Looking at using 3 monitors

[Guest bradzim]

I am not necessarily looking to build a cockpit per say, but I am looking at running 3 monitors to get side views and forward views at the same time. I have a Geforce 6800GT 256mb video card and a Dell 8350 PC with h8/3.0 and 1gb ram. Would this be possible? Please direct me to how I can go about doing this. ThnaksBrad

[Guest N684]

Yeah i would like to know this too. Do you need 3 video cards for 3 monitors, 3 pc's?...Thank you!

[brynjames]

General consensus is that with most graphic cards more than one outside view on a PC kills the framerate. You can try it by opening another window in flightsim with a side view and seeing what happens. The Matrox Parhelia card (a bit expensive and not very fast) will let you spread the image over 3 monitors without a framerate disaster. It only has drivers for XP so don't expect to run it on 98. (Found this out *after* I had bought one on ebay, so now I am building another machine).Folks with lots of computers and even more time use Wideview www.wideview.it to run multiple views, but AI aircraft are not synchronised between different views.--Bryn

[Guest jrh2006]

I have one system driving (6) 19" LCD monitors drive from [3] Dual Output Nvidia GForce FX - 128 MB. You can see the whole setup at:http://home.nc.rr.com/jrhavrilla/ The system may require more memory depending on how much scenery detail you want.

[Guest N684]

Nice!Thank you.

[Guest lpmolinap]

I use four monitors for views , two monitors for panels and one monitor for GPS... In one computer. See this link if you want...http://www.simkits.com/builderlluismolina.php

[Guest lpmolinap]

In response to In response to 4 (sorry for this error...Is not a response to 4 ...;-) )I use four monitors for views , two monitors for panels and one monitor for GPS... In one computer. See this link if you want...http://www.simkits.com/builderlluismolina.php

[Paul Henty]

HiI wonder if the two posters (or anyone else) who are running more than one Video Card in their PC for *outside* views can elaborate on how this is done and how well it works.Like Bryn said above - it is widely believed that more than one outside view will bring framerates into single digits. The only real way to run multiple monitors for outside views is to use video cards that do the monitor spanning internally and present a single desktop to windows (like the Peherila does with three monitors).As far as I knew nVidaa cards can do this spanning accross only two monitors. What models of video card are you using (presumably they are in PCI slots) and do you need to make any special settings to get this to work?Or do you simply have low framerates (<10)? Or do you have the detail sliders very low?Please guys - let us know the scoop there - 'cos it's widely believed that the setup you are using cannot work.I'd ditch my Paherlia card pretty quickly if it turned out you can do the same thing with faster video cards like nVidia's.Thanks...Paul

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[brynjames]

>I have one system driving (6) 19" LCD monitors drive from [3]>Dual Output Nvidia GForce FX - 128 MB. You can see the whole>setup at:>http://home.nc.rr.com/jrhavrilla/ That is a *very* nice setup you have there and I enjoyed the short video of the sim in action.How is the framerate on the external views? It looked ok in the video, and not the "slideshow" that other folks have reported when using multiple outside views on one PC.How do the two CH analogue yokes work together - do you switch between them in some way so that only one is active? I notice you feed them into a USB hub - presumably using some sort of adapter to convert their gameport output to USB. I'd be interested to hear more about it.Last question: are the two front views offset 22-1/2 degrees so there is no overlap? That is the way it looks in the video. If so that presumably gives you a total field of view of 180 degrees unless you have adjusted the zoom in some way.Once more, a very nice setup indeed - a good compromise between absolute realism and achievable ease of construction.--Bryn

[tigert]

>Like Bryn said above - it is widely believed that more than>one outside view will bring framerates into single digits. >The only real way to run multiple monitors for outside views>is to use video cards that do the monitor spanning internally>and present a single desktop to windows (like the Peherila>does with three monitors).I think new hardware can cope with several accelerated views, and, while it does put a strain on the CPU, it does not mean it will *completely destroy the framerates*. The CPU needs to work "twice" for two separate outside views, but as long as the screens have hardware acceleration, it does not need to kill the system. By reducing detail level etc I guess sensible results can be done with a very fast cpu.This we should not mix up with systems that only has one accelerated videocard (like my Matrox Mystique PCI is not 3d accelerated in my Windows 2000, but my main AGP Geforce 4 is. So I can move panels to the Mystique just fine, but if I move FS 3D view there, it will run on pure CPU - thus very slow.Anyway, it would be interesting indeed to hear what kind of CPU's people have to achieve reasonable results with multiple views?//Tuomas

