Availability Anywhere Part 17 — Splitting physical monitor into multiple

This is the seventeenth part of the Availability Anywhere series. For your convenience you can find other parts in the table of contents in Part 1 – Connecting to SSH tunnel automatically in Windows

Let’s say that we have a big physical screen that we would like to split into multiple screens. We would like to support a proper full-screen behavior, so not just like splitting a screen into windows, but screens that are completely independent from each other.

We can emulate this with OBS and Indirect Display Driver Sample. Install the driver as specified in GitHub to get additional 5 virtual monitors (not desktops).

Now, the trick is to juggle with OBS to manage screens. Currently, I have 3 physical screens numbered 1, 2, and 3. They are physically configured like this:

I have 5 additional virtual screens numbered 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. I turn off screen number 8, and other screens put to the left of my middle screen (2), like this:

Now, I start OBS, create a scene of the size of screen 1. I create 4 display captures for monitors 4, 5, 6, 7. I put them in the corners.
Finally, I select “Full Screen Projector Preview” and put it on the screen 1. This way I can move my mouse from screen 2 to the left to enter screens 5+7 and then 4+6. If I move the mouse pointer more to the left, then I end up in screen 1, but I don’t want to do it.

This works as physical monitors where I can use only screens 2-7. I can’t use screen 1 (as it would obscure screens 4-7), but that’s not a problem. I have 6 screens effectively at this point. Full screen works as expected. The problem is with connecting over RDP with multiple screens support, because then screen 1 obscures all screens 4-7. We could fix that by running similar OBS in the remote environment.

You can achieve the same in Mac with BetterDisplay.