Twin monitors

[garydpoole 183]

HiHaving read a previous thread on running fs2002 using two monitors, this has fuelled my interest in the subject. I've recently upgraded my system and now have an old amd k63-400 system sitting around collecting dust. The setup i'd like is to have my main monitor display the standard cockpit view with the second (14") monitor display gps, radio stack etc.Does anyone have any advice (or links) on how to go about running fs2002 using two machines across a network (the actual network part is not the problem here) I'm assuming that running across a network is the best way to ensure that there's no drop in frame rates - is this correct ?Any advice gratefully received

[JLedford 0]

Hello,If all you want is to display like you said, gps and radio you do not need a second networked machine. All you need is a second video card, or a single card with mx outs. One machine will power both monitors and you will then extend your desktop over to the second monitor, undock your gps, radio stack and simply drag them over to the second monitor.This will accomplish what you need and will not have an impact on your frames. I do just this and run FS2K2 on a PIII 500.The video card you choose will need to be PCI if you are adding a second card, or AGP if you are replacing your actual card with a mx output card. If you go the route of selecting a second PCI card, it does not need to be very powerful, you can select cheap card.If your second machine can run FS2K2, then you could network the two machines and use the second monitor for mx outside views using wideview.Best of luck, and hope that this has provided you with enough info to complete your second monitor addition.Search this forum as well as the PIC forum and there should be additional info on this topic.Regards,Jay

[Guest SD Sim]

Excellent advice Jay :-). The only thing that I would add is to be cautious with adding a second PCI card. Several people (including myself) have experienced an extreme drop in performance (frame rates and otherwise) when combining an AGP card for main views with a PCI card for instruments. I have not been able to figure out why this is, but perhaps it's related to the onboard memory for the PCI card (??). Here I'm thinking that less might be better, and if you can, go with a GPU chipset that is different between the AGP and PCI (i.e. nVidia AGP coupled with Ati PCI). If possible, I think the best solution was your other recommendation: dual outs such as found on the MX cards, or the GF4 Ti4600 (that's what I use). That's my 2 cents worth. Edit - almost forgot to mention that given the original posters current equipment, it would seem to me that the simplest, most cost effective choice would be to network the two computers and use the client to display the instrument panels. This will certainly work great without any performance impact.

[Toys_R_Us 0]

I did not experience any hit at all by adding a second monitor for instruments only. And... It's a dream with FS Navigator.It will stall-out severly if use with an active FS view window however.A couple of "Copy and Pastes" from my previous posts on this subject.First...You can always drag an object to Monitor 2 by undocking it. But on some systems you can not get the mouse pointer over to monitor 2 without first dragging something over there (if the Sim is in full screen mode). In this case, a neat trick is to place your mouse pointer on the very right edge of the screen until the pointer "splits", and left click the mouse. It will then go over there. You must do this if you send FSNav over to Monitor 2 by using it's on screen Icon, and you have not yet undocked and dragged something else over there.Also, some key commands may not work if the mouse pointer is parked over on monitor 2 (Example - Some Falcon 50 VC eyepoint movement keys). When this happens, move the mouse pointer back to monitor 1, and left click it. The keys will then work again. Also:I just did this myself, and it is great.Also it was quit simple, in my case.I bought a cheap 19 inch monitor for $169.00, and an inexpensive PCI video card for $49.95 (PNY-Verto TNT2-M64), from TigerDirect.com.I thought about a 17" LCD, but with the 19 inch monitors being so cheap, I thought they would all come down by a like amount very quickly and probably have better resolution and recovery.After installation of the second card (the PCI card), the machine recognized everything automatically and no software had to be loaded. You find this out in the next step.After the machine re-boots, just right click on the desktop, choose "properties", and then "settings". Two monitor icons will appear in the set-up box, representing both monitors, and each icon is numbered (1 or 2). Click on the icon for the new monitor (2) and set it's resolution, etc. Then, go back to monitor(1) by clicking on it's icon, and be sure to "check" the two boxes at the bottom of the set-up box. One "check" sets the primary monitor as monitor(1), and the other sets up the machine to work across both monitors. It's fairly obvious and a basic "no-brainer". You can also get to the video set-up box by using Control Panel, Display, and Settings).Installation and set-up takes about 5 minutes.The whole idea is great, but with FSNAv it's an absolute must.Regards.... BobBob (Lecanto, Fl)AMD, Athlon XP, 1800+MSI, K7T266 XP ProPC 2100 DDR, 1024 MBXP, Home Edition Elsa GLadiac 920, GF3/64Mb andPNY, Verto nVidia TNT 2-M64/32WD, 100 MB, 7200, Ultra 100Sound Blaster, Audigy MP3+CH Prod, VPP Yoke - Sound CardCH Prod, Pedals - Sound Card

[Guest]

Wideview (http://wideview.00server.com/main.html) can be used to span outside views to multiple monitors across a network of computers. For wideview to work well its nice to have simliar performance in computer hardware, but isn't required. I experimented with that and decided that unless I had the outside view monitors the same size that it didn't make sense to use Wideview. (I had for that set up a 19" and 15" monitors which was to big a difference for me. Didn't want to use my 17" for that, cause it's used for panels)I have a dual monitor set up as well as a network set up and use WideFS for use with FSMeteo as a whether server. This works well to remove the pauses I would get in FS2K2 when downloading whether with FSMeteo. The site for that is http://www.schiratti.com/dowson.htmlalso to run WideFS you need to have FSUIPC also at that same site.Otherwise the suggestions of a second video card the previous posters above posted would be fine. I am in the group of people that have had problems with a second video card installed in my computer. With that said here are some of the problems I had to tackle.1. I had a matrox millenuim that would wash out the video about every other time I would boot my machine. This was not a problem when my motherboard was using a 1GHz athlon but showed up when I upgraded to a 1.4Ghz CPU. I have several of these cards and they all exibited this problem.2. I also tried a TNT video card, but it would only run in PCI slot 1 which was next to the video card, all other slots would lock up, but my down side turned out to be lots of static noise out of my sound card.My solution to the above problems were to upgrade my primary video card from a geforce 2 GTS to a Geforce 4 TI440 and use the dual head feature of the card. This so far is working great. Don't let the problems I had deter you from trying yourself, but be aware it can be problematic. Your mileage may vary.Scott