PMDG on 4K 28" monitor

[por930 51]

I have been trying to work out the conundrum of the 4k monitor for use with my PMDG A/C for FSX or P3D in less than 40" monitor size. I have been discussing with another member via pm but thought I might ask the PMDG community for their experiences.

I was looking at a 28" 4k monitor with a 4k games display, and it looked great. but when the sales rep went back to the Win10 screen, the text was squished up to the left hand side. He said, yeah...normal, these monitors really are for gaming or movies and you need a second normal HD monitor for work...When we looked at a 42" 4k TV, as a monitor, this was a lot better. I do not have the room on my office desk for larger than 32".

Now, as you know, loading for example the PMDG 747v3, it will work well in FSX/P3D 4k. But what happens to all the supporting programs I use like, weather, ATC, flight planning etc. None of these are 4k and will become victims of the 4k resolution. I read that I can change the scaling in Win10 to make the text more readable, but also read that some text is often not able to be scaled, and then what happens to the 4k format if scaling is used?

Unless some one has got the scaling to a position it can handle the native resolution of 3840x2160 while in FSX/P3D...AND...in another window be able to handle the flight sim supporting programs, I might simply buy a 31" 2560x1440 monitor that is pretty good at both flight sim and general stuff.

I had a look at several formats. I thought as long as I kept my pixel count/mm to about that of HD in the larger than 24"screens, then all should be sweet!

    

[RichBowman 1]

If you're using Windows 10, I'm sure there's a text scaling option (selected as a percentage) that you use to fix the small text issues.

Can't remember where it is found - but guessing somewhere in the display settings - hopefully that'll negate the need for a second monitor!
 

Am sure others will chip in to confirm.

All the best,

 

Rich

Edit: Oops - just saw you know about the scaling. I've used it on a work PC with 4k and it worked really well with all the applications. Wasn't aware that some didn't play nicely!

[Matthew Murray 0]

Geoff,

I have two screens, one 4K 3840x2160 and the other an older 1680x1050 screen. I run FSX/Prepar3D on the 4K with no anti-aliasing. I run ActiveSky Next/2016, Navigraph Charts and Adobe Reader for the manuals without much issue, each program generally adapts to whatever screen it is on.

The charts program has a bug when scrolling/moving a zoomed chart on the 4K screen, but isn't an issue on the non-4K screen.

The PMDG Ops Centre works correctly.

The annoying issue I have is with Adobe Reader, it stays at the 4K scaling, even when on the non-4K monitor. This means the menu bar and toolbar are twice the size, leaving less room for the document. I normally just press F8 to hide the toolbar, and F9 to hide the menu bar.

High DPI UI is up to each program to implement, and support is getting better all the time. Older, Win32-style applications will always struggle.

I'd still recommend the setup but ultimately would like to get a second 4K screen.

 

[elmucki 32]

i run a 39" 4K TV and have zero issues. All i did was remove the option here (https://gyazo.com/f8d4b184cdfd228c2ccea232464c26be) to what you see. Thats it.

[por930 51]

Thanks for the replies Ric and Matthew

Yes I saw where scaling and other magic can be performed, especially with Win10. Because I use the MD11 and the 747v1, I have not bothered with exchanging Win7 for Win10, otherwise I lose them.(and I can hear some saying, no worries, get 747v3, and the MD11 is past it)...If I want to go to a 4K monitor, maybe I have no choice but to move to WIN10!!

I was trying to understand if I scale and whatever else, the 4k machine driving the monitor to read the HD flight sim support text, is Win10 smart enough to ignore the scaling when the 4K monitor uses the native 4k for FSX?...sort of, the monitor displays full screen 4K FSX, then I swap to another window session to look at ASN weather, and the monitor then scales up for reading the text etc, then reverts back to 4K full screen when back with FSX?

