I have noticed recently that there are several of us, like Iceman2 and MaxTechGuyC, that are looking for the best performance of a multiple monitor FSX configuration where three of the monitors are of the 3D out-the-window scene and possibly another monitor for 2D instruments and such. The NV 680 is the first card to provide this in a single card (yes, I have used the Matrox TH2GO in the past but now I want to drive 3x1920x1080 at 60 hz or better) and it has tremendous performance - but still not necessarily enough for the most complex situations. I hope to stimulate others to try this amazing wrap around view configuration because if you already have the 680, adding two more 1920x1080 monitors can be fairly inexpensive these days. There are several concepts to setup including windowed, which I prefer, or fullscreen - NVSurround or not, and then all sorts of zoom factor considerations. Also, there are the concerns about using Vsync for this mode of operation.

What I would like to encourage at this point is to do some informal benchmarking at your own choice of scenery positions, maybe just using SLEW mode to get to an eyepoint position and hitting an arrow key to make it pan left or right for some movement and then report your FPS. For example, with an eyepoint just above the Washington monument and initially looking at the White House, I get about 48 fps (Unlimited) with Scenery Very Dense, Autogen Dense, minimal water setting, and NO traffic (Zoom on all three monitors at .6). At my home airport (KCRQ - very simple scenery there), I get 55 FPS, and at FlyTampa Hong Kong VHHX, right near the main terminal, I get 22 FPS. Obviously, for minimal stutters, you may be using Vsync and locked frames - so please report on your best configuration settings for that. I don't see this as trying to impress each other, but just to help find some of the best setups. For example, I read the one thread about one of us who had a 590 dual GPU and went to a 680 but found less performance (so far). I tried reducing the side views to small windows (maybe 400x300) and noticed that my FPS went up maybe 10->15 percent - maybe a 690 would handle that better (but who has the coins??).

Anyway, I would appreciate comments from those who have such a configuration on finding the best drivers, the best CFG tweaks, the best minimal stuttering parameters, etc. Perhaps some of you are trying Prepar3D in this mode as well. I find it is about 10% slower in FPS but has many other redeeming features.

 

Thanks

 

Dave

P.S. I have found some situations where FSX with three separate 3D windows has the buildings (Scenery Objects, not Autogen) at improper heights - let me know if you notice this. I can solve this by setting Options->Settings->Display->Scenery Objects to Very Sparse, reload, and then return it to Very Dense and reload.

I have noticed recently that there are several of us, like Iceman2 and MaxTechGuyC, that are looking for the best performance of a multiple monitor FSX configuration where three of the monitors are of the 3D out-the-window scene and possibly another monitor for 2D instruments and such. The NV 680 is the first card to provide this in a single card (yes, I have used the Matrox TH2GO in the past but now I want to drive 3x1920x1080 at 60 hz or better) and it has tremendous performance - but still not necessarily enough for the most complex situations. I hope to stimulate others to try this amazing wrap around view configuration because if you already have the 680, adding two more 1920x1080 monitors can be fairly inexpensive these days. There are several concepts to setup including windowed, which I prefer, or fullscreen - NVSurround or not, and then all sorts of zoom factor considerations. Also, there are the concerns about using Vsync for this mode of operation.

What I would like to encourage at this point is to do some informal benchmarking at your own choice of scenery positions, maybe just using SLEW mode to get to an eyepoint position and hitting an arrow key to make it pan left or right for some movement and then report your FPS. For example, with an eyepoint just above the Washington monument and initially looking at the White House, I get about 48 fps (Unlimited) with Scenery Very Dense, Autogen Dense, minimal water setting, and NO traffic (Zoom on all three monitors at .6). At my home airport (KCRQ - very simple scenery there), I get 55 FPS, and at FlyTampa Hong Kong VHHX, right near the main terminal, I get 22 FPS. Obviously, for minimal stutters, you may be using Vsync and locked frames - so please report on your best configuration settings for that. I don't see this as trying to impress each other, but just to help find some of the best setups. For example, I read the one thread about one of us who had a 590 dual GPU and went to a 680 but found less performance (so far). I tried reducing the side views to small windows (maybe 400x300) and noticed that my FPS went up maybe 10->15 percent - maybe a 690 would handle that better (but who has the coins??).

Anyway, I would appreciate comments from those who have such a configuration on finding the best drivers, the best CFG tweaks, the best minimal stuttering parameters, etc. Perhaps some of you are trying Prepar3D in this mode as well. I find it is about 10% slower in FPS but has many other redeeming features.

