Sambo71

Left side window view Right side window view Hi Guys, I thought I would share with everyone how I setup my three monitor Cessna flight simulator cockpit. After many hours of research reading through the FSX and other multi-monitor forums I took to the task of installing and setting up my two new monitors in my already single monitor Cessna flight simulator. The physical installation of the monitors was pretty easy, getting it to all function properly was another story...The trouble shooting was beyond frustration to say the least...But in the end through trial and error I found the right combination of settings and the system turned out to be a complete success! My goal was to have one forward monitor with a forward virtual cockpit viewing forward and two side monitors, each one would have a 2D cockpit view expanded to full screen in window mode. All views being perfectly zoom scaled to eliminate any distortion. To have all the runway edges, markings/lines line up and view as close to perfect as possible while running REX4/Soft Clouds, Active Sky Next in overcast conditions and maintaining 30 FPS with no OOM's. Please note, my system was formatted and setup following Nickn’s “The FSX Computer System: The Bible” from start to finish located here: http://www.simforums.com/forums/the-fsx-computer-system-the-bible-by-nickn_topic46211.html My System Specs: Windows 7 64Bit Sabertooth Z87 Intel Core i7 4770K Quad Core OC @ 4.2GHZ Geforce GTX 980Ti 6 GB Crucial M500 SSD 240GB HD Skill Sniper 16GB DDR-1866 Corsair CX Series 750W PSU Note: Hyperthreading is turned on in my Bios with the following entry in my FSX.CFG file: [JOBSCHEDULER] AffinityMask=84 Monitors used in my simulator: I made sure all three monitors had the same resolution of 1920X1080! 42" Sharp Aquos LCD TV 27" BenQ GW2760HS LED Monitor 27" BenQ GW2760HS LED Monitor After getting my two new 27" BenQ monitors installed, I connected them to my NVidia GTX 980Ti using DVI cables which would already have my 42" Sharp Aquos connected to it via a HDMI cable. I powered everything up, went to the desktop, right clicked and went into "screen resolution" and made sure all three monitors were set to 1920X1080 and were in "Landscape" orientation. (I did not use "NVidia Surround", it won't work for my screen layout because I need 90 degree window side views). I then positioned the monitors in the "screen resolution" panel so that my left monitor was #1, forward monitor was #2 and the right monitor was #3 making sure when I moved my mouse left and right, it would move to the monitor I was moving it to. (I moved all my icons to the forward monitor so they would all be front and center even know when the system was booting up the main #1 system monitor was the one on the left). Now that all the monitors were setup I could move forward making changes to the FSX.CFG file and the NV Inspector settings. These are the only entries and changes that I made to my FSX.CFG borrowed from Nickn's NV Inspector Guide: [MAIN] FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=0.15 [TERRAIN] LOD_RADIUS=4.5 [bUFFERPOOLS] UsePools=1 Poolsize=8388608 RejectThreshold=126976 [Display] TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=120 [MAIN] HideInfoText=1 DisablePreload=1 [DISPLAY] WideViewAspect=True [GRAPHICS] HIGHMEMFIX=1 [JOBSCHEDULER] AffinityMask=84 [DISPLAY] ForceFullScreenVSync=True ForceVSync=True [GRAPHICS] ForceWindowedVsync=1 [GRAPHICS] Texture_Max_Load=1024 Once again, the following information & settings were borrowed from Nickn’s “advanced NV Inspector guide” to setup all my settings using NVidia Inspector for my GTX 980Ti GPU. Nickn’s advanced NV Inspector guide is located here: http://www.simforums.com/forums/drivers-nv-inspector-fsxcfg-complete-guide_topic36586.html