Hi . I am newbie. Tried to search in the forum but it took too long to find the answer that I want.I have FSX and I have dual CRT 19" monitors and spanned both display as one. And it works fine but...I am considering to buy 3 LCD monitors with willing to span all monitors as one view.So which is the best: 3 normal (4:3) LCD monitors or 3 widescreen LCD monitors?Would widescreen monitors get the spanned (across 3 monitors) view distorted?I have Nvidia 8800GTS 320mb SLi so I will need another graphics card in order to use 3 display units (monitors)My colleague said why not buy one widescreen for the centre and two normal (4:3) monitors - one each side.I am a bit worried about graphics memory hungry and the refresh rate (ms). Should I go for 2ms?I would like to hear any suggestions?CheersChris

Here's a pic of FS9 with triple views running on an 8 year old 19"CRT and 2- 17"LCDs: both 8ms. Computer is an ancient AMD XP2200 with 2 GeForce FX5200 video cards. This setup has a 45" wide perspective & 146

Here's a pic of FS9 with triple views running on an 8 year old 19"CRT and 2- 17"LCDs: both 8ms. Computer is an ancient AMD XP2200 with 2 GeForce FX5200 video cards. This setup has a 45" wide perspective & 146

Alex,It looks like a perfect combination. I have 22" WS Samsung. I want to capture PMDG-MD11X 2D Cockpit in 22"main monitor and side windows/view left/right at two 19". How can I do it? Will it slow down the graphic card. I have Navdia GF 280X card. I am running in slow FPS at Major airports 10FPSThanksSanal

------------------------You need to be able to run your single view system at 30-50 FPS to do this. Reason is that your computer must generate many more view pixels. In the picture, main view is full screen height & outer views are each 1/2 height and this doubles the pixel count. So my frame rate drops by 50%. I adjust FS9 settings to achieve a steady 30-50 FPS with only a single view active. Then with triple views, FPS drops about 50% to the 15-25 range. (Surprisingly the Quality/Smoothness remains just as high as it was at 30-50!)Unless you can get steady frame rates about 30-50, I don't think you can satisfactorily run multiple views. Settings that I degrade are Traffic, AutoGen & various Scenery Complexity sliders.It's the views that affect performance- popup gauges seem to have little or no effect other than Overhead and COM popups are FPS killers and should only be opened as necessary. Your options probably are TH2GO for virtual panels or WideView with an additional processor for 2D panels.Alex Reid

I have 3 19" Widescreens for a whooping 4320x900 resolution using a Matrox TripleHead2Go Digital. I had an Nvidia 8800GTS (640Mb version) and it struggled with that high of a resolution. Upgraded to a GTX 260 and no more problems.My FPS before was high 60's before this and it is now about mid 20's with some busy spots down into the teens, but it still runs smooth. The extra resolution really does hit your system hard, but boy is it worth it.Here's a snapshot from my screen (Click on the thumbnail to see them in 'actual size')AC Shot:VC Shot:Ugly Traffic Shot:

If I may jump in on the tail end of this conversation... I too am thinking on my next PC going for three 24" or 25" monitors for the "wrap-around" effect. After reading above, am I correct to assume running those at decent FPS will be solely dependent on the GPU cards I get (speed of card, on board ram, etc)? I am thinking of getting two top-of-the-line 2gig cards (what ever those may be at the time of purchase), to operate 3 monitors at 145 degree view and maybe even a fourth with a moving map or something.In your opinion could this run pretty good on one pc if I also use it with a top-notch processor?

If I may jump in on the tail end of this conversation... I too am thinking on my next PC going for three 24" or 25" monitors for the "wrap-around" effect. After reading above, am I correct to assume running those at decent FPS will be solely dependent on the GPU cards I get (speed of card, on board ram, etc)? I am thinking of getting two top-of-the-line 2gig cards (what ever those may be at the time of purchase), to operate 3 monitors at 145 degree view and maybe even a fourth with a moving map or something.In your opinion could this run pretty good on one pc if I also use it with a top-notch processor?

--------------------------From what I've found playing with triple views, the most important hardware factors are a fastest possible CPU and lots of RAM. I believe the graphics cards are much less important. (After all 2 of the views are always static/inactive!) In effect, the 3 monitors are time sharing the CPU!I think this "time sharing" is why the visual performance is so satisfactory at what most simmers would think are marginal frame rates - two monitors/views are always inactive while the third is updating. If the three views are accurately synched into what your brain thinks is a single picture, then a modest frame rate looks pretty good. My triple monitor 16-24 FPS is just as smooth as 30-50 on a single monitor. (Two of three monitors always have an infinitely HIGH frame rate and so counterbalance the low rate of the third!!! Our brains see the whole as an average!)You may not gain as much as you think by using very large monitors. As monitors get larger we generally increase eye to mon distance. The objective of triple mons, of course, is simply to fill our full peripheral vision with FS scenery. I use a 19" CRT (really only 18") along with 2 17"LCDs and this fills nearly 170