Ubuntu multiscreen unusable with manual scaling

[Abitamim]

I have a 27" 1440p monitor and a 27" 4k monitor I would like my Ubuntu instance to scale across. It works when I allow autoscaling, but the 4k screen is way too small. To fix this, I scaled it using Ubuntu display settings. Now, on my main 1440p screen, I cannot access the top 20% of the screen and whenever I go up there, another mouse pointer shows up. This makes it unusable.

[scott28tt]

Version of Workstation?

Host OS?

[Abitamim]

Host: Windows 10 Home

VMWare Player 16

Ubuntu 20.04

[scott28tt]

Moderator: Thread moved to the Workstation Player area.

[bluefirestorm]

Why not use the multimonitor feature? Make the VM "Enter Full Screen" (Ctrl-Alt-Enter) and choose the "Cycle Multiple Monitors".

Alternatively, you can create a a custom screen resolution using cvt and xrandr inside the Ubuntu VM (example: 4000x1200) as the largest width is 6400 (2560+3840) while the lowest height is 1440 to span across the two monitors. The display name should be called Virtual1. But this probably will not be pleasant to the eye as the screen resolutions of the two monitors are not identical.

You can also custom scaling using xrandr --scale instead of being limited to what the GUI display settings shows.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/377937/how-do-i-set-a-custom-resolution

[Abitamim]

I am using Cycle multiple monitors. And I dont need a custom scale - the default options are fine. Its with this multimonitor setup that I am getting this problem - when I choose to use the 2 27inch monitors in the Cycle Multiple Monitors, its fine, but after I change the scale to make the sizes about even on both, it gives me this bug.

[bluefirestorm]

Both screen resolutions (2560x1440 and 3840x2160) have the same 16:9 aspect ratio. So they differ by a 1.5 scale (3840/2560).

Perhaps use

xrandr --output (4K monitor name) --scale-from 2560x1440 and make them identical.

[Abitamim]

That resulted in the same problem. I tried it the other way around with --output (2k monitor name) --scale-from 3840x2160 and I did not get the original error, but I started getting two arrows. I have also made a reddit post with a 1 minute video clearly showing the original error:

https://www.reddit.com/r/vmware/comments/jcpnq2/workstation_player_16_multi_monitor_bug/

[bluefirestorm]

After seeing the video I understand what you meant by another mouse pointer showing up. I thought it was another pointer within Ubuntu VM. But It looks like it thinks it is already out of the VM bounds and the mouse is the Windows host mouse pointer and the command menu bar is showing up.

rightmost display (1 in Ubuntu VM) is 2160p?

center display (2 in Ubunut VM) is 1440p?

Try to go full screen on the 2160p monitor instead of the 1440p and then cycle through monitor.

Another possibility is "pin" the command bar before scaling.

[Abitamim]

I tried that-now the multiple pointers shows up on the right 4K screen. However, I am still unable to access the top 20% of the middle 1440p screen.

I pinned the task bar before scaling and now the multiple pointers doesn’t happen, but the inability to access the top of the center screen still does.

[bluefirestorm · Accepted solution]

Scaling displays is always problematic (not just with VMware Workstation/Player/Fusion) as not all applications are aware of scaling and not necessarily at all scenarios within the application.

I can't think of any other ideas other than this.

Go to the Windows 10 host display settings, the display 1 and 2, maybe make them align at the top. That could be why VMware player is cutting off the top part as it has to decide or not whether to go "out of bounds" to show the menu bar.

[Abitamim]

Thank you so so so much! That fixed it.