Now that I had all the information and setting changes entered into both my FSX.CFG file & NVidia Inspector, I was ready to move forward and setup all my slider settings in FSX. Please note, if you see an option missing below, it’s because I didn’t check the box or bullet and left them empty or unselected. Below are my FSX settings: [Graphics] Tab Device: NVidia GEFORCE GTX 980Ti.0 NVidia GEFORCE GTX 980Ti.1 NVidia GEFORCE GTX 980Ti.2 Target Frame Rate: 30 FPS Full Screen Resolution: Each one above is set to: 1920X1080X32 Filtering: Trilinear Global Options: Global Texture Resolution: Very High Advanced Animations is (Checked) [Aircraft] Tab 3-D Cockpit (Bullet Selected) High Resolution 3-D Virtual Cockpit (Checked) [scenery] Tab Terrain & Water: Level of Detail Radius: Large Mesh Complexity: 75 Mesh Resolution: 10 m Texture Resolution: 7 m Water Effects: Low 2.X Land Detail Textures: (Checked) Scenery Objects: Scenery Complexity: Very Dense Auto Density: Dense Special Effects Detail: High [Weather] Tab Visual Settings: Cloud Draw Distance: 60 mi/ 96 Km Thermal Visualization: None Cloud Detail: Detailed Clouds (Bullet Selected) Cloud Coverage Density: Maximum Simulation Settings: Rate at which weather changes overtime: No Change [Traffic] Tab Aviation Traffic: Airline Traffic Density: 16% General Aviation Density: 16% Airport Vehicle Density: None Land & Sea Traffic: Road Vehicles: 0 Ships & Ferries: 0 Leisure Boats: 0 Now that I have all my FSX settings set, we can move on to my REX4 Settings. REX 4 Configuration & Optimization Settings: Texture Resolution: 1024 (Medium Resolution) Low-Level Clouds 1024 (Medium Resolution) High/Mid Level Clouds 1024 (Medium Resolution) Runways 1024 (Medium Resolution) Taxiways Texture Compression Algorithm: DXT 5 Low-Level Clouds DXT 5 High/Mid Level Clouds DXT 1 Wave Animation DirectX: Standard DX9 (FSX) Sun/Effects Standard DX9 (FSX) Water Standard DX9 (FSX) Wave Animation Now that I have all my REX 4 settings set, we can move on to my Active Sky Next Settings. Active Sky Next Settings: Simulator Depiction Options: Show in-sim text messages: False Suppress Local Weather Changes: False Depict hurricanes: On Cloud Options: Maximum Cloud Layers: 3 Maximum Cloud Turbulence: 100 Maximum Cloud Icing: 100 Prevent Thunderstorms When CB Reported: Unchecked Minimum Cloud Draw Distance: 60 Maximum Cloud Draw Distance: 60 Force BKN to 7/8ths: Checked Enhance Overcast Conditions: Checked High Detail Thunderstorm Clouds: Unchecked P3D Low Cloud Offset: 0 Wind Options (and effects): Maximum Surface Wind: 100 Maximum Wind Turbulence: 100 Turbulence Effect Scale: 70 Maximum Wind Shear: 100 Force ATC Wind Lock: Unchecked Disable Winds Aloft: Unchecked Interlayer Wind Interpolation: Checked Enhanced Turbulence: Unchecked Wake Turbulence Strength: 0 Maximum Downdraft Rate (Feet per Minute): 800 Maximum Updraft/Thermal Rate (Feet per Minute): 800 Visibility Options: Enable Wing Fade Effect: Checked Disable Haze Layer: Checked Enhanced Haze Simulation: Unchecked Minimum Surface Visibility: 0 Maximum Surface Visibility: 15 Maximum Upper Visibility: 63 Auto Adjust Upper Visibility: Checked In Cloud Visibility Reduction: Checked This completes all the settings that I needed to get my three monitor Cessna flight simulator cockpit to run with three screens with one virtual cockpit view and two side 2D cockpit views while running REX 4/Soft Cloud textures & Active Sky Next in overcast conditions maintaining 30 FPS. I'll do another post later explaining how I scaled the zoom settings for all three monitors, lining up the edges of the runway and horizon. I hope that this info can help save someone some time to get their setup up and running, eliminating a lot of the guess work and research I went through... Sam

