I'm finally getting around to moving from a rig that is olderthan January's and after reading much of the postings here onmulti-monitors, I have chosen to go that route. I do have acouple of questions though that I would like to present to thisaugust group. I'm running FS9 on XP and plan to stay that waywhen I replace the existing system which is too old to mention.1. Can you use widescreen monitors with this without distortingthe gauges, etc or should one stay away from wide screens ina multi-screen environment.2. I plan on using a single computer. How many graphics cardsdo I need? and should they be the same? I know if I use theMatrox THTG gadget I need only one, but January's setup appealsto me more.I have all the info on aligning bezels and I understand thatfrom prior playing with panel.cfg files for wing views.--JimC

Good morning Jim- Good question re widescreen monitors! I don't have one to try out so my answer is an educated?? guess. I think the 2D panel guages would be "ovalized" if it were to be stretched full width. Presumably you could leave the main panel in its normal proportions and use the extra width to display a popup or two! I expect the centre view itself would stretch readily- or would it have to be undocked to stretch? Some unknowns here.The above presupposes using a widescreen for the centre/main mon. But I see no reason why a wide mon would not not work well as a secondary. Here both popups and view are stretched/sized to fit the mon. In fact, I've been wondering about doing this with my right mon, where a little extra space would be welcome.Anyone out there who has tried this??Graphics cards? As far as I know- one for each monitor. But some of the more recent ones apparently can drive 2 mons. Then there are the Dual Head cards. I have a dual head AGP and a single PCI- all GeForce FX5200. Jim Cooper- can you help us here?Alex Reid CYYJ PS I don't think we are an August group-it's already Sept!

Yes most Graphics cards have two video putput connecters, the only real option is wether you want the digital or analogue connectors, but i suspect that with everyone using LCD,s these days you may only find digital ones with analogue adapters. The only thing with dual monitors is it does have a slight FPS hit depending on how many gauges you throw up on the second monitor, but i find with the virtual cocpits you may ony need the gps and knee board up there. You will need to run FSX in windowed mode, the knee board can be dragged staright to the other screen but all the others need to be undocked before they can be moved.Hope that helps

The 2d Panel on a Widescreen monitor will stretch by 20%. Some people get used to it others hate it. ..Here's the effect on a single gauge:.You can either stretch/re-sample/re-draw the panel bmp and edit the Panel.cfg Here's an example of the Cessna 172 that I re-drew and edited the Panel.cfghttp://hometown.aol.co.uk/JimCooper1/Panel...kground_640.JPGhttp://hometown.aol.co.uk/JimCooper1/172-Wide.JPGI then used the space on the Right for RadiosAlternatively you can drag the panel back 20% (eg from 1920 to 1600 pixels) and use the remaining 320 pixels to place your Radio Stack, Throttles, GPS etc.To answer your original question: Ideally get a Dual-Head card for your AGP slot and a PCI card (not PCIe) for your third monitor. Get the same Make (not necessarily same model) to simplify the driver issue Not knowing your budget or system specs but, by the sounds of it, as it's quite old you could either go for nVidia FX5200 which come in both AGP and PCI..or if you've got more to spend 7600GT AGP and FX5200 PCIhttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814150239http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814150233http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814139143These are examples only..not a recommendation..without knowing your exact system specs I can't give you a definite recommendation. Feel free to e-mail, Pm or post again with your Specs.RegardsJim

Thanks for the video card input. Yes- in 2D there can be an FPS penalty with multi monitors. But it varies with each aircraft and specific panel. With triple views/triple mons, I can run PMDG 747 nicely on my vintage AMD 1.8/ GeForceFX5200 system. Usually both CDUs,Lower EICAS and throttle popups are open on #2 along with Kneeboard on #3. No sweat. But Overhead or Com popups do slow things a bit- so they are displayed "on demand". Each plane seems to have different characteristics in this regard. The DreamFleet Baron doesn't seem to care what's up where! And generally a popup on the PCI monitor hurts FPS more than on an AGP mon- BUT NOT ALWAYS!Regards Alex Reid

