I have Fedora 22 running ( XFCE) and recognising my external display. I have disabled the laptop display to force eveything to the HDMI out. When I launch VO it still goes to the laptop display instead of the external, any ideas?

What did you use to disable the laptop display?

The Display section of the xfce administration area. I also installed MATE and did the same thing but VO still launches on the laptop display. At boot I have to use the laptop screen to login so I am assuming the above changes are only session settings for the user and thus when the game launches the video layer is not reading that setting.

This same set-up on Ubuntu 15.04 works and I can reboot and login on the external as well as play the game on it. It does have some issues related to thrust not working right but that may just be the crappy bluetooth keyboard.

You're running full-screen, right?

Try xrandr --output LVDS --off --output HDMI0 --pos 0x0 in a terminal then launch the game and see what happens.

I wouldn't be surprised if this was VO's fault. It only shows video modes for the first monitor on the X screen and has been like that for years. Zaphod mode works around that, but is largely unsupported these days.

I run the game in a window sized to the full resolution of one of my monitors. That way it doesn't corral the mouse cursor and prevent multitasking.

You can try changing the DISPLAY environment variable in your terminal where you start VO to point to a different display. I have no idea if that'll work though. VO does read that value and use it as the parameter to XOpenDisplay(). It defaults to "0:0"

They're all :0.0 these days since XRandR sorta replaced Xinerama. What you suggested only works on Zaphod mode.

ok so when I ran that in terminal as root here is what I get:

warning: output LVDS not found; ignoring
warning: output HDMI0 not found; ignoring

When I jsut run xrandr to get settings I get this:

[root@wash Desktop]# xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 8192 x 8192
VGA-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
TV-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
LVDS-0 connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
1920x1200 59.98 +
DVI-I-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-0 connected primary 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 598mm x 336mm
1920x1080 60.00*+ 59.94 50.00 60.00 50.04
1680x1050 59.95
1440x900 59.89
1280x1024 75.02 60.02
1280x960 60.00
1280x720 60.00 59.94 50.00
1024x768 75.03 70.07 60.00
800x600 75.00 72.19 60.32 56.25
720x576 50.00
720x480 59.94
640x480 75.00 72.81 59.94 59.93

So I would assume that it would launch the game on the HDMI but it doesn't. When I boot it loads the login window on the laptop screen So I am assuming there is somewhere else where I need to specify the settings so they apply to x server on boot rather than to the user session when I log in.

Here is a screen grab from the nVidia xserver settings tool

http://imgur.com/lvmD1nx

ok I tried that command again

xrandr --output LVDS-0 --off --output HDMI-0 --auto

and then launched Vo and it worked.

I just need to figure out a way to make that permanent as having to do that every session is going to be a pain.

Also the thrust issue with F/A on exists on Fedora as well. With F/A on thrust tops out at 47, F/A off and it works perfect.

Well, you could add it to a start script for vendetta, or .xinitrc if you dont ever want to use both monitors by default. There's another way to do it with Xorg.conf, but it's probably a lot more trouble.

Also, xrandr doesn't need to be run as root, just as the user who's logged in.

Just swap around your screen sections in your xorg.conf, whichever one is first is the primary monitor. Its literally a copy paste job. You could also get old school with it and just swap your monitors places. As for the input woes, no idea, prolly something intercepting the keyboard and taking too long.

Not a lot of people set up displays with xorg.conf anymore. Basically everything is auto-detect these days.

then I dont have a damn clue, and neither do you!.

If its an nvidia card, thier config tool is straight.

I do have a damn clue. The devs need to fix their game.

Take my setup for example:

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 3360 x 1968, maximum 16384 x 16384
DisplayPort-0 connected 1024x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 304mm x 228mm
1024x768 60.00*+ 77.01 75.08 70.07 66.01
832x624 74.55
800x600 72.19 75.00 60.32 56.25
640x480 75.00 72.81 66.67 60.00
720x400 70.08
DisplayPort-1 connected 1920x1200+1440+768 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 518mm x 324mm
1920x1200 59.95*+
1920x1080 60.00 50.00 59.94 30.00 25.00 24.00 29.97 23.98
1920x1080i 60.00 50.00 59.94
1600x1200 60.00
1280x1024 75.02 60.02
1152x864 75.00
1280x720 60.00 50.00 59.94
1024x768 75.08 60.00
800x600 75.00 60.32
720x576 50.00
720x576i 50.00
720x480 60.00 59.94
720x480i 60.00 59.94
640x480 75.00 60.00 59.94
720x400 70.08
HDMI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DVI-0 connected 1440x900+0+768 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 408mm x 255mm
1440x900 59.89*+ 74.98
1280x1024 75.02 60.02
1280x800 59.91
1152x864 75.00
1024x768 75.08 70.07 60.00
832x624 74.55
800x600 72.19 75.00 60.32 56.25
640x480 75.00 72.81 66.67 60.00
720x400 70.08
DVI-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

In this case, the game starts in 1024x768 and that's the highest it'll go because it only looks at the "first" display output, which happens to be the crappy panel i have up in the corner. Nevermind that monitor resolutions are totally irrelevant since I run the game windowed anyway.This kind of crap is why i use Zaphod mode as a workaround for dumb apps that can't figure out how to handle more than one monitor.

Bonus points for how the game handles the window being resized. This is Awesome with a capital A.

ahh I tried windowed mode and had the same response. So it isn't just me.