Lurk

Is there written evidence somewhere regarding the delay of multi-monitor support? That’s one huge let-down for me, as it is pretty much all I was waiting for to get back into flying : (

I fly out of Torino but the main landmarks in my city are completely missing. I decided to put the sim on hold until someone releases LIMF. The Mole Antonelliana soars above the city as the highest brick building in Europe and it’s completely absent in the sim, while the Basilica di Superga dominates Torino from the highest hilltop. Right now it’s an unrecognizable flat texture. These and other important landmarks were all available with the LIMF add-on for FSX, P3D and XP11. It’s kinda hard to get an immersive VFR experience in my area without these: 🙄 https://images.app.goo.gl/nkd472JqoMhugLqr5 https://images.app.goo.gl/EKV7uZrYknSAgfPZ8

it's in the pipeline, that's great news 👍

You can mitigate this by running the sim in Surround in a window and pulling in the sides so they don't stretch to the entire length of the side monitors. This way you'd be using just half of your left and right screens, which kinda makes the whole purpose of ultra-wide a bit pointless. I have a feeling my side monitors will be resting for quite a while : (

I encourage anyone with three monitors like myself (3x24"@6048x1080) to try what I posted here. Certainly far from ideal, but the visual advantage over single screen is obvious while avoiding distortion and without hindering performance as much. While waiting for a fix, of course. https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/581753-geometric-distortion-in-a-triple-monitor-setup-for-msfs-2020/?do=findComment&comment=4318155

Monitors have developed quite a bit since I assembled my Eyefinity setup (now Surround) years ago. Nowadays I definitely wouldn't repeat the experience; too many nuisances and drawbacks, and usage limited to extremely restricted scenarios (driving and flying). Not to mention that I expected MSFS 2020 to support triple monitors out of the box, but it doesn't. The image on the sides suffers from horrible stretching, reason for which I run the sim in a window where the side edges are pulled to the middle of the outer monitors in order to reduce distortion, not ideal and certainly not a good way to use Surround. If I were you I would go for a single large screen, provided you have the horse-power to support the resolution. I doubt that Asobo will ever release a patch allowing for proper perspective adjustment on triple-monitor setups, which are most likely a minority. Right now I feel my setup is wasted for the sim and certainly not put to good use. Not enough scenarios to make it worth, and I think that the moment for triple-monitors has long passed.

I'm on Nvidia Surround as well, 3x24", and I'm interested in knowing your findings, because I can't get the WIDEVIEWASPECT=1 setting to stick. It reverts to 0 even if I set the .cfg to read-only.

At this point I'd be curious to know why the setting wideviewaspect=1 resets to 0 every time, even after setting the file to 'read only'.

same here, I need to go up a few notches in the sim to achieve the same volume I have on other games.

I remember downloading that same pack quite a while ago (dunno whether it has been updated or not) and I know for sure that some of the shaders inside DIDN'T appear in games. My guess is that only some of them have been modified to be compatible with Freestyle. Imo Freestyle does an excellent job out of the box, the sharpening filter being almost a must for all games that are supported. What I'm probably missing is SMAA, but I can't remember if this is one of the Reshade shaders that didn't show up. Other than that and probably ambient lighting (ESSENTIAL in FSX, but it was hard on frames), I think that default Freestyle includes all the essential.

I'm not in front of the computer, so names might not be precise. Go into your Windows sound settings, select your headphones and choose them as your 'Default Communication Device' (NOT 'Default Sound'). Next find your sound settings in MSFS and select 'Communication Device' for ATC. That's all there really is to it, works perfectly.

Understandable, but then you wonder because from what I read it seems that the same distortion happens on single 21:9 monitors, whereas the game should be totally affordable performance-wise on those screens. I'm sure Asobo could come up with a solution for minimizing the stretch effect on ultra-wide resolutions without having to resort to splitting the view in three. Let me know. The advantage of this method is that you can stretch the window on both sides to your liking and depending on the side of your monitors, until you are satisfied with the adjustment to the distortion. As I said, major disadvantage is probably running windowed vs full-screen, although I haven't noticed a tangible degradation in performance to the naked eye.