Hi Guys, I have a few quick questions, I'm running a Cessna cockpit with three screens, a 42" Sharp TV for my forward monitor and two 27" BenQ side monitors all at 1920X1080. My forward view zoom is set at 0.56 on the 42" Sharp and the only way to scale things to match for the two 27" side monitors is to set the zoom to 0.80 to have everything the same scale and size (airport buildings, other planes etc...) is this normal? Can anyone else share their zoom settings for a three view cockpit setup? Note: I am not using NVidia surround, these are all 1920X1080 single monitor views... Thanks, Sam

Hi Guys, I got my two new monitors setup for my two 90' side window views. I'm now running three monitors, my questions is, is there a way to remove the thin white frame on the active monitor? or at least change the color to black? If anyone can point me in the right direction to remove this or hide it, I'd be forever grateful! Thanks in advance, Sam

Hi Guys, I got my two new monitors setup for my two 90' side window views. I'm now running three monitors, my questions is, is there a way to remove the thin white frame on the active monitor? or at least change the color to black? If anyone can point me in the right direction to remove this or hide it, I'd be forever grateful! Thanks in advance, Sam

Hi GSalden, Sorry, just woke up and missed your post last night.... Ok so this is what I have, I've got the 42" Sharp TV for my front view, I've mounted two 27" BENQ monitors in the tops of my doors (This is a Cessna Simulator Setup) left and right sides, the monitors don't need to line up frame wise, for me it was important to position the monitor inside the cockpit as if it were a left or right cockpit window. what is important is that you set the zoom correctly (enable red text to see zoom settings or eyeball it to your front view using objects at the airport, signs other planes etc.) to the front monitor and move the view up or down to line up the outside views, I use the edge of a runway to get it as close as possible. All the above was the easy part, what I had problems with that I have now solved was maintaining my 30 FPS! Running three monitors and three separate views is a huge load on the system, throw Active Sky Next in there and it becomes even more of a challenge! So to get this all working after many hours of testing, this is what I did: I did not use NVidia Surround, because I didn't want a surround view or new window views on top of the spanning surround (This is a major frame hit if undocked windows touch or are on top of each other), I wanted three separate views, front/left/right, so making sure I disabled NVidia Surround, I went back to my desktop and set my resolution to 1920X1080 (Native resolution for all three views). Went into FSX and in the graphics options pull down menu, made sure all three devices were at the same resolution and filtering settings were set the same. I then went into free flight, which when loaded gave me my front view in 1920X1080, I then opened a new undocked view and dragged it over to my left monitor and made sure it was spanned correctly (full screen) in that monitor and did the same for the right monitor/view. Now that I had my three views, it was time to check on performance, at first it was struggling and dropping below 30 and sometimes into the teens... I did a bunch of testing to get my frame rates to maintain as close to 30FPS as possible by following Nickn's guide, this was very important when using multiple monitors and views as I have found out during this project. Adding the following info to my FSX.cfg was very important for my system with this setup to get good frame rates with the two new undocked views ... [GRAPHICS] ForceFullScreenVSync=1 ForceWindowedVSync=1 I don't want to get into too much detail of my settings, everyone's system is different, you need to get everything setup position wise, lower your settings and textures and then slowly bring them up until you find a balance. I can go into detail at a later time if you need help... Sam

Awesome, thanks Slayer! If it wasn't for this forum and a few others, I'd be getting 2-3 fps and watching a jerky slide show as I fly around... :smile:

Hi GB, I got it sorted out, a guy from another forum advised me as you just did, to go into the FSX graphics options and go to the "Device Pull Down Menu" all three of my screens where listed there and sure enough, monitor #3 was set to 1024X768X16! I changed it and made sure all the filter settings were the same... Went back in fired FSX up and loaded the flight and "A la peanut butter sandwiches!" as the Amazing Mumford would say....it viewed perfectly! So now way less load on the system without over laying the two views on top of the 5760X1080! I'm getting a solid 30 fps now and with Active Sky Next running in light overcast conditions!. Thanks for all your help! Sam

Hi GB, Thanks, I've been trying all these different configurations and you are correct about laying the two new views over top of the full "Surround" view. I did find one issue when I tried the 1920X1080 single monitor views, I found that the monitor for the right door window view seemed to not be the correct resolution once I was in the FSX program, I'm not sure why though? why would the first two monitors be tack sharp and not the other? I'll do some more testing today to see if I can get this corrected. Thanks, Sam