 

Thanks

 

Dave

P.S. I have found some situations where FSX with three separate 3D windows has the buildings (Scenery Objects, not Autogen) at improper heights - let me know if you notice this. I can solve this by setting Options->Settings->Display->Scenery Objects to Very Sparse, reload, and then return it to Very Dense and reload.

 

Dave:

 

I am very interested in following this thread. I presently use a 42 inch LCD TV connected to a 560Ti OC video card. I am at the point in my simming where I want to move to three monitors to display the cockpit and side views. I am trying to decide whether to go with the TH2G configuration or to upgrade to a 680. My plan is to use two 42 inch LED/LCD TVs for the side panels and a 53 inch LED/LCD for the front panel. All TVs to be driven at 1920 X 1080 @ 60 hz.

 

I have a couple questions. Are you using a frame limiter (internal or external)? How much memory is on your 680?

 

Thanks

Danny,

Glad you are interested. I am using three small 21" screens at home but one fellow in my area is using three 50" HDTVs. One side note - make sure you choose an HDTV that has a fairly small lag (less than 50 milliseconds - NOT the spec called response time which is a different hardware issue) when setup up for gaming mode. Otherwise, flying manually will be difficult. An FAA recommendations for lag from column pull to horizon movement on the visual is a total of 100 msec which includes sensing the column pull, simulator frame delay (usually 1 and 1/2 times your frametime), and then visual delay. Here is a writeup and the program to run on your laptop when you go to an HDTV dealer.

http://www.flatpanelshd.com/focus.php?subaction=showfull&id=1229335064

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1131464/input-lag-wars-post-your-input-lag-results-of-your-lcd-display-here-for-reference

 

The NV680 has 2gb of memory - what I have seen with EVGA Precision GPU mem usage is about 1.2gb for Word Not Allowed's 8Xs and 2XGSS AA and a complex airport. As yet, I am running mostly using unlimited without Vsync - probably not my final setup.

Danny,

Glad you are interested. I am using three small 21" screens at home but one fellow in my area is using three 50" HDTVs. One side note - make sure you choose an HDTV that has a fairly small lag (less than 50 milliseconds - NOT the spec called response time which is a different hardware issue) when setup up for gaming mode. Otherwise, flying manually will be difficult. An FAA recommendations for lag from column pull to horizon movement on the visual is a total of 100 msec which includes sensing the column pull, simulator frame delay (usually 1 and 1/2 times your frametime), and then visual delay. Here is a writeup and the program to run on your laptop when you go to an HDTV dealer.

http://www.flatpanel...l&id=1229335064

http://www.avsforum....e-for-reference

 

The NV680 has 2gb of memory - what I have seen with EVGA Precision GPU mem usage is about 1.2gb for Word Not Allowed's 8Xs and 2XGSS AA and a complex airport. As yet, I am running mostly using unlimited without Vsync - probably not my final setup.

 

Dave:

 

Thanks for the informaton. I am aware of the lag issues, and, appreciate your reminding me. I fly mostly helicopters and use Orbx scenary. Three monitors to provide some periphial vision would really be great. I hope others with multiple displays chime in.

 

Danny

Would love to share some benchmark results in Surround mode. Just one problem: it doesn't work at anywhere close to full resolution on my system because of a bug in Nvidia's driver that has existed dating back to to the 280 series drivers. If your monitors have different EDID info (usually the vertical/horizontal sync polarity values) the driver thinks it can't run in Surround mode, despite the fact that the monitors can all be driven at the appropriate resolution independently. I have searched online and attempted every known fix but nothing is working for me so I'm out of luck until NV wakes up and fixes this.

TechGuyMaxC,

Do you run only in FULLSCREEN or do you experiment with WINDOWED? Some of us like the freedom for other apps that WINDOWED provides. I run with just the 2D instrument panel displays running on a fourth monitor and therefore get very good performance on the three 3D monitors - typically over 40 frames per second (I run traffic at minimal levels though). For me, the scenery is the priority.

Hi

 

Did a FSMark11 test 5029x1050 Nvida Surround

Tuned the PC for the normal clocker.

