Important question before I buy the PMDG 747

[Guest chrut]

Hey fellow aviators!I'm about to buy the boxed version of PMDG747 and use it on my 16:9 widescreen TV. I'm planning to use the 2D panel only and have noticed that PMDG only arrives with a 4:3 2D panel. I'm now wondering if this 4:3 vs 16:9 aspect ratio issue is so bad that it'll ruin my experience with the 747 (I don't mind if the panel get's slightly streched/oval, but the fonts/text should be perfectly readble). Anyone who could upload a pic of the 2D panel in either 1920x1080 or 1280x720 would have my gradituted. Other widescreen resulotions are of course welcomed. Thanks!Sami, PMDG newbie

[vscimone 16]

Hey fellow aviators!I'm about to buy the boxed version of PMDG747 and use it on my 16:9 widescreen TV. I'm planning to use the 2D panel only and have noticed that PMDG only arrives with a 4:3 2D panel. I'm now wondering if this 4:3 vs 16:9 aspect ratio issue is so bad that it'll ruin my experience with the 747 (I don't mind if the panel get's slightly streched/oval, but the fonts/text should be perfectly readble). Anyone who could upload a pic of the 2D panel in either 1920x1080 or 1280x720 would have my gradituted. Other widescreen resulotions are of course welcomed. Thanks!Sami, PMDG newbie

The PMDG 747 does not come with 16:9 panels (The PMDG MD-11 is the first aircraft to support this feature). The native resolution of the PMDG 747-400 2D panels is 1600x1200, and those of us (including developers) who use widescreen monitors have not had any issue in reading fonts.I'll leave it up to our generous community to post screen shots (I'm personally still on a 4:3 CRT) so I cannot provide that for you.

[Andydigital 93]

You cant beat a 4:3 CRT for clarity and all resolutions always look good, real estate wise yes WS is better, CRT's are getting as rare are rocking horse dodo though, I dunno what I'm going to do when this one eventually dies :(

[january 19]

Hey fellow aviators!I'm about to buy the boxed version of PMDG747 and use it on my 16:9 widescreen TV. I'm planning to use the 2D panel only and have noticed that PMDG only arrives with a 4:3 2D panel. I'm now wondering if this 4:3 vs 16:9 aspect ratio issue is so bad that it'll ruin my experience with the 747 (I don't mind if the panel get's slightly streched/oval, but the fonts/text should be perfectly readble). Anyone who could upload a pic of the 2D panel in either 1920x1080 or 1280x720 would have my gradituted. Other widescreen resulotions are of course welcomed. Thanks!Sami, PMDG newbie

-----------------------Sami- Why not take advantage of the widescreen potential? Drag the right edge of the 2D panel to the left to get normal proportions. Then add some popups to fill in the blank area on the right edge- as in the attached screenie. Here the lower EICAS display, EICAS SW Panel & Misc SW Panel are now visible all the time! I think it makes a real improvement. If you prefer, put the CDU or Throttle popups there. (You can shrink/enlarge popups to fit the available space- just drag the edges.) When you are happy- Save the flight for next time! No need to repeat this formatting exercise.Alex Reid(Black areas are unused portions of my triple (4:3) monitor arrangement for this experiment.)

[Guest chrut]

The PMDG 747 does not come with 16:9 panels (The PMDG MD-11 is the first aircraft to support this feature). The native resolution of the PMDG 747-400 2D panels is 1600x1200, and those of us (including developers) who use widescreen monitors have not had any issue in reading fonts.I'll leave it up to our generous community to post screen shots (I'm personally still on a 4:3 CRT) so I cannot provide that for you.

Sounds good, I'm really excited to get my hands on the 747 and later on the NG2.0.

-----------------------Sami- Why not take advantage of the widescreen potential? Drag the right edge of the 2D panel to the left to get normal proportions. Then add some popups to fill in the blank area on the right edge- as in the attached screenie. Here the lower EICAS display, EICAS SW Panel & Misc SW Panel are now visible all the time! I think it makes a real improvement. If you prefer, put the CDU or Throttle popups there. (You can shrink/enlarge popups to fit the available space- just drag the edges.) When you are happy- Save the flight for next time! No need to repeat this formatting exercise.Alex Reid(Black areas are unused portions of my triple (4:3) monitor arrangement for this experiment.)

