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i want to create a virtual monitor. The way this would work is that the virtual monitor would appear in a window on my desktop. As far as Windows knows it is just another monitor.

It occurs to me that it would, as a practical matter, have to be done as video card driver (i.e. rather than the video going out a wire to an LCD panel, it would go into another window on the desktop).

Does what i'm describing sound, technically, possible? (from a DDK point of view)

Note: i can't use a virtual pc, because no virtual PC has resolutions high enough for my needs. Also because it's not what i asked for.

Note: My reasons are unimportant, but i can make some up:

Community
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Ian Boyd
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    Poor Keanu Reeves - not good enough as an actor to play a smart person. – MusiGenesis Sep 20 '10 at 13:49
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    You may want to have a look at this: http://www.uvnc.com/features/sdk.html – Matteo Italia Sep 20 '10 at 13:57
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    One of the (made up) reasons happens to apply to me. I'd like to use my Kindle DX as an external monitor. Have you found, or implemented, or made any progress with the virtual video card driver? – Călin Darie Aug 20 '13 at 15:40
  • my only thought is, what happens if you move the window that contains that monitor onto that monitor.... in the words of Keanu... Whoa – Justin Ohms Aug 29 '16 at 15:49

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I'd say it's definitely possible, since that's what virtualization tools do for their guest utilities, but I wouldn't be able to tell you how in details. I'd suggest looking at the VirtualBox guest driver code as a starting point: http://www.virtualbox.org/browser/trunk/src/VBox/Additions/WINNT/Graphics

(This is released under GPL as far as I'm aware.)

Bruno
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  • I agree that it's possible. There are also drivers that output to an USB device, or the null driver from Windows XP Embedded, which prove that there's no need for a hardware graphics card. – OregonGhost Sep 20 '10 at 14:13
  • @OregonGhost Do you have any names, or links, of these things you're talking about? i've not heard of such things before. – Ian Boyd Sep 20 '10 at 15:09
  • Looks very useful as a starting point. You can in the source history where they extend the capabilities of the virtual video card to include features required to run Aero on Vista, and then Windows 7 features. – Ian Boyd Sep 20 '10 at 15:19
  • @Ian Boyd: Samsung has some USB screens (search for U70, for example) which come with a virtual display driver, though I guess they won't supply the driver code. The null driver is part of Windows XP Embedded (and likely later Embedded versions of x86 Windows). I think there's a trial, but I think that the driver code again is not available, even though it would be great, since it sounds like a really simplistic driver. – OregonGhost Sep 20 '10 at 16:06
  • @OregonGhost Honestly i'm not much interested in writing one - i'd like one. But i already asked the question about if one exists, and got no answers. So i'm resigned that i'd have to write one. – Ian Boyd Sep 21 '10 at 17:11
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It's definitely possible, see for example the UltraVNC mirror driver. But I don't know of any virtual video driver that makes source code available.

Ben Voigt
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I have been searching for something similar and I found a nice solution: spacedesk. You can download it here: http://spacedesk.ph/ In windows, it installs an extra monitor, which you can open in a browser or a viewer. Enjoy!

Johnny
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Don't know about Windows, but for X (Linux) there is Xvfb (X Virtual Frame Buffer), which is quite a useful thing.

troelskn
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