huge proponent of multiple displays but anytime I use more than three the mental overhead of trying to remember which display something is on (or even finding something for every display) becomes to much.
    - rbanffy 7y ago
      My dream setup is two 2x2 clusters of square monitors siding a camera. Sadly, it's hard to make the camera glow red and Douglas Rain is no longer available to do its voice. It's also probably not well suited for software development work, but it'd be a killer operator's console.

limomium 7y ago

Consider this: To gain any information from a screen, you must actually look at it. You can only look at one screen at a time. The entire functionality of a second screen can be replaced with a single button: While that button is pressed, the screen shows whatever else it needs to show. It is true that pressing a button is ever so slightly slower than moving your eyes. But considering all the benefits from saving a whole screen (double battery life! reduced manufacturing cost! smaller device size!), dual screenage is really just a gimmick. All you need is a button dedicated to "screen" switching in software.

chacha2 7y ago
This is how a robot thinks. It's much more intuitive to have two screens where you can see everything in your peripheral vision and dart your attention without any extra thinking.
dirtyid 7y ago
People with multiscreen setups knows about alt-tab. It's about removing friction.
aidenn0 7y ago
This is not true for several reasons: 1) Software screen switching is not instantaneous 2) Moving your head is lower friction than pressing a button (and more likely a key chord) 3) Humans have very good spatial awareness and multiple screens have this affordance that a button would not.
- tanr54ok 7y ago
  1) False. Software screen switching is easily instantaneous. If you literally have two front buffers which, you must for a dual screen setup... there’s no reason you couldn’t flip between them at the refresh rate of your monitor (which is ridiculous but doable). Workspace switchers that run on shitty old X can be and many are effectively instantaneous. Not sure about Windows, but I assume something exists. There’s more to life than Mac OS X. 3) you can still have a spatial layout of workspaces even with one viewport.

Narishma 7y ago

I always thought it was a gimmick on the DS too. I don't remember any game that did anything interesting with it that couldn't also be done on a single larger screen.

viridian 7y ago
[spoilers] 999 relies on the two screens for the actual purposes of constructing the narrative(s), as well as for the big reveal at the end. The story is unfortunately a layer shallower on the PC port of the game (not to mention that you have to choose between one of two options for dialogue, neither of which is all inclusive).
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  > 999 relies on the two screens for the actual purposes of constructing the narrative(s), as well as for the big reveal at the end What does it do with two screens that couldn’t be done with one screen divided into two halves?
  - viridian 7y ago
    The screen being arbitrarily divided into two halves would give away a huge plot element pretty quickly, if you are paying attention, as well as some smaller stuff. You aren't actually controlling Junpei, as you are led to believe for the entire game, at least, not really. You are actually controlling a girl in the past named Akane, who is seeing the world through Junpei's eyes. The trick is that Akane's observations are actually happening on one screen, while what Junpei experiences happen on the other. You would be pretty crazy to see the observations made as coming from anyone but Junpei, given the context, except the whole screen thing, even though there are weird little issues of phrasing that don't quite make sense, but if the game was arbitrarily played on two screens, it'd give that bit away. There's also the part near the end where you play as Akane directly, and you play with the DS turned upside down in your hands, but that's more minor versus the fact that the entire game actually takes place on a meta level.
    - 7y ago