Jim Cooper- Thank you! Great explanation. Does the View also stretch- that is do runways or other objects appear 20% wider for example? And could the 2D panel be left at the normal width leaving an unused space to place a popup such as throttle?Alex Reid CYYJ

Thankyou all very much, exactly what I was looking for. I'll be staying with FS9 and XP for a while. Right now I'm on a PII at 450MHz with 384MB. It's a LONG story but I can confirm that FS9 doesn't run well. For some reason though I can fly around Louisville, KY right well but there isn't much of anywhere else I can go. Jim Jones's scenery must be might framerate friendly. I've decided to build a new system around an Intel dual or quad core chip, haven't decided which yet. I don't like the stretching that comes with the widescreen so will stick with straight flat panels. Bezels don't bother me, as they apparently do some, as most aircraft have them as part of the windscreen (F16 and the like excepted.) And I have Alex's detailed post on how to align them properly. The issue of using widescreens as the 2nd and/or 3rd panel is interesting. Thanks Jim for the video card recs! Again, thankyou all very much!! Cheers, Jim

Does the View also stretch- that is do runways or other objects appear 20% wider No, the outside view is handled separately so remains undistorted (as long as in your hardware settings the setting is set to one of the widescreen optionsAnd could the 2D panel be left at the normal width leaving an unused space to place a popup such as throttle? Yes, when it opens it will stretch to full width..you simply need to grab and drag it back 20%. You can either just drag the panel and leave the horizon full width or you can drag them both and put instruments in the whole height space leftRegardsJim

I'm on a PII at 450MHz with 384MB. I wouldn't bother even trying to go Multi-monitor with this setup. Save the money you would have spent for your new systemI've decided to build a new system around an Intel dual or quad core chip, haven't decided which yet. If you're happy with FS9 I see no reason to migrate to FSX just yet. You can build a decent system based on P35 motherboard, E6750 or Q6600 CPU which will then give plenty of scope for upgrades later. Depending on your budget you could then put in '7900' or '8800' graphics cards. RegardsJim

Another thank you to Jim Cooper from me. Nice to have an expert in the house.Alex Reid CYYJ

I have been reading quite a lot about setups like the one from Alex (aka january) with 2 gfx cards to drive multimonitors.I would like initially to go to a three monitor setup driven by one PC showing only external views, and later on, assemble a second mid-range PC(based on used parts from ebay) to drive 2 additional monitors for panels only, using Wideview.For the time being I have one PC and two monitors, right now I am playing with bezel correction, and I am liking what I am seeing.My current machine is a P4 3.0 + Asus P4P800 + 1Gb DDR400 + Sapphire X1950 Pro 512.This gfx card drives my two monitors really well, I wonder what will happen if I add a PCI card (like FX5200) regarding performance.Sometimes I read people saying that, no matter the PCI card added, the performance depends exclusively on the main AGP card. In other times, I see people concerning about matching the PCI with the performance of the main AGP card.Should I just buy any FX5200 (for example, no matter what ammount of VRAM) and I will be able to drive my three external views on three monitors?Thanks a lot for your kind support on this recurring question.

My video cards are- AGP Dual head GeForce FX5200 and a PCI GeForce FX5200. Works just fine for me.Initially I had 768MB RAM but when this was increased to 1.28GB, performance increased about 20%. My processor is an ancient AMD XP2200 1.8GHz- ASUS A7N8X-X m'board. The experts tell me that RAM in excess of 1.0 GB doesn't do much for FS9- but with three hungry monitors- I wonder??I would think you would be happy with a 5200 PCI card for 3rd mon.----------------------------(PS-Just had a nice flight in the ATR 72- FPS 18-22, good weather at 2500 ASL over the BC Gulf Islands. The 48" wide horizon makes it hard to keep one's eyes on the instruments!)Alex Reid CYYJ

Re multiple FX 5200 cards: Should have added- If you experience stutters, retard the Hardware Accel sliders TWO notches for the SECONDARY monitor cards. (found in-Display/Settings/Advanced/Troubleshoot) Works wonders.Alex Reid