[frantzy]

>I wonder if the two posters (or anyone else) who are running>more than one Video Card in their PC for *outside* views can>elaborate on how this is done and how well it works.I have 1 computer with nVidia SLI and 2 video cards which each support 2 monitors, so 4 monitors in total. SLI was intended to have those 2 video cards combine their resources to have nearly double the performance; it doesn't work that way with MSFS, so SLI has been much maligned in these forums. However, it was an easy, off-the-shelf way for me to get 4 monitors. Expensive though (I got it last January).As for performance, my sliders are mostly medium and I lock framerates at 31 FPS. I always have 2 monitors displaying external 3d views, sometimes 3. With 2 monitors in 3d, performance is great (I have the best AMD CPU and best nVidia cards that were available last year, plus 2GB RAM). With 3 monitors in 3d, I get mid-20 framerates. With 4 monitors in 3d, I get mid-teens framerates. I started with 1GB RAM, but upgraded to 2GB due to lockups. The extra RAM solved the problem. The CPU is now my bottleneck (I remember the quote at AVSIM from the Microsoft presenter: "We can bring any computer to its knees". If I were to slide all my sliders to the right, my framerates would drop to slideshow with these 4 monitors going.) Because of the many variables (especially add-ons...I run high-end airplane add-ons like Eaglesoft and PMDG, I have 3rd party Traffic and ActiveSky weather, but no scenery add-ons at all), your mileage may vary. One last note, based on the FSX preview chatter, you might conclude this is a bad time to do a big video card update, since *no* current video cards will support DirectX 10, and DX10 promises great advances in graphics and performance by pushing load to the GPU.

[Guest jrh2006]

Thanks for your comments.Frame rates are 28 to 30 so its really smooth. I am running FlightOne's Ultimate USA scenery software and the views are remarkable. There is some hesitation when flying in moderate to heavy clouds or weather, but overall I will trade that off for having 6 displays. I am using (2) usb/game port adapters from Radio Shack. Windows 2000 Pro sees them as two separate joysticks, but FS2004 sees them as one. So both are active and can control pitch and bank. I modified the pilots yoke to provide an external input for the throttles, flaps and gear. The co-pilots yoke I did have to disconnect the throttle control. Both connect to the PC through a 4-port USB hub.The top front monitors are spanned so they act as one monitor. The bottom are spanned and the left and right diagonal monitors are spanned. The left and right monitors are set up with separate virtual windows and zoomed in to 2 times so the horizon is level with the forward view. Compromise is the key word in designing and building a flight sim cockpit. This is my 8th generation cockpit each developing as technology and my budget changes......I am going to add a section to the web site this week describing more of the hardware setup and why I made the decisions I did.

[Guest robertsflight]

Hi!I am using four monitors also. Two are for the outside view and two are for the panels. The outside monitors are hooked up to one AGP BFG6800 and I "Span" the view across for a resolution of 2048 X 768. The other two monitors have their own PCI cards both old with 8 mb memory I think. The key to having more than two monitors for outside view (on an AGP/PCI sytem) would be to add a PCI card that is DX9 compliant and 3d accelerated, unfortunatley FX5200 is the only one that does it and it is not the fastest card around. Now with the SLI I don't know, maybe you can even have four outside viev monitors? Here is a link to some info on a 4 monitor setup.http://www.geocities.com/fsbobby/hope this helps.Robert

[Guest alexlaw]

Hi,I noticed that on your otherwise fantastic setup you note that:"Unfortunately FS2004 does not store window positions for multi-monitor mode. You will have to repeat the window undocking, placement and resizing each and every time. I consolidated as many instruments on one panel as I could so it reduces the setup time as much as possible."Well this is true and ... not true :-). If you save a situation, then MSFS 2004 remembers the windows positions. This is how I operate mine and I only set up teh windoes once.If you want to save a different situation then use the "windows in place" one as a "template" and change everythig except the windows position.

[kunzel4]

Hi Gentlemen ,I also have four (4) monitors and one projector .The projector is for the front external view , two monitors for the main panel , one for CDU and other for radio stack .The main video card ( AGP ) is an ATI 9600 /256 MB ,and four ATI 128 PCI video card for monitors .Also ,I did the setup of the windows once , just after the setup I saved the flight in FS9 and that's it , every time I start that flight the windows appear in the right position .The frame rates is always above 25 fps , I have a Pentium IV / 3 GHZ/1GHZ RAM / Win XP Profissional .RegardsAlberto K