Remote Control/Multiple Screens for a Unity3D application

Currently I have a need to write Unity3D applications. But with one twist.

I need to have two screens. One a touch device like a tablet etc., and one monitor on the wall. Interact on the touch enabled device with a menu or touch in some way and control the output on the large screen on the wall.

The first app would be the controller on a windows with a touch screen or some other mobile device.
And the other would be the unity game.

This device could be a android tablet, ios or a windows with a touch screen. The second monitor attached as the primary display, may or may not be a touch enabled device. Additional input.

I know kind of vague but that's how things roll here.

I was thinking that the best approach would be two unity applications.
And using something like TCP to communicate between them.

Anyone have a better idea or approach, has anyone ever done something like this.
I tried searching on this but I keep coming up with unrelated results, obviously I am not using the correct search keywords.

Thanks/

 

Unity's dual screen support is very poor. It's not completely impossible, though, if you can arrange your two screens so that they span a single big desktop, and then you make a window that spans that desktop, as described here and here.

But in your case, since the two screens are quite different sizes and one of them is a touch screen, that's different. If this is a dedicated installation, I think you're in luck: Unity 4.1 introduced AirPlay support, which lets you essentially run two screens, one an iPhone/iPad and the other an external display via something like AppleTV. See here for an example.

 

...Incidentally, I was surprised to find there wasn't a very well-written and coherent feature request for multi-monitor support, since I know it's been discussed here (with no happy resolution) on a number of occasions.

But I did find (and vote on) this one. If anybody knows of a more appropriate feedback request, please let me know!

 

I was not aware of that solution thanks, I will look into it.

It looks like it might be exactly what I need. But the problem is that sometimes the client may not want to pay for ipads, I may have to use a Windows w/Touchscreen or Android, and have separate machines. I am newish to Unity3D but have been a regular "corporate" developer for almost 20 years. (This is loads more fun btw). And that might be my problem, maybe I am too stuck on finding a cross platform solution. But alot of these projects are going to be done on a time crunch, as much as I can put into a reusable package to include the better I think. you know include error handling , log4net etc.

I was thinking of connecting the two unity3d apps with http://mypersonalsoft.blogspot.com/2010/12/unity-3d-integration-with-any.htm something like that.

 

Yes, something like that will certainly be the most general. Then you just run Unity app A on one machine (which could be anything), and Unity app B on a second machine (which could be anything else).

I'm currently working with a middle-school team that's building a rocket/spaceflight simulation system. When all done it's going to have probably a dozen computers between the simulator cockpit and Mission Control, all of them running their own instance of the app, communicating with one master app that tells all the others what's going on.

It's a PITA, but it will certainly work!