It depends on each aircraft, but some, notably the glass cockpit ones, and particularly the Cessna citation.. I can't read the instruments very well because the altitude and speed numbers are rather small.

Overall I feel like the numbers on instruments are a bit blurry and not as crisp as they could be.

My graphics are set to high.My monitor is a 22" at 1680x1050. I was considering getting a 24" 1920x1080 screen. Would this help? Another thing I'm wondering is the anti-aliasing, could it be applied to the instruments exclusively?

For now I'm in between zooming in to the point I lose much of the outside view, and a view good for looking around but I have trouble reading the instruments.

Have you tried the instrument views ?  (CTRL +0 , CTRL +1 etc or A to cycle through them).

The other thing you could try is setting the render scaling in display settings higher than 100 .

From default view most glass instruments are a bit small. A bigger monitor will help but it also places additional pressure on your graphics card. If you are in the market, try go 1440P, not 1920x1080. It will make more of a difference. 
 

What works so well for me is Track-IR. It solves this problem entirely. Apart from getting far more of a surrounding view (by just moving your head naturally as you do in real life, just leaning slightly forward for a moment brings everything closer and makes reading small numbers a breeze. It is truly a fantastic piece of kit for this sim.

7 hours ago, cantremember said:

It depends on each aircraft, but some, notably the glass cockpit ones, and particularly the Cessna citation.. I can't read the instruments very well because the altitude and speed numbers are rather small.

Overall I feel like the numbers on instruments are a bit blurry and not as crisp as they could be.

My graphics are set to high.My monitor is a 22" at 1680x1050. I was considering getting a 24" 1920x1080 screen. Would this help? Another thing I'm wondering is the anti-aliasing, could it be applied to the instruments exclusively?

For now I'm in between zooming in to the point I lose much of the outside view, and a view good for looking around but I have trouble reading the instruments.

check the new setting for speed blur, or whatever it is and try it with it set on and off..  I found, that at my resoltion and setting that option off really sharpened the interior views and the lettering on the controls and screens.

Graham

We all have this problem to a degree because the default views are set well back, which is fine for me, as I like a wider view, and if needed I just change it to read the instruments (mainly just the G1000 etc.)

One thing is for sure, going from 1050 to 1080 will only give you 30 more pixels depth and will not really help you.

As others have said, best options are: -

1.  Use the instrument views, which are also 'down' on any joystick top hat switch if you want to do it quickly, then 'up' again to return to your view.  After going down, you can also go sideways on the top hat switch to change screens / views.

2.  Buy a monitor capable of at least 1440 (4k even better and are becoming cheaper).

3.  See how far you can push up render scaling in TAA mode without lowering your frames per second too much. On a lower res monitor this will not achieve much though - there is no substitute for having a good native pixel count!

PS. Ensure you are using TAA and Anisotropic at 16, and only ever upscale if you can (120%, 130% etc.).  Super sampling doesn't seem to do anything with TAA on so doesn't really need to be set.

I think the working title CJ4 mod has bigger and clearer fonts, that might help