Wow, that's a really great idea. But wouldn't the performance decrease if I use multiple views?Still if anyone could upload a pic, I would be most greatful...Thanks,Sami

[january 19]

Sounds good, I'm really excited to get my hands on the 747 and later on the NG2.0.Wow, that's a really great idea. But wouldn't the performance decrease if I use multiple views?Still if anyone could upload a pic, I would be most greatful...Thanks,Sami

--------------------------Sami- here is a pic of PMDG 747 with triple views/triple mons. This is running comfortably on an ancient AMD 1.8 with GeForce FX5200 GPUs. Performance or FPS is affected by multiple views but popups generally have little impact. (Except for Overhead which does soak up some frames.)I adjust FS9 settings by starting with a single view & main 2D panel and turn down settings until I get consistent 30-45 FPS. Autogen is OFF since I use Ultimate Terrain & Ground Environment. 30-45 becomes 15-22 FPS when you add the two outer views on mons 2 & 3. This sounds a bit strange until you realize that only one view is being updated at any time- after all, there IS only one CPU !! That means that 2/3 of the overall view is always unchanging & rock steady!So a POSTED frame rate of say 15 is seen by your brain to be as smooth as perhaps 30 on a single mon!A strange phenom here is that for the same reason, the sim is very smooth and flyable right down to about 7 FPS if you get into a heavy duty scenery at night! (probably equivalent to about 14 on a single mon sys)The secret with multiple views is to adjust the outer view angle by the same amount as the combined width of the two monitor bezels. This hides a slice of scenery behind the bezels in the same way that a slice of scenery is always hidden behind the windshield posts of your car. When you get this right your eyes/brain see a single very wide image of about 145

[Guest Mower]

MD-11 s getting much better FPS than the 744, that's a fact.

[Guest chrut]

--------------------------Sami- here is a pic of PMDG 747 with triple views/triple mons. This is running comfortably on an ancient AMD 1.8 with GeForce FX5200 GPUs. Performance or FPS is affected by multiple views but popups generally have little impact. (Except for Overhead which does soak up some frames.)I adjust FS9 settings by starting with a single view & main 2D panel and turn down settings until I get consistent 30-45 FPS. Autogen is OFF since I use Ultimate Terrain & Ground Environment. 30-45 becomes 15-22 FPS when you add the two outer views on mons 2 & 3. This sounds a bit strange until you realize that only one view is being updated at any time- after all, there IS only one CPU !! That means that 2/3 of the overall view is always unchanging & rock steady!So a POSTED frame rate of say 15 is seen by your brain to be as smooth as perhaps 30 on a single mon!A strange phenom here is that for the same reason, the sim is very smooth and flyable right down to about 7 FPS if you get into a heavy duty scenery at night! (probably equivalent to about 14 on a single mon sys)The secret with multiple views is to adjust the outer view angle by the same amount as the combined width of the two monitor bezels. This hides a slice of scenery behind the bezels in the same way that a slice of scenery is always hidden behind the windshield posts of your car. When you get this right your eyes/brain see a single very wide image of about 145

[january 19]

That's really cool Alex, with the multiple views. Must be very cool and mighty to sit in front of the 3 monitors and feel the power of the PMDG747 :(. Unfortunately I only have access to a single 16:9 monitor and on top of that I'm going to use FSX (FPS hog). That is the reason why I wanted to see how the 2D panel of the 747 would look like, stretched, in a 16:9 resolution (like 1920x1080 or 1280x720). If someone can post a pic in that format or perhaps in the common 16:10 format, that would be helpful (so I can determine wheter the 2D panel is useable and doesn't look distorted or something like that).Over and out,Sami

---------------Single mon- no problem. Just resize/reposition the panel and fill in the blank area with popups as I described in my orig post.Alex Reid

[Guest chrut]

---------------Single mon- no problem. Just resize/reposition the panel and fill in the blank area with popups as I described in my orig post.Alex Reid

Alright, great! I have placed an order, I'll see how it goes... thanks for the help guys!Sami