NickBuxton

Thanks for the link; that's a great story. We all share that same fascination of flight.

Just got it in the post today. I think my copy will stay in the box until the fixes are proven. The same happened with the horizon V3 upgrade discs for scenery areas 1, 2 & 3. They ended up reproducing a whole new batch of discs and reshipping to all existing customers!

I join the call for UTX Asia. I suspect the problem is getting a good set of data to represent the city limits, rivers, roads etc... For Europe and North America, I think this data is very accurate and readily available. For parts of Asia this would be for government eyes only. e.g. India/Chinese/Pakistan border area. I've trekked the region many times and even getting good maps was very difficult.

The Flight1 version is good but definitely takes the jump-seat to A2A's version. That bird really feels alive. It you abuse it, it will bite you and go wrong. I think you learn a lot more with the full acusim experience. Spitfire still my favourite though as it likes to overheat and takes a bit more skill to get the performance from it.

Hi Mikeinflight - Sorry, my poor description, by 'goldfish bowl' I mean the effect where when you look dead centre, there is minimal distortion, but this increases as you look towards the edges of the screen. The issue you raise of the short rain cone has been handled in the forums before, I remember a thread on it some time ago. I think this is due to the graphic for rain/snow being a certain width but it does not scale with our surround screen configuration. I think you can take the graphic and stretch it (copying it back to the correct file) but then you have other issues of it looking a bit blocky. As I use TrackIR, I don't actually look at the far edges that much so never pursued this fix. I guess the original Aces team hadn't thought we would be playing this so many years on when 3 screen rigs were a possibility for many. Try some searches on 'rain cone' and see if the fix works for you. Best of luck

FSX is a complex beast. I went from a GTX570 running 1920X1080 to a GTX680 running 6072X1080, and got a huge boost in frames, and more importantly smoothness. With my CPU at 4.6, the GPU was the apparent bottle neck.

I quite like 'FSXfollow' as a moving map. Their instruments app is not so great, you only get one gauge for the screen and it's a little laggy.

You could try running the sims in windowed mode and also run the TrackIR wireframe at the side (or another monitor) to see where the tipping point is where it goes crazy. Then maybe you can tweak the multiplier graph settings to eliminate it?

One GTX780 will eat FSX alive. I suspect SLI will give no advantage in FSX but X-Plane can certainly use some serious resource.

I use 3 monitor surround and for business use, I just window the app and use it on the desired screen. It will open up here the next time you fire it up. If the large screen array starts to strain the eye, I just knock off the ones I'm not using with the switch on the monitor. This does not affect the other displays. Once you are used to a 3 screen display, there is no going back; Excel on one, a pdf open on the other and Email on a third, becomes very convenient. Oh . . . and damn good for simming also!

Hi Wizz. You might want to checkout the 'How to setup 3 Monitors' thread. There is some good stuff in there. I would have thought a single GTX680 or GTX780 would do the trick nicely.

Regarding the VC question using surround; the only solution I have found is to use a higher magnification. It really 'goldfish bowls' at 0.50 but starts to become more reasonable over 0.70 I have just been flying the Staggerwing at 0.80 and this was optimum. If you used 1.00 it would be further improved but then this starts to restrict your field of vision. As I use it with TrackIR, the sides being a little bent is not so important as the centre of the screen always looks right. The flat screens have to represent the world like this so straight lines still appear straight as they go to the edge or your vision. If it didn't do this it you would look towards your straight wing and it would appear curved. Any other thoughts on this from anyone?

Thankfully, cables are the cheep part of this set-up, so for a few quid you can experiment with your suggestion. I'm running a GTX680 2GB with 3 screens in surround mode (6072X1080) and I see no reduction in frame rates on FSX from a single screen. Not sure why but good news all the same. With the size of your screens, the trick is being far enough away to be comfortable. I sit 4.5 feet back from the centre of my set-up but you may need a little more. If you are into VFR flying, your set-up would be great with TrackIR. Best of luck.

Remember also to back up your ‘Logbook.BIN’ In Win7 this can be found in C:\Users\youraccount\Documents\Flight Simulator X Files This is your FSX logbook / total hours flown etc... It’s well hidden amongst all of your save games.

One last thought is to check exactly what outputs are available on the GTX680 you will be buying as this may vary per manufacturer or region. Mine was an Asus 2Gig which I’m very happy with. I was flying through ORBX Seattle yesterday with sliders-right and easily got 30 FPS. They are physically huge though! I use a cool master case that is twice the size of a normal desktop and it only just fits in. The other element is the space you need to set up the monitors. I modified a 5X3 foot dining table to take a few controls. The monitors only just fit on the table and are about 6 foot across in total. To comfortably view these, my eye point is around 4.5 foot from the centre monitor. Any closer and it will feel like being on the front row of the cinema ;-)