I was wondering what is your guys opinion on this computer my plan was to run fs2004 with 2 screens one for scenery and other for gauges possibly with a payware 777 and some scenery addons specially interested on upgrading Frankfurt, London, Toronto Calgary and tokyo

http://m.futureshop.ca/?lang=en#/catalog/productdetails.aspx?ajax=true&sku=10182891〈=en-CA

Amd fx4300

Geforce gt610

8gb of ram

Should be good.

Make sure your operating systemis 64bit!! Essential when you have more than 4GB RAM.

If your operating system is 32bit, it will only use a max of 4GB RAM, INCLUDING that RAM of your graphics card!

That might be fine for FS2004 but, if you plan to 'expand' your simulator experience, you might soon find that the graphics card and the processor are not quite up to snuff.

 

If you can, go for a better graphics card and processor. AMD FX series is OK but you'll want faster clock speeds and possibly more cores. I'm running a GTX 760 graphics card and an FX-6350 six core processor at over 4GHZ. It's doing well until I also start doing screen capture to record my simulator flights... then the frame rates drop a bit and the processor gets hotter than what is good for it.

 

I had a 610 for a graphics card but, it simply could not keep up with two monitors.

What you have is fine for what you have, which answers you question.

It also opens the doors for guys to advise re upgrading, which is not what you asked.

 

Have fun with what you have. I have 2x versions of FS9 on my laptop. We also have built 2x simulators using FS9.

FSX is just too much effort (No, I will not debate that...)

Yes the computer is a 64 bit and alhefner how much did the frames drop with a second monitor?

Not much at all. We got 2x sims ,MB326 jet & an Avro Shackleton, at our club, Both using FS9 32bit !! Both using 2x screens. We also using a lot of scenery addons as well. Our PC.s are of a lesser spec, & no noticable frame drops at all!

We loaded Prepar3d.. Crashed & burnt!! FS9 works great, for what we need.Too much expense & hassle to change to get similar frames!

Ok thanks for the fast response and Wobbie do you guys have worked with displays like this one http://m.ebay.ca/itm/251538381934?nav=SEARCH i was thinking of building an autopilot panel, I have been researching already and seen how to wire all knobs and switches but not idea about these??

No, nothing like that. We use a large screen or projector for scenery, & a smaller screen, vertically mounted in the jet (it's a twin seater, so we have 2x screens at the back, 1x in front for the panel) & a larger screen 42" on the nose) The Shacleton.. a screen for the panel & a projector for scenery.

 

We use  BU0836X 12-Bit Joystick Boards from www.leobodnar.com

Cost was very important to us, as is immersion. So, we did not use any additional displays.

We also set up the sims that we do not have to touch the PC's keyboard at all, apart from switching the thing on (Shackleton) In the jet, we wired up the real start button to the PC's. However, as it is a 2x seater trainer , we do have a mouse & keyboard in the back seat, (for the instructor) & all controls are linked, front & rear, with switches duplicated.

 

Hope this helps.

Thanks once more, hopefully someday I won't need a keyboard anymore

Its actually quite easy. When you ready.

Good luck,

Robin

With the 610 and two monitors, the frame rate was usable at about 20FPS average. The real problem was that I had a lot of artifacts and horizontal lines that looked like garbled video showing. I upgraded to a GTX 760 and it ran both monitors fine and frame rates went up about 60%. Right now, I have the gtx 760 driving the main simulator monitor and the 610 installed to drive my second monitor. Both monitors are working quite well in that configuration but, doing that did not improve anything really...

I had something similar with verticle lines. Remember, your eyes cannot see more than 25 fps anyway.

Wobbie, when I upgraded my graphics card, not only did the frame rate increase but, the performance/responsiveness of my simulator overall greatly improved... no more delays between moving a control and seeing the effect so the whole experience improved. I can only speculate as to why that happened.

Better graphics card, more graphics RAM there to be used.

BTW, getting back to keyboards...

What we did at our club, was to get a 2nd keyboard, remapped (FSuipc was a great help), group similar functions & relabel key. We had the keyboard flat, slightly raised but vertical .

so, for example, all the radio keys were remapped & grouped together . Only problem was that obviously everything on the main keyboard was duplicated as well. Not a problem tho, as, doing things this way, you dont really have to use the original keyboard.

Jeez, I hope that makes sense! lol.