Matthew, So, you probably have Win10? on the machine driving the 4K monitor, which apparently, makes scaling 'better' when you load P3D. Do you have both monitors off the same video card and 'share' the text workload? on the 1680x1050 monitor? You do not say what size your 4K monitor is.

It seems like the 4K monitor is before its time and some of the win32 style applications are in need of replacement, which is further accentuated with Win7.  

[por930 51]

7 minutes ago, elmucki said:

i run a 39" 4K TV and have zero issues. All i did was remove the option here (https://gyazo.com/f8d4b184cdfd228c2ccea232464c26be) to what you see. Thats it.

Michael, This look like a screen capture tool that resizes the picture for display? Also, you have a great screen size where scaling is less of an issue. When you look at your screen size and the pixels/mm and a 18.5" HD monitor, the pixels/mm are almost the same, making life for you much easier. 

I am looking how best to change the scaling of the HD screen information to be able to read it in the 28" 4K screen without having to reboot. 

Maybe as Matthew says, most of the PMDG supporting programs can be read on a 4K monitor.

[Matthew Murray 0]

41 minutes ago, por930 said:

Matthew, So, you probably have Win10? on the machine driving the 4K monitor, which apparently, makes scaling 'better' when you load P3D. Do you have both monitors off the same video card and 'share' the text workload? on the 1680x1050 monitor? You do not say what size your 4K monitor is.

It seems like the 4K monitor is before its time and some of the win32 style applications are in need of replacement, which is further accentuated with Win7.  

1

Geoff,

Yes, I use Windows 10 Pro 64-bit. The 4K screen is a 28" Asus PB287Q 4K Gaming Monitor, the other a 21.6" Samsung SyncMaster 2253LW.

Windows 8/10 don't offer the developer any "better" scaling over Windows 7, but there are improvements to how the OS alerts the program to changes in DPI, and how the developer then chooses to respond to those changes. The OS does a lot behind the scenes from using brute-force doubling of pixels on applications that don't support scaling well (native Win32), to providing the necessary notifications e.g. that an application window is changing between different DPI's, and even giving suggesting window sizes to the application. These are of course hidden to the end user, but allow the application to respond well to the changes.

TLDR; - Each application is fully in control of how it displays itself, and the OS does most the grunt work in alerting the program to any changes in DPI.

It is important to understand that with FSX the UI does not scale (i believe it's a bitmapped MFC-style app over Win32), but that when the simulator environment is drawn to the screen (to the back-buffer in graphics-speak), it is at the full resolution you choose in the FSX settings. Just as you can resize a windowed FSX, the back buffer will adjust for whatever resolution screen FSX is running on.

[por930 51]

Thanks for the reply Matthew. FSX still works very well considering the hardware changes that have been developed. Looking forward, P3D seems to handle flight sim and PMDG very well and I believe P3D uses the video card more than FSX does. It looks like P3D is the way forward. Just means I have to junk my MD11...or I can dual boot into Win7/FSX/MD11, (ummm, now that's an option!!) Both FS platforms still rely heavily on the processor.

Looks like I have to roll the dice and see how a 4K monitor works for me. 

[Hoang 108]

2 hours ago, por930 said:

Thanks for the reply Matthew. FSX still works very well considering the hardware changes that have been developed. Looking forward, P3D seems to handle flight sim and PMDG very well and I believe P3D uses the video card more than FSX does. It looks like P3D is the way forward. Just means I have to junk my MD11...or I can dual boot into Win7/FSX/MD11, (ummm, now that's an option!!) Both FS platforms still rely heavily on the processor.

Looks like I have to roll the dice and see how a 4K monitor works for me. 

Hello,
I have just moved to P3D and I can see the big difference in terms of performance (and other aspects as well). When using FSX:SE my video card only works around 20-30% even in heavy cloud but with P3D it works 99%.

The only thing is I just invested a lot into FSX:SE, especially all the PMDG aircrafts. Buying each one again for P3D now.

Hoang Le.