One of the new features of the Terminal Server/Remote Desktop Client in Windows Vista is the support for multiple monitors. If the machine running the TS-Client has a multi-monitor configuration that creates one logical rectangle, then the TS-Client can span over all the monitors, creating one virtual desktop of the combined size.
For example, this configuration is suitable for multimon spanning:
(-1024,0) |--+--------------+------------------> x
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
+--------------+--------------+ (1024,768)
| y
V
While this configuration is not suitable for multimon spanning:
|
--+--------------+--------------+---> x
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
+--------------+ (1024,768) |
| | |
| y +--------------+ (2304,1024)
V
You can access the functionality using commandline options, in one of two ways:
If you know the rectangle dimensions of your virtual desktop:
mstsc /w:2048 /h:768 /v:<servername>
or if you want mstsc.exe to figure-out the dimensions:
mstsc /span /v:<servername>
There are a few limitations of multi-monitor spanning:
* The maximum dimensions of the virtual desktop in a TS-Session is hard-coded to 4096x2048, regardless of the color-depth and the available resources on the remote machine.
* The remote session will see your virtual desktop as one giant display.This reduces the complexity of the multi-display implementation in the remote session, while still allowing the windowed mode of the TS-Client to
be functional and viable.
