I have two GeForce 9800 GTX+ cards currently and I run 4 monitors to fly the PMDG 737-700 under FS2004 without any issues. I see that the folks at Proflight have announced the new CDUII which looks great. I see it requires a video output to run the screen on the device. I can't imagine I would need anything too heavy duty to make that work from a video card perspective.If I place a low end PCI card in and attach it only to that device, is there any issues with having multiple brands/models of video cards installed on one PC? I hate to spend about $500 for something that won't work.I have a duo core E8400 with 2Gig RAM on an ASUS motherboard under XP Pro SP3.Any thoughts would be appreciated.John

I have two GeForce 9800 GTX+ cards currently and I run 4 monitors to fly the PMDG 737-700 under FS2004 without any issues. I see that the folks at Proflight have announced the new CDUII which looks great. I see it requires a video output to run the screen on the device. I can't imagine I would need anything too heavy duty to make that work from a video card perspective.If I place a low end PCI card in and attach it only to that device, is there any issues with having multiple brands/models of video cards installed on one PC? I hate to spend about $500 for something that won't work.I have a duo core E8400 with 2Gig RAM on an ASUS motherboard under XP Pro SP3.Any thoughts would be appreciated.John

John- it's my understanding that one PC can have only one GPU driver. In that case, multiple video cards will all have to run from a common driver- and that implies all cards must be of the same family- although I believe, not necessarily identical models.Any chance you could post a pic? Do you display multiple views?Alex Reid

John- it's my understanding that one PC can have only one GPU driver. In that case, multiple video cards will all have to run from a common driver- and that implies all cards must be of the same family- although I believe, not necessarily identical models.Any chance you could post a pic? Do you display multiple views?Alex Reid

Alex;I use three monitors side-by-side to have forward/left, forward. forward-right views. the 4th monitor site "on top" of the forward view to show the overhead panel. I have the Saitek radio panel and the CH flight yoke. the only other windows I need open are the weather radar, CDU, and the throttle quadrant although that one is just for show.I will have to take a snapshot next time I fire it up probably this weekend.Thanks for your reply.John

Alex;I use three monitors side-by-side to have forward/left, forward. forward-right views. the 4th monitor site "on top" of the forward view to show the overhead panel. I have the Saitek radio panel and the CH flight yoke. the only other windows I need open are the weather radar, CDU, and the throttle quadrant although that one is just for show.I will have to take a snapshot next time I fire it up probably this weekend.Thanks for your reply.John

John- Sounds terrific! A lot of "heavy" pilots will be interested in the overhead panel on 4th mon.Could your system cope with another card to provide Views Left & Right in a six monitor (five views) configuration? That would give a Field of View of well over 180

John- Sounds terrific! A lot of "heavy" pilots will be interested in the overhead panel on 4th mon.Could your system cope with another card to provide Views Left & Right in a six monitor (five views) configuration? That would give a Field of View of well over 180

John- yes, I suspect that 5 views might be overkill!I too, never found virtual to be very believable. Panning & Zooming doesn't replicate how we see the world. And a single monitor is equivalent to tunnel vision- which will flunk a real world medical. TH2Go generates a wide perspective but the Field of View remains at 45

John- yes, I suspect that 5 views might be overkill!I too, never found virtual to be very believable. Panning & Zooming doesn't replicate how we see the world. And a single monitor is equivalent to tunnel vision- which will flunk a real world medical. TH2Go generates a wide perspective but the Field of View remains at 45

Alex;I'll do the measurements tonight and send it along. thanks. I never bothered to try to see if there was a way to smooth it out. Appreciate it.John

I'm lousy with the pic. how do I post it?

I'm lousy with the pic. how do I post it?

AVSIM requires that any pic post must be no larger than 200 K pixels or 1024 x 768. Assuming your pic is in "My Pictures" place your mouse on the pic and a box will open to show the size status. If you need to reduce to the AVSIM limits I can give you a fast method to do so. If it is larger than their limits, AVSIM will delete.To post in AVSIM, click on Browse at the bottom below message, and it displays My Pictures. Then search for the one you want, click on it and if within the AVSIM limits, click on UPLOAD. When this completes, open Manage Current Attachments and click on the green leftside icon to insert the pic in your message.Alex Reid

AVSIM requires that any pic post must be no larger than 200 K pixels or 1024 x 768. Assuming your pic is in "My Pictures" place your mouse on the pic and a box will open to show the size status. If you need to reduce to the AVSIM limits I can give you a fast method to do so. If it is larger than their limits, AVSIM will delete.To post in AVSIM, click on Browse at the bottom below message, and it displays My Pictures. Then search for the one you want, click on it and if within the AVSIM limits, click on UPLOAD. When this completes, open Manage Current Attachments and click on the green leftside icon to insert the pic in your message.Alex Reid