Hi Guys, Ok so I got my new GTX 980 Ti card installed and working great with my 1080p 42" Sharp Aquos TV. I then went out and purchased two BENQ 27" 1920x1080 monitors same resolution as my Sharp TV. I hooked the Sharp TV to the DVI port in my GTX and the BENQ's into the two DVI ports. Everything fired up great, I went into the NVidia Control panel and selected "configure surround PhysX" and setup the surround configuration to 1x3 at 5760x1080. What scaling settings should I use? Aspect/Full screen/No scaling? Display or GPU? or not touch any of these settings? So I got everything placed where I want it, I then went into FSX and opened two new windows, placed them on the two BENQ monitors on each side door and adjusted them for the side window views. So I did a test and found with no weather I had a good solid 29-30 FPS, as soon as I turned on Active Sky Next with some overcast, the frame rates plunged! I didn't expect this with the new card. So am I doing the right thing by opening windows on top of the original 5760x1080 view or should I be doing something different? When I remove the two new windows the rates go back up to 30 FPS, is there a way to break up the original view 5670x1080 between the monitors to just use the one view? This opening and docking new window views is a pretty new to me... In NVidia inspector I'm following NickN's guide step by step Should I set NVidia Inspector to Single Display Performance or Multi Display Performance? I'm running a i7 4770, Z87 motherboard and 16Gb of RAM so I should have enough power should I not? Sorry for all the questions guys! Just looking for a little direction for a confused old guy! Sam

Hi Guys, Just a little update, my new Gigabyte GTX 980 Ti arrived here a few days ago and I finally found some time to get it installed today. Installation went in without any problems, did the fresh driver (359.06) install and reset all my NVidia Inspector settings for FSX. Everything is working awesome, I moved my setting up a bunch, ran FSX with Active Sky Next in a big black storm and still getting a solid 30 fps! Temperatures for the card hover around high 20's to mid to high 30's wow! it runs nice and cold! Very happy with the new card! Thanks to Vic and all the rest of you guys who helped me along here with your info and feedback to help me make the decision to purchase this card! All the best, Sam

Hi Mike, Thanks for the info, I'm starting to feel better about my decision and purchase! What driver version are you running Mike? This place is great for all the help a person can find! Thanks again, Sam

Hi Martin, Thanks for your info, I have always had a clean system, that is totally dedicated to FSX and not used for nothing else. There's so many things that can effect FSX, I'm really careful about what I install and all the adjustments I make to the CFG file ( Follow Nickn's FSX Bible/NI setup to every setting) logging everything I install or change by writing it down in a binder. So far so good, didn't want to go messing up two years worth of work installing the new card, it's always been a dream of mine to add the two additional monitors, one in each door with my 42" Sharp Aquos LCD TV as my main viewing windscreen. Still waiting for the GTX980 Ti to arrive, I tried the two monitors yesterday as a test on the GTX760 and everything worked great! after hooking it up and doing a test flight I was just about doing back flips in my garage I was so excited! Can't wait to see how it looks with the new GTX980! Thanks again, Sam Pictures of my setup: http://www.vanisleva.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=68329&sid=9b0bba8ebaeb8b15307d6cf340db3f74

Hi Vic, Thanks for the info, it has been a long time! Since building my simulator, I've enjoyed every minute spent inside what my better half calls "Your Box in the Garage in Sammy's World of Make Believe " After all your help setting up all my software and the Nickn system, my simulator experience has been outstanding! so much so that my neighbour across the street tried it and 2 months later we built him an exact replica! which we fly together online all the time! Anyway enough jibber jabber, my PSU is "CX Series CX750M 750W ATX 12V 80 Plus Bronze Modular Power Supply" 750w should run it I hope! I saw this post about the GTX980 Ti not working because of it not supporting DX9 or something about shader handling: http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2668215/gtx-980-fsx-work.html I hope this is not the case and I can install it without too much head scratching??? Like I said before, the purpose of the upgrade is to help support the two new monitors more than anything else, my FSX on the single monitor runs awesome but with the two new monitors, it did slow just a tiny bit....which I hope will clear up with the new GTX980 Ti! Thanks again Vic! Sam

