Just curious to what you guy’s monitor setups are. I’m considering a 27" led monitor and adding a 18 or 20 in widescreen monitor in vertically to do my coding and web browsing on.
I’ve heard big monitors can reduce productive around 26" or more, but I found a great deal on this 27 incher.
But my main question is this: What do you think the best monitor setup is for productivity in Unity and MonoDevelop/Visual Studio?
I’m a coder, but I also find myself fixing stuff the artists do in 3ds max a lot.
I use a mac and fine that Spaces with a single monitor provides me all I need. One space for IDE, one for Unity, one for GIMP, one for browser. Of course I’m typically doing iOS and not doing much 3D stuff, so I can generally fit a 480x320 preview on the same screen as the scene view and various inspectors.
I use three monitors at work. Two portrait so I can edit two pages side by side and one landscape for everything else. Granted, I’d rather a nice big monitor but I get hand-me downs at work, well, for the monitors anyway. I have a sweet computer otherwise.
At home, i have a huge 27" iMac and to the right I have my 22" PC monitor and to it’s right another 22" monitor hooked to my Mac Mini. I would have more monitors hooked to the iMac but I have no more desk space, perhaps once I move to my new house this summer.
Important to note I keep my OS X dock to the left, with icons only big enough to be slightly smaller than my index finger.
At work I have 4 19" 4:3 monitors set up in a grid. Keep most my “working on now” stuff on the lower two monitors and push up to the upper ones the “hold on a minute” stuff that is too important to go invisible by minimizing to the task bar (windows).
27" and 24" side-by-side. Unity with inspectors, custom inspectors etc. on the 27" one, Monodevelop, Photoshop, browser and other stuff on the smaller one.
At the office, I have dual monitors - 24" and 25" - One for Visual Studio, and one for my applications and virtual machines. At home, I use a 32" 1080P 3D TV as my main monitor - mounted to the wall with an adjustable arm, and use my laptop screen as my second monitor.
Depending on what I am doing, I will run in five different configurations:
mono develop on the notebook, and unity on the main screen – when debugging and designing levels, etc.
switched when I am mostly coding.
Win 7 VM on the main screen and Unity on the notebook (when I am working in Max)
switched if I am running exports from Max only.
and 5 is for when I am just editing scenes - Unity on main screen, and mplayer running videos on the notebook.
I got a mini projector and even though the focus is kinda shitty, I am inclined to use it all the time so I’ve been testing it out with unity, works really well for zbrush sculpting.
iMac 27".
I wish I had a second screen, but it would take a little too much to make it happen. I used to have a 42inch with two small screens on my old one. A little…over the top.
I also recently began enjoying my new 27" iMac with a 2560x1440 resolution. I just have that one screen. It’s pretty big. I wouldn’t say it’s huge, like I think 36" or more would be huge. It’s a nice size, I do find myself needing to turn my head a bit to cover the whole area. It’s nice being able to put multiple documents on the screen at once. Usually I use Mac’s spaces and I have my dock spanning the whole bottom of the screen. For writing code I like being able to use a bigger font and to see more code. I think a tall screen would be ideal for that too. For using Unity I prefer the wide screen.
I wish someone would come out with screens that have absolutely no border around them so that you can put them next to each other and be totally seamless. That would be awesome.
Talking of big screens and multiple monitors, I’m working on a shootemup game in Unity and decided to make the graphics work well on a UHDTV (Ultra High Def) … ie 7680 pixels wide, or more. It may not be mainstream for another 5 years but it’s coming. With all the talk of iMac’s coming out with retina displays (which I think will likely be closer to 4096 pixels wide for the 27" iMac, not a doubling to 5120), I figure I might as well jump on the bandwagon early and be able to say my game is one of the first designed for UltraHD and retina. I basically want it to look cool on my 27" screen, at least, cus I’m a bit tired of all the lower-res games that don’t have HD graphics.
Used to run 3x 24" quite a while back, for coding in general. It is quite nifty, but I’m not too fond of the large, vectical span.
Switched to a 30" 2560 * 1600 display, and I must admit that is absolutely preferable to me.
I did find the multi-monitor setup useful for keeping references at the sides, while working in Painter or PS, admittedly. That’s the only thing I really miss.
