Hi all,I just purchased a 23" hp widescreen LCD monitor and I have questions about these types of monitors when using flight simulator 2004. First of all, the monitor has an auto-adjustment and recommends that I use 1920x1080 resolution. I like the widescreen monitor but the problem is that in the 2D cockpit of flight simulator 2004, the panel is stretched out and the round dials are compressed, so I assume that flight simulator was not designed for wide screen monitors. It does seem to look okay in the virtual cockpit. In flight simulator under the display hardware tab, I normally use the 1024x720 resolution. With this setting in the spot view, the aircraft is really stretched out and compressed. But when I set the resolution to 1920x1080 as recommended by the monitor, the aircraft view looks correct. But when I set it to 1920x1080, I noticed that the frame rate is more jerky, and it is still slightly jerky in 1024x720. The LCD monitor seems to be more jerky and more demanding on frame rate than the CRT type that I was using. Since this is the case, are LCD monitors more demanding on flight simulator frame rates than the CRT types? I wonder if I did the right thing by purchasing the LCD monitor. Is there anything I can do to correct these problems with my LCD monitor?Ken Manning

Drag and resize 2D, they work like windows. Don't know about frame rate issue.

The higher the resolution you run, the more stress on the computer...the less frame rate.And no, default 2D panels in fs9 were not designed for widescreen. Many add-on planes though have an option to download a widescreen version of their 2D panel. VC and the outside world work just fine in wide screen.The main difference between CRTs and LCD is that LCD must use native resolution to get a good picture. Since that is 1920x1080 for you, you should only use that resolution otherwise the picture is terrible because of the fixed number of pixels.

Hi all,I just purchased a 23" hp widescreen LCD monitor and I have questions about these types of monitors when using flight simulator 2004. First of all, the monitor has an auto-adjustment and recommends that I use 1920x1080 resolution. I like the widescreen monitor but the problem is that in the 2D cockpit of flight simulator 2004, the panel is stretched out and the round dials are compressed, so I assume that flight simulator was not designed for wide screen monitors. It does seem to look okay in the virtual cockpit. In flight simulator under the display hardware tab, I normally use the 1024x720 resolution. With this setting in the spot view, the aircraft is really stretched out and compressed. But when I set the resolution to 1920x1080 as recommended by the monitor, the aircraft view looks correct. But when I set it to 1920x1080, I noticed that the frame rate is more jerky, and it is still slightly jerky in 1024x720. The LCD monitor seems to be more jerky and more demanding on frame rate than the CRT type that I was using. Since this is the case, are LCD monitors more demanding on flight simulator frame rates than the CRT types? I wonder if I did the right thing by purchasing the LCD monitor. Is there anything I can do to correct these problems with my LCD monitor?Ken Manning

Ken- when you increase resolution to 1920x1080 you dramatically increase the number of pixels. So the CPU has to work that much harder to compute them, hence slower frame rates. That would explain the difference you see between the CRT and the wide LCD. I have triple monitors a CRT and 2 LCDs- it's the processor and how much work it has to do that largely controls FPS.With your wide monitor, simply drag the right edge of the 2D panel leftward until the gauges are round again. This will leave a blank area of desktop which you fill in with popups. in the attached (experimental/demo) pic (PMDG 747) I have added in the lower EICAS, EICAS Sw panel and Misc Sw Panel. Or you could fill with FMC or Throttle popups. Either way the panel looks better and is more functional.Alex Reid

Ken- when you increase resolution to 1920x1080 you dramatically increase the number of pixels. So the CPU has to work that much harder to compute them, hence slower frame rates. That would explain the difference you see between the CRT and the wide LCD. I have triple monitors a CRT and 2 LCDs- it's the processor and how much work it has to do that largely controls FPS.With your wide monitor, simply drag the right edge of the 2D panel leftward until the gauges are round again. This will leave a blank area of desktop which you fill in with popups. in the attached (experimental/demo) pic (PMDG 747) I have added in the lower EICAS, EICAS Sw panel and Misc Sw Panel. Or you could fill with FMC or Throttle popups. Either way the panel looks better and is more functional.Alex Reid

I ended up making my own 2D panels for my 24" monitor. It's not that difficult - make a new bitmap that fits your monitor then adjust the gauges using FS Panel Studio.

Thanks, Dolph. I had thought about that, but sometimes the disclaimer wording FSPanel Studio, actually screws up the panel, so I'm a little leery about quickly recommending that course of action. You might consider uploading those new panels to AVSIM and FlightSim -- I know there may be copyright issues, but they'd sure be handy for people less adept.

Thanks, Dolph. I had thought about that, but sometimes the disclaimer wording FSPanel Studio, actually screws up the panel, so I'm a little leery about quickly recommending that course of action. You might consider uploading those new panels to AVSIM and FlightSim -- I know there may be copyright issues, but they'd sure be handy for people less adept.

I don't mind sharing but I use a few odd addons in my panels as well, like a fuel gauge and some other stuff. There would be too many issues for that to work unless those who download it has a /FSX/gauges folder that looked exactly like mine, know what I mean? Like opening a can of worms.I don't know about the copyrights either. I use the original panel as a base and stretch or otherwise change the format so it's not exactly the same. Plus, I have done it for different planes than most fly like the Flight1 ATR 72-500 and the Eaglesoft Citation X (comes with a widescreen panel but I modified it anyways) and Citation II. I did do one common panel - the Cessna 182 in both black and Cessna beige but I didn't think anyone would be interested.

ATR F1 blue panel wide is very welcome