Hi Guys, Can anyone help out a confused old flight sim guy? I'm currently running a "Gigabyte GeForce GTX 760 OC 1150MHZ 2GB" I just bought two BenQ 27" monitors to run along side my 42" Sharp Aquos for side views in the doors of my fully enclosed Cessna flight simulator. I hooked up everything and set everything to run the three monitors and everything ran pretty good, but felt it was time to upgrade my video card. I just ordered a new Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 Ti G1 1241 MHZ 6GB thinking that the extra 4GB might help run things a little smoother, now I know that FSX is CPU dependant but will the bigger faster card help to run the two extra monitors better? I read somewhere that people had problems running the GeForce GTX980 Ti G1 1241 MHZ 6GB on FSX, is this true? For those using the GTX980 Ti, what driver version have you found runs best with FSX? I hope I didn't make a mistake, can anyone running the GTX980 Ti with FSX tell me if they had any problems swapping their old card out and replacing it with the GTX980? Thanks in advance, Sam My system specs: Windows 7 64Bit Sabertooth Z87 Intel Core i7 4770K Quad Core OC @ 4.2GHZ Geforce GTX 760 OC 1150MHZ 2 GB Crucial M500 SSD 240GB HD Skill Sniper 16GB DDR-1866

Hi Guys, I'm not getting any LED read out when I select XPDR Squawk Code on my Saitek Pro Radio Panel? Has anyone else run into this problem and is there a fix for it? I do have the latest driver installed... Any help would be greatly appreciated Thanks, Sam

Hi Guys, I've been having freezing and lock up sound issues with the latest Nvidia driver. I went back to 331.58 seems to have fixed the problem, but then it did lock up again once, this is much better but can anyone give me some feed back on what driver they have found best for the GTX 760 OC? Some say they have had better success with 331.40, haven't tried it yet. Thanks in advance, Sam

Hahahaha ok I just tried something, I replaced the DDS file with the BMP and it did exactly what it was supposed to! Yesssss clear windows with no reflections!

Hi Everyone, I'm trying to remove the window reflections in my Carenado Cessna 152, I've downloaded the alabeo152prop.zip and looked in my Carenado C152 folder and can't find the texture to replace? I see the Alabeo152Prop.dds file but no Alabeo152Prop.bmp? Am I missing something here? Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance, Sam

Hi Andrew, Thanks for the info, I cleared all FSUIPC weather settings... Everything is looking awesome, just wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything! : )

Hi Everyone, Is there any specific settings that I should set in FSX weather when setting up ASN?

Hi Guys, First things first, thanks Pete for talking me into not uninstalling REX+OD and leaving it on the hard drive!. I installed Active Sky Next this morning and messed around with it for most of the morning using REX4 textures... I'm blown away, it's pretty awesome, I hit one snag though, I set the cloud layers too high and took a real hit in frame rates, cut it back to default levels and was getting a solid 30 fps!. For now it Active Sky Next & REX4 textures for me!. Thanks for all your input guys and for saving me from throwing my REX+OD in the trashcan, I'll just put it on the back burner for now, or maybe just use the textures... All the best, Sam

Ok thanks, I don't think space is an issue, just didn't want the two programs conflicting with each other. I'll just make sure all the weather engine settings are turned off and REX+OD is closed when running Active Sky Next with REX4. Thanks, Sam

Hi Pete, I'm going to Active Sky Next and using REX4 Textures no need for REX+OD anymore?

Hi Guys, I need a little help here.... I purchased and installed REX+OD, then I purchased and installed REX4. I'm not happy with REX+OD's weather engine and have now purchased Active Sky Next. If I go into REX+OD and want to uninstall it so I can install Active Sky Next, do I "restore to Default FSX textures" before uninstalling? I've been using REX4 textures and I don't know which ones are presently loaded? Will I mess up FSX if I restore defaults in REX+OD if I don't know which textures are loaded? Thanks for any help in advance.. Sam

Does anyone know if it's possible to hid/toggle the Yoke on and off ??? Thanks in advance, Sam