P3D on multiple PC network.

[Wooly 0]

Hi everyone. I’ve struggled finding reliable information on multi-PC setups, so I thought I would share my findings here.

 

Yes I do have multiple licenses (That’s that out of the way)

 

My main use for my computers is photography, and that has influenced some of my buying decisions, a 27” Eizo coloredge is not necessary for a flight sim!

 

PC 1 (Main flying computer). This is a 6 core I7 with 32Gb RAM, water cooled and clocked at 4G. I have a R9 290X connected to 27” (1920 x 1200) and a 23” (1920 x 1080) monitor. The R9 allows me to run a mismatched monitor eyefinity setup with my VC spread across both monitors. This runs at ~60fps with maxed out textures for both the cockpit and terrain. I turn down the scenery content because it not required for the VC, but because I do see the landscape scrolling past, I have the terrain detail maxed out.

 

PC 2 (Main forward view). This is a 4 core I7 with 16Gb RAM, water cooled clocked at 3.7G. It has my oldest GPU, a GTX670 connected to my Eizo 27” (2560 x 1440) with a 30’ field of view. This also runs at ~60fps with maximum terrain detail and textures. But I do have some of the scenery detail trimmed back.

 

PC 3 (Left and right views). This is a Mac-Pro 2 x 2.66 Xeon CPU with 32Gb RAM and a GTX680 GPU Running Bootcamp). Connected to 2 23” (1920 x 1080) Monitors. These run at ~40fps with the same settings as forward view.

 

PC4 (Weather/Mapping/Navigation etc) My aging Mac-Book-Pro again with bootamp.

 

I run with Pilots, Orbx and Sim720 scenery and REX with soft clouds and giant Sun!

 

All 3 PC have the latest 2.5 with hot fix applied.

 

My network views are controlled with Wideview and wide traffic. I’ve tried the built in network set up, but that looses the ATC facility.  I have also tried other third part weather live view system, but I found it tricky to get going and it had more of a FPS impact. To calculate the field of views a drafted out the layout in CAD (I’m an engineer) including the bezel gaps. From that I could calculate the angle of view and offset to several decimal places. This gives me a perfect alignment.

 

My weather is Pilots FS Global real weather running on the Mac book pro, which syncs to multiple PCs perfectly.

 

One main improvement I found was running P3D on separate SSDs to my boot drives including the Mac Pro, I have bootcamp on one SSD and P3D on a OWC accelsior running at 6Gps.

 

I had the outside views configured the opposite way round with the Mac-pro being my main view. I was getting better FPS on the side views, but after about 30 mins the side views would CTD! Despite lots of adjustments to detail levels I couldn’t get it 100% reliable. Since the swap I have not had one CTD.

 

All of the above has been quite an investment in both time and pocket money. But it’s a lot cheaper than a Cessna!