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vmdavid
Contributor
Contributor

Fusion 7 Pro Unity or Full Screen with 3 monitors

Is Fusion 7 Pro supposed to support 3 monitors?  I've been trying to get either full screen on all monitors or unity working but it doesn't work.  I found this thread:

VMWare Fusion 7 / 3 displays not supported?

But the suggested changes didn't make a difference.  It works fine if I only use two monitors (ie the main macbook monitor and one external).  Once I connect a second external monitor if fails.  One is connected via hdmi and the other is on a thunderbolt port.

The host is osx 10.10.4, the guest is windows 8.1, Fusion is 7.1.2 (2779224). When I try to enter full screen, it seems to get stuck in an endless loop where the screen is black but occasionally flickers the login screen.  Trying unity appears to be similar but I don't tend to see the login screen.  If I look at the library window, I see it indicate three monitors and I see a thumbnail of the login screen flicker there.

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13 Replies
Mikero
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hm, bummer... it should totally work, sounds like a bug.

I just switched desks and haven't set up my multi-mon yet to test myself, but I'll check with our devs if there's some outstanding bugs here.

Can you take a screenshot of when it's in that weird loop you describe?

If you could get one of the VM library window, that would be great too so we can see the 3 displays.

And lastly, just so we have the complete picture, if you could post the output of your help > collect support information, that would be really helpful.

Thanks!

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Michael Roy - Product Marketing Engineer: VCF
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vmdavid
Contributor
Contributor

Mikero,

I've done as you requested.  The screenshot of the VM is just a black screen so I skipped that.  The occasional login screen is too quick to catch.  I have the other two items.  How do I get them to you? I don't really want to post support information in a public forum.

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Mikero
Community Manager
Community Manager

Thanks for taking the time... go ahead and either dm me a dropbox link or something, or just email me directly at mroy AT vmware DOT com

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Michael Roy - Product Marketing Engineer: VCF
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vmdavid
Contributor
Contributor

I just sent the files via email.  Please let me know if they don't get through or if there's anything else you need me to do.

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RickShu
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Hi,

Could you please confirm how many external monitors does your MacBook Pro support natively?  You should be able to find the information from Apple site according to your model

Thanks,

-Rick

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vmdavid
Contributor
Contributor

Rick,

I'm not sure what you mean by natively but I have two external monitors connected.  One via the hdmi port and the other used a thunderbolt port.  Both are 1920x1080.  All three work fine for the mac os host and I believe this is the most officially supported.

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zhus
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

How much graphic memory did you assign to the VM? (you can check it via Virtual Machine -> Settings -> Display)

Try to use the recommended value, if not.

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vmdavid
Contributor
Contributor

Currently set to the recommended value of 1024.  I tried setting it to 2048 and even tried turning off Accelerate 3D Graphics with no improvement.  I basically played with all the settings in that dialog.


Current settings:

Accelerate 3D Graphics = on

Shared graphics memory = 1024

Use full resolution for Retina display = on

Scaled high resolution = All View Modes

Automatically adjust user interface size in the virtual machine = on

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zhus
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Umm:smileyconfused:... would you please try to change "Scaled high resolution" setting into "Unity Only"?

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vmdavid
Contributor
Contributor

Zhus,

That kind of helps but not really.  I could successfully get three monitors working but now the screen resolution makes it unusable.  Either the mac screen is too tiny to see or everything on the two external screens is so large nothing fits.  When I was previously experimenting with only two monitors, "Scaled high resolution" fixed this.  I also discovered turning off "Let me choose one scaling level for all my displays" in the windows 8 guest doesn't seem to work with Fusion.  This doesn't really leave any options that I am aware of.

Trying to use the Unity option still doesn't work.  After a while it just enters single window mode but leaves a bunch of icons in the mac menu as if it had entered unity. See the attached screen shot.

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zhus
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Hi vmdavid,

Most likely it encountered a limitation in Fusion 7 with DX9 and HW version 11 in Fusion 7.

The Scale High Resolution option you choose will double the resolution of non-retina displays which may makes it exceed the max size...

It has been resolved in Fusion 8 TP.

If you want to have a try, you can access it here:

VMware Fusion Technology Preview 2015

PS: Back up your VM could be necessary before you update it.

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vmdavid
Contributor
Contributor

zhus,

I tried it and the result was about the same.  I logged in to windows 8 in single window view. Then switched to full screen with all displays.  Initially it seemed to work but the screens didn't resize to fit.  So I logged off and it started doing the same thing as before. I played with the display settings a bit without success.  Although I wasn't as thorough in my testing.  It tends to lock up so its a hassle to recover and continue testing.  I think you'd be better off just telling the user it's not going to work with certain settings.

I also upgraded my vm (after backing up) and tested some more, again without success.  Incidentally, when I installed Fusion from that link, it said it was version 7.

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vmdavid
Contributor
Contributor

Just an update on this.  I tried turning off Accelerate 3D Graphics and Use full resolution for Retina display and switched to Unity and it seems to be working with acceptable text and icon sizes on all screens.  I thought I had tried this before but it must have only been with full screen.

There does appear to be a problem where the taskbar will be visible over windows close to the edge of the screen but this was fixed by autohiding it.

So not a complete solution but an acceptable workaround for the moment.  As long as it continues to work.

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