Hi all! First off, I'm a newbie on all of this, so go easy on me. This may have already been answered, although I have yet to find a specific post on it. I'm wanting to put two 19" monitors side by side and have a forward Captain's and forward First Officer's view, one in each monitor. I know how to get views in different windows and monitors OK, but I'm not sure how to create these views so that they look as one view out the flight deck when put together(side by side). I'm not worried about panels at this point, as it will be on a different monitor as well. Any help would be appreciated!-Marcus

MarcusIf you do this on a single computer it will kill your framerates. You can run two veiws using two networked computers. It requires WideView or WideFS, I forget which. Both utilities are by Pete Dowson and can be found here: www.schiratti.com/dowson.html. However you can run things like the radio stack, GPS, throttle quadrant, etc. on a secund monitor with no framerate hit.David

Marcus,As David said on 1 PC your frames will suffer - unless you get a graphics card that has monitor-spanning support. An example is the Matrox Parhelia card that supports 3 monitors. http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/home.cfmThe difference with these cards is that Windows sees the 2 or 3 monitors as a single display device (just with a really wide resolution like 3072x768). This way Flight Sim only has to render 1 3d window on one DirectX device (just like normal) - the card just spans it over 2 or 3 monitors.I read another forum post somewhere that nVidia has something similar but I can't be sure - maybe someone who knows can chip in.The alternative is indeed multiple networked computers - you need WideVieW (which is by Luciano Napolitano - www.wideview.it). The 2004 version is still in beta at the moment. Last time I looked there were still a few problems that needed sorting.With the graphic card method the horizons are not going to match up in a bank because of the gap in between the image caused by the borders of the monitors. The image does not continue on 'behind' the borders of the monitor like your brain assumes it should. LCD panels can lessen this as they have thinner borders. It's probably livable-with though.DeltaFlight (www.deltaflight.com) use converters to CRTs with hardly any borders at all (and the Matrox card). They just use the tubes without any casing. OK their setup is a bit special, but it's an idea.WideVieW however, when setup correctly, can compensate for this gap. The image looks like it carries on behind the monitor or lcd borders.Be aware also that with only two monitors the gap in the image in going to be on the runway centre line (unless you land off-centre). Three monitors solves this but it's obviously more expensive (especially the WideVieW route as you need 3 PCs).WideFS by Peter Dowson will not help in running multiple views - it's for running FSUIPC programs on remote machines.Paul

So most people use the spanning? I have a Sapphire Radeon 9600XT(Dual Head) that supports spanning just fine, and I've already set that up once in windows but never tried to see what it looked like in FS2004. I take it you can only stretch the outside views, as I'm sure the 2D cockpit would become quite distorted? How is the realisim once the outside view is "stretched" across? Does it need to be adjusted for realism any(viewing angles, etc.)? I'm thinking more and more about just running gauges in the other monitor because I have to use this machine for work sometimes as well, and stretching the screen gets annoying to me at times. I'd rather normally have two seperate desktops to work with. I wouldn't take much of a frame rate hit as well then. Maybe when I get those "extra" 5 monitors and computers that are laying around here hooked up with WideView, etc., then I'll mess more with this! :)

The spanning option is a fairly recent development with the newer cards. WideVieW has been around since FS98 days. Spanning is what I'm going to be using. The WideView option is too expensive for me and it's more complicated to setup - espiecially with synchronising weather and date/time between the views.You're right about the panel in 2D Mode - if you pull it accross the 2 montiors it won't be pretty. If you use the virtual cockpit mode it'll be fine.If you want to run 2D cockpit, a cheap PCI graphics card with XP Drivers (GForce 4 MX or something) and another monitor will let you run the panel on a seperate monitor. When in the sim, be in windowed mode (not full screen - Alt-Enter toggles these modes) - right click on the panel and select 'undock' from the menu. The panel will then be in its own window which you can drag onto any monitor.This works for any view or panel.For 2 montor outside view you will need to adjust the view angle otherwise you'll just have the one monitor view but stretched. In FS it's the Zoom setting you'll need to adjust in the view options. This is really just personal taste - I suspect somewhere around 0.50 - 0.60 would work well. Note that decreasing the zoom will lower frame rates but it's not too bad a hit.Paul

Thanks for all your replies! I think I'll try the spanning and see if I like it. I do have another 17" monitor and ATI 128 PCI card, I may try that for the panel. Then I'll have two 19" and one 17". I might reduce my resolution a little since I'll be using multiple monitors, that may help the frame rates some(I'm using 1600x1200 now) We'll see how it goes!