4.8ghz ram 2133 9 11 10 28 2T

 

2700K Evga 670OC 4096

 

Min Max Avg

5029x1050 26 54.5 37.5

1680x1050 30 65 47

 

Hasse

TechGuyMaxC,

Do you run only in FULLSCREEN or do you experiment with WINDOWED? Some of us like the freedom for other apps that WINDOWED provides. I run with just the 2D instrument panel displays running on a fourth monitor and therefore get very good performance on the three 3D monitors - typically over 40 frames per second (I run traffic at minimal levels though). For me, the scenery is the priority.

 

I haven't bothered to run in 3 screen mode yet, it just isn't right to run these monitors at such a ridiculously low resolution. When I do though, I intend to run in the VC probably 98% of the time, with outside spot views accounting for the other 2%.

Hi

 

Did a FSMark11 test 5029x1050 Nvida Surround

Tuned the PC for the normal clocker.

4.8ghz ram 2133 9 11 10 28 2T

 

2700K Evga 670OC 4096

 

Min Max Avg

5029x1050 26 54.5 37.5

1680x1050 30 65 47

 

Hasse

 

Westman,

Thanks much for a great comparison - though I am surprised at the great results. You are saying that with Surround, you only lost 10 fps to go to three monitors from the single monitor - very good! Not being familiar with Surround yet, I imagine that you have to run in FULLSCREEN mode, correct? What amount of AF and AA do you have? Any chance you could run at 3x1920x1080?

Thanks again for the report!

 

Dave

The silly thing can't even use two monitor as one!

 

I tried with my 2 X Dell 24" (2405WFP) and what I used to do with the Win XP its not possible in Win 7. Sigh!

 

My new Dell 24" 2408WFP is on the way (as the third monitor)... but from what Tech guy is saying it won't work!

 

http://support.dell....en/UG/about.htm

http://support.dell....pw/en/about.htm

 

Allthough the resolution and speed and Polarity are all the same, I was reading that the EDIC data of the 2408 differs!

 

I bought the GTX570 and the IB at 4.2 (ghz). Yes..I am gun shy of OC at this stage... After burning down two CPUs and two MB's Ha Ha

 

MAnny

In case some of you are focused solely on running NVSurround for the three monitor experience, there is another concept that doesn't involve a single super widescreen monitor(5760x1080) concept. With this idea, the left and right monitors are directed straight left and right - 90 degrees to the forward view.

 

An alternative to this distorted view concept is to run the three monitors as follows:

1. Don't set up the monitors as a single very widescreen (i.e. 5760*1080), but as three separate 1920x1080 screens. This

elimnates the use of NVSurround, of course. You may be able to try this concept even with NVSurround still enabled - you would

just run FSX in windowed mode - not full screen. When you create a new view, just right click to undock it and then move it to

one of the side monitors and resize it.

2. Set up three views, one center with Zoom = .60, one directly right (right arrow with shift key held down(release it last)),

same zoom, and one directly left at the same zoom. You can run this windowed or fullscreen. Adjust the zooms to get the merge

at your bezel to be just right.

3. Get the freeware utilities called PanelRestore so that when after you SAVE this view config as a FLT file, you can easily

restore it the next time you want to use it. http://janvaane.org/virtualfsx/?p=34

This looks better to me - objects are not distorted and this emulates looking straight left and right for approaches to the

runway - except the horizon is bent. The framerates are good but they might not be as good as NVSurround. At least try it!

Finally got 3 monitor full resolution Surround mode working! Had to create a different driver for the monitors numerous times, uninstall and reinstall said drivers, reboot many times, finally after what appeared to be a broken boot with no display I was about to give up entirely and on the next boot it finally worked! Will commence benchmarking tonight, given enough time.

Looks like my bezel adjusted resolution will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 7830x1440. Had a chance to test out the default C172 around Friday Harbor and with basically maxed out settings FPS was hovering around 100-150 :D

TechguyMaxC,

Are you saying that you are getting 100->150 fps driving that whole 7830x1440? WOW - what zoom do you use and does the distortion on the extreme sides bother you? If you can take the time, I would certainly appreciate a frames per second reading on three separate views - center, left, right - as opposed to the single but very wide view. What are your scenery settings? Taffic set to minimal or off. Also, please benchmark a busy downtown - like Seattle - amongst the buildings - both single wide view and three separate views. Thanks much!! Probably some of the others would like an FSXMark11 run?? Also, please indicate whether you have the Virtual Cockpit on/off. Many of us with the 680 or 690 will be moving the cockpit instruments to the fourth monitor - placing it lower than the center monitor?? - and just using the forward three monitors for nothing but scenery.

I'll run FSXMark 11 again at 7830x1440 when I get some more time.