Thanks Alex.Here is my setup. I had to scale down the pic so it is a little blurry. I have the radio panel at the bottom right.my monitors from left to right are 20" diagonal with 1" edges, 22" diagonal with 1 1/4" edges, and 20" diagonal with 3/4" edges.John

Thanks Alex.Here is my setup. I had to scale down the pic so it is a little blurry. I have the radio panel at the bottom right.my monitors from left to right are 20" diagonal with 1" edges, 22" diagonal with 1 1/4" edges, and 20" diagonal with 3/4" edges.John

John- NICE SETUP! I like that! I need the horizontal width of main monitor screen rather than diagonal maesurement. I assume the 1", 1 1/4" and 3/4" measurements are the actual bezel widths of each monitor. That is the left mon separation will be 2 1/4" if these monitors are touching each other- and at right separation will be 2".Alex Reid

John- looking at your pic, here are some important monitor guidelines.Any monitor- single or multiple, should be viewed squarely from your eyes to its centrepoint. In many cases, this will require some monitor tilt. A monitor viewed from even a small angle - sideways or vertically will distort the image you see.For example when your eyepoint moves sideways, the screen AND THE IMAGE appears to be narrower than what is actually displayed. A diagonal line from corner to corner in the image will get progessively closer to vertical as your head is shifted sideways. That's why a visitor sitting beside you will see a very distorted view of FS.----------#1 Apply whatever tilt is needed to set main monitor to being square before your eyes.#2 Twist the outer monitors toward you until each appears to be square to your line of sight. Typically this will be somewhere between 35-45

John- looking at your pic, here are some important monitor guidelines.Any monitor- single or multiple, should be viewed squarely from your eyes to its centrepoint. In many cases, this will require some monitor tilt. A monitor viewed from even a small angle - sideways or vertically will distort the image you see.For example when your eyepoint moves sideways, the screen AND THE IMAGE appears to be narrower than what is actually displayed. A diagonal line from corner to corner in the image will get progessively closer to vertical as your head is shifted sideways. That's why a visitor sitting beside you will see a very distorted view of FS.----------#1 Apply whatever tilt is needed to set main monitor to being square before your eyes.#2 Twist the outer monitors toward you until each appears to be square to your line of sight. Typically this will be somewhere between 35-45

Alex. Yes that is the correct assumption on the bezel widths. The main monitor is 18 5/8" in horizontal viewing width. Thanks for the work on this. I will be interested to see how it works out!John

John- The 21/4 " & 2" separations between screens are the equivalent of 5.4

John - part#3: some thoughts on multi mons.1.You like me, use outer monitors of different sizes. To equalize the size of objects between mons: Drag the view from a side mon onto the larger main mon and size it same width as main view. Drag it back to the outer mon and keep dragging till the inner edge of the view is exactly at the bezel. This causes some of the far end of the view to "fall off" the far edge of the outer mon but that's ok- all objects/ paint marks etc are now same size as main mon. In effect I display a 19" image on a 17" monitor!!2.NEVER let the edge of a side view overlap the adjacent monitor!!! Big frame rate hit. But popups appear ok for overlapping. Big popups such as Overhead Panels seem to hurt FPS- I open them only as needed. Most other popups seem to have little effect on frame rate.3. When you have a flight set up perfectly, save it- then reopen it to start up with the display settings ready to go. You may need a few very minor tweaks to repostion something but on the whole it reopens 98% as you saved it.4. You need to adjust Panel Config for each aircraft.5. Full screen doesn't work for me. However you can easily hide task and menu bars and change colours of title bars/lettering. I use black with dark green letters. The result is VERY close to the appearance of full Screen.6. Don't be unduly concerned by the apparent frame rate drop with triple mons. Remember there is only one CPU so only one monitor/view is being updated at any moment- the other two are always static- they have an infinitely high frame rate. With 2/3 of your view being displayed with "perfect smoothness" and 1/3 at an "acceptable" frame rate- what does the pilot see? A very smooth wide picture! Frame rate seems to mean very little here. I can even fly comfortably with the FPS as low as 7-8. There is some nearby object chatter then but overall the whole wide scene is very flyable! The secret of course is that the 3 images are correctly blended into one wide picture.Generally my display at say 18-22 is just as smooth as single monitor at 35-45 FPS.The attached screenshot gives an idea of how closely the 3 views can be integrated. And this pic distorts my visual reality because it assumes the 3 monitors are in line- not angled, and it removes bezels and shows the views as touching rather than bezel separated!Alex ReidDreamFleet Bonanza ready for T/O at Duluth R27