Ready to add second monitor--what to expect?

[Guest Stompy]

The VGA to DVI converter I ordered should be sitting at home waiting for me as I type this, and I'm getting really excited about plugging a second monitor into my Ti4400. But the more I read about it, the more worried I get. All I want to do is have a few gagues and controls appear on the 2nd monitor. I don't want any of my windows desktop stuff there, I don't want any of the cockpit there, I don't want anything there except for a couple of items. My plan all along was to fly in virtual cockpit view on the primary monitor (as I have all along--this is FS2K2, btw) except with the benefit of having the radio stack and VOR dials and stuff I can't control from the VC appear on the 2nd monitor.So what should I expect and what should I do once I plug in the new monitor and boot the computer (Windows XP Home)? I've read that the built-in dualview stuff is fine, and nView is bad, and so on and so forth, so this is why I'm asking now. How do I begin? Is this a really bad idea after all?My wife's going to be mad enough at me as it is, I don't need this turning out as a failure. Geez, all this buyer's remorse and the converter only cost me $9.Any advice/tips/tricks/support would be greatly appreciated. Thanks very much in advance!

[Guest cw1011]

I take it that your card has dual output. If so, this is a piece of cake. Go into control panel and open your the display icon, and then open the settings tab. If you have the second monitor hooked up, XP should show you a graphic with two monitors side by side, with the numbers 1 and 2 on them respectively. First thing to do is make sure that XP knows which is the primary and which is the second. Simply click on the monitor and the selection boxes below will become active. Self explanatory. Second, you can can drag and drop the monitors so they are arranged on the screen as they are in front of you. This way the computer knows where to move the mouse when it reaches the edge of the monitor adjacent to the second monitor. In MSFS2002, just about any panel that can be brought up in a window can be moved over to the second monitor. Right click on the window, select undock, and drag it onto the second monitor. Piece of cake. Note that many programs do not support multiple monitors - CFS 2 for instance. This is in the program, and not your set up. Good luck. I'm sure you will be happy. I usually put the radio stack, throttle quadrant and FS Flight max on the second monitor. I have very little degradation of performance. Don't expect to be able to put another external view there, however. You need to network computers to be able to pull that off.

[Guest gasebah]

Not a lot to add here except one tip. When running FS2K2 in full screen many people can't move the mouse over to the 2nd monitor except they invent workaround that are all not very convinient. But there is a trick. After you have set the 2nd monitor up go to the display/hardware settings in FS2K2. Under the disoplay adapter section you will find something like:Display1/Primary display adaptorscroll down and change that to Display1/NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600 (.DISPLAY1)and you will have no probs.Ah and yes, here is a pic of what to expect.

[Guest Stompy]

Hey what the hell, gasebah?! I followed your instructions perfectly but it doesn't look that THAT!!! :-xxrotflmaoSeriously, thank you very much, both of you. That was perfect. Now, for those of you playing along at home that might be reading this, if you try this, whatever you do, DO NOT undock the ATC window and move it over. Ack! Slideshow city!It's funny...after all that grandstanding about how I didn't want anything on the 2nd monitor other than FS, the very first thing I did was move IE over there so I could read the info here as I played around in FS! :-lolOkay, so everything is going swimmingly. I fired up the default 172 and got everything all nice, but quickly realized the only thing of any value I could move over to the 2nd monitor was the radio stack. I could feel the eyes of my wife burning into the back of my skull so I quickly opened the kneeboard to the checklists page and shoved that over. I realize other aircraft will have more controls, like the throttle quadrant you mentioned, but I'm wondering if it's possible to get things like the VOR gauges over there so I can move the bugs & stuff. I tried opening the 2d cockpit over there but it won't let me "crop" the window to get rid of the stuff I can see in the VC and just look at the stuff I care about. So I either end up with 2 cockpits or one virtual cockpit and one really smushed one.Also, is there a way to get rid of the title at the top of say, the radio stack? I mean, I know it's the radio stack, it doesn't need to tell me that. I've tried the obvious and made sure "window labels" was turned off, but that's something different.Anyway, thanks again very much! It really was a piece of cake and I can tell this is going to be a blast to play with!

[Guest drobson]

Anything that you can "undock" on the main panel can be moved to a secondary monitor. Things like the GPS, radio stack, Throttle quad--depending on aircraft. About the title at the top---Nope! Your secondary monitor will only display 2d things, and only in windowed mode, so you will have the border around it.Do you run FSMeteoe? You can have that on the secondary and have the weather displayed as it updates.I've been running two monitors since the fs98 days, and will not be without the second one now. Works really well for things like MSWord on one and Excel on the other---running two Internet browsers, etc.Darrell

[Guest]

Added a 2nd monitor about a month ago but it doesn't work...In the NVidia control panel I see the monitor and can set it, but Windows itself doesn't provide the option and I keep getting a black screen.

[Guest gasebah]

Stompy,IMO opinion the best use of a 2nd or 3rd money can be made by using FSPanel Studio. Whenever I geta new plane I spend half an hour of making spezialised panels for the 2nd and 3rd monitor. The program is very easy to use, if you keep it simple you can make a new panel window that contains ur VORs the Radio Stack and ur engine instruments in 3-4 minutes.Also for many things e.g. Jepessen charts or the Radio Stack I found it very useful to turn the monitor 90 degrees to have 3:4 ratio rather than a 4:3 ratio. That makes sense with everything that is higher than wide e.g. a Radio Stack.I include two screenshots with special panels I made here for the Seneca V from FSD.There is no way to hide the window titles but I usually drag the window to a size where the title is