Possible for two people to play bf3 on one pc?

Angelz3

Weaksauce
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Oct 30, 2011
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Hey, I know this is sort of a strange question to ask, but I was just wondering if it was possible to use a pc as a "console-like" system so that multiple people could play at once?

Let me put forward a scenario for a better explanation.
Say that I have two or more monitors, and one of my friends comes over to my place to play some games. Is it possible for me to bust out my $2000+ pc, hook up some monitors, and us bust out bf3 simultaneously?
I know that I won't be running ultra settings or anything, but I though hey, if a $300 console could do it, why can't my $2000 pc do it?

Thoughts and suggestions would be super greatly appreciated.
Thanks amazing people!
-Angelz3
 
I doubt it. Even if you used two different browsers and were able to run two instances of battlelog(you'd still need two different accounts), I don't believe you can run two copies of origin at once so there would be no way to launch two copies of battlefield.

Maybe I'm wrong, just seems like you'd have to do some crazy stuff if it was somehow possible, not to mention the hardware issues.
 
You might be able to di it IF you use a VM for each additional player.

You would also need to have a video card for each player as well (most likely).
 
Sandboxie can allow you do run the same program twice. I used this to dual box FFXIV clients, and it works universally with other programs. If the system was powerful enough to run two clients, you could have two windowed versions of the game running at the same time. The next trouble would be implemented two different sets of keyboard/mouse.

I don't find VMs to be a smart idea, keeping it all on the same OS is much faster. You can run multiple high-end 3D applications and still function fairly well on even average systems. The next step in my mind if the system can do it (at least I know two instances, the paid version of sandboxie can do more), is to figure out the input issue. If someone knows of an application, super!
 
I believe you can do this in Left 4 Dead, that's the only fps that I know of though.
 
Sandboxie can allow you do run the same program twice. I used this to dual box FFXIV clients, and it works universally with other programs. If the system was powerful enough to run two clients, you could have two windowed versions of the game running at the same time. The next trouble would be implemented two different sets of keyboard/mouse.

I don't find VMs to be a smart idea, keeping it all on the same OS is much faster. You can run multiple high-end 3D applications and still function fairly well on even average systems. The next step in my mind if the system can do it (at least I know two instances, the paid version of sandboxie can do more), is to figure out the input issue. If someone knows of an application, super!

Well.. if you are using gamepads or joysticks, the input would be pretty easy to work out... or if one user was using keyboard/mouse and the other is using a gamepad or joystick.
 
Busting out BF3 simultaneously is impossible but busting a nut simultaneously is possible.
Have fun :)
 
There was another thread on here asking the same question, albeit with different games. He was able to find a program that allowed two instances of different OS at the same time. Each OS could be dedicated their own hardware in the computer, so having two graphics cards (one for each OS) would give the best performance. I don't have the link at the moment, but I might have it this Friday.

Yes, he got it working. Performance was equivalent to as if they were two separate computers with the hardware they were allocated. I believe he ran two different OS off of two different hard drives. Two keyboards, two mice, the whole nine yards. It was quite literally two separate computers inside one.

Edit: Found the link: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1037098978
 
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If this Sandboxie program works as advertised I don't see why this couldn't be possible. I feel like my rig has powerful enough hardware to make this happen.

My CPU currently hits less than 50% overall running a single instance of BF3. That's with ultra and both types of AA enabled. Both of my cards have 2 gigs of RAM so that shouldn't be a problem. Dropping the settings down to medium or high should make 2 windowed instances of this game possible. I can't recall if BF3 allows you to choose which graphics adapter is used, but I doubt it.

No idea how the input situation would be resolved. It's definitely feasible hardware wise to do this. In terms of memory management, input issue, and drivers I don't know. It would definitely take alot of tweaking.
 
I've done this on a couple other games about 2 years ago. Somebody asked a similar question about a year ago so heres a copy and paste of my post from there (yeah I'm to lazy to retype). IIRC you don't need 2 video cards but you will of course need at least 2 outputs and 2 video cards would be helpful.

"I've tried and was some what successful (but it did take a lot of google-fu and then just trying stuff since I couldn't find anyone else that had tried). After trying a bunch of extremely complicated but unsuccesful ways of doing it (running 2 instances of ubuntu with vmware running xp on both, trying multiple programs for locking dual keyboard/mouse to certain screens) I discovered a program that will let you boot multiple instances of Windows and give you seperate keyboard and mouse controls for each. The program was not designed for games though so as of ~15 months ago there was issues with some games. In my case I tried Dirt 2, Crysis Wars, Command and Conquer Kane's Wrath, Fear Combat.

Dirt 2 - No luck, would completely crash both instances of windows as soon as the menu for the second one came up.
Crysis Wars - Ran perfect right out of the box. Even more surprising is that I could run 2 instances of the game smoothly (on low settings) with just a amdx2 3800 @2.6ghz, 1 or 2GB of ram (can't remember) and a 8800gt.
Kane's Wrath - Could run 2 seperate games no problem, even ran 7 brutal comps on both instances with no problems. However could never get lan to work, even with running multiple lan cards and even running one game in vmware the game simply would not see each other.
Fear Combat - worked fine

http://www.thinsoftinc.com/product_pc_sharing_betwin_vs64.aspx Its designed for schools and stuff like that so they don't have to much info on how to make games work but like I said some do. Also you can dedicate different video cards to each instance of windows to get better performance (At one point I ran a ATI on one and Nvidia on the other). IIRC there was a free version (2 instances of Windows) and the full version let you have more (6 maybe more). "
 
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