Multiple monitors - still limited under FS2002?

[Guest]

Hi,Having wondered for a long time that it would be good if you could put a PCI graphics card in your pc as well as an AGP card, I was amazed to find out recently that it can be done. I bought a GeForce 2MX400 64MB PCI card to complement my GeForce 2Ti AGP card and managed to get it rigged up. I had to change the bios to see the PCI card as Primary, then changed it within XP back to the AGP card. I downloaded a useful piece of software called Ultra-Mon, available from www.realtimesoft.com. This web site is quite useful for getting advice on multi-monitor systems and this software is great for memorising application positions, letting you drag icons to the second monitor, different wallpapers, etc.However, from what I read in the newsgroups, it seems to be the case that you cannot really run decent FS2002 windows on the second monitor without suffering a massive framerate hit on both monitors (except for static windows such as the throtle quadrants). By this I mean undocking a spot plane window and moving it on to the second monitor. It's ok at the standard size, but when enlarged, the machine suffers badly from slowdown, to the point of being unusable.I understand that this may be due to the lack of hardware acceleration on the second monitor, possibly a DirectX problem?I would be interested to hear from anyone who has got to the bottom of this problem, or solved it, or knows that it is still a problem for the foreseeable future.Cheers,Raoul

[Guest]

Hi Raoul.I suspect that if you're having that sort of difficulty, it's probably because you're trying to run --3d-- windows on both monitors. I doubt the machine (or the cards) have enough oomph to power both. Even if the two graphics cards can do their jobs, you're probably vastly overloading the processing power of your CPU, whatever it happens to be! That would be why both displays become choppy.I think what most people do (and I KNOW it's what I do) with two monitors is use one for the main view and control panel, then use the second monitor for radios, maps, throttle quandrant windows, etc. .. basically, whatever you want to have constantly available.Those who want multiple 3d views (say, for panaramic viewing) use more than one PC networked together and controlled by WideFS.Hope this sheds some light on things for you.--Tony

[Guest]

Thanks, that was the conclusion I seemed to arrive at too. It's a shame really because I was hoping to have the spot plane view on the second monitor. It's ok if you keep the window small. I'm using a TBird 800, overclocked to 1GHz, with 512Mb Ram - fine with the one window. Guess I'll have to just use the second monitor for static views.Cheers again,Raoul.

[JSACKS 0]

Raoul:Me too. I had an ELSA GTS 32MB DDR card in my P3 850Mhz DELL which worked whizzo! and added the same MX card as you. I was crushed to see frames of only 1.4 /sec. in SPOT view on monitor 2 ! So I use the primary monitor (a 21", driven by ELSA) for cockpit or spot views, and use the secondary ViewSonic 17" for the MX card to display FSNavigator + various cockpit gauges, radios, pedestal, etc.I'll likely never get around to networking anything, so I don't know if I'll ever see a glorious SPOT view at 20 fps alongside the cockpit view on another monitor.JS