I'd like to chime in and "raise awareness on this issue" as well, as the op has stated. I've been a long-time simmer on three 27'' 16:9 monitors, first with Eyefinity and now with Nvidia Surround at 6048x1080 with bezel correction. Despite other simulators like Euro Truck Simulator 2, Project Cars 1 and 2, Assetto Corsa and X-Plane11 have built-in three monitor support with the ability to successfully and easily eliminate graphic distortion on the side monitors, for some reason Microsoft Flight Simulator has always been lacking in this respect. I've found that the only way for me to have a satisfactory experience with the Flight Simulator is to take advantage of the graphic engine's ability to maintain aspect ratio when stretching the window while running in windowed mode. I simply run with the sim's window centered on my middle screen and stretch it on both sides so that it reaches slightly over the center of the side monitors, while keeping my desktop background black to avoid distraction. In this way graphical distortion is minimized when not totally absent. The downside is obviously the presence of the window frame on the top and the fact that running windowed probably causes a performance loss vs full-screen, but this is for me truly the only way to enjoy the sim on three screens until MS addresses the issue (not holding my breath). I'd be glad to keep participating in this discussion as the sim moves forward to a (hopefully) bright future.

yeah, I figured. but it was such a pita to install that I can easily live without it this time around.

thx for your extensive reply, Chock. It is enough alone to convince me to go with P3D. So now, which version? Academic or Pro?

thank you very much guys. nice to see all of you chiming in. Great place here as usual. I don't have payware add-on aircraft, only WOAI traffic installed. Seems like it's a no brainer at this point! Are the advantages of switching to P3Dv4 evident? I'm obviously looking for better overall graphics, higher resolution cockpit textures, better performance and ultra-wide support (running 3xEyefinity here). Not that I'm expecting anything stellar here, but the FSX engine+graphics are REALLY beginning to show their age regardless of all add-ons installed!

Thank you very much. Maybe they have a discount for owners of FSX licenses, who knows. If that's not the case, I'm afraid I'll have to rethink my plans : (

Hi fellow simmers, I'm considering the move from FSX-SE to P3D v4. I figured avsim forum members would have enough experience to provide me with the answer I'm looking for, without me having to post on several different add-on forums. If possible, I would like to know which of the additional software I bought for FSX is directly compatible with P3D v4 out of the box, i.e. without requiring me to purchase a new license. I'm currently running the following add-ons. - REX Texture Direct + Soft Clouds - FTX Global EU - FTX Open LC - Active Sky 2016 - UTX Europe Thanks to anyone that can provide an answer. I was hoping I could buy P3D v4, run the executables of the above listed add-ons, and be up and running!

My same point. Absolutely. And probably this is one of the problems, if not THE problem. Sad to admit; the tools to dramatically change the face of flight simulation already exist, but the rights to use them are tightly and jealously safeguarded. Kinda sad, if you ask me.

it's not only that. I was kind of hoping it would be clear. It's the smooth running, the detailed 3D buildings which are peculiar to the city I fly above, the exact precise patches of terrain and geological features, a whole new feeling without the evident drawbacks, the amount of faithful detail FINALLY AT METER-LEVEL, REALISTIC AND TRUE TO LIFE. The general impression of a whole new world of possibilities for simming that works right out of the box without the need to spend countless extra-hours, which some of us don't have, taken away from flying. The enthusiasm when you realize that a whole new level of flight-simulation experience is possible, mixed with the sadness when you think it probably won't happen anytime in the near future.

hi V-Pilots, I absolutely DO NOT intend to start a flame, as much as I am interested in a possibly serious discussion. I just gave a shot to the new Google Earth and immediately tried a fly-by over my hometown, an important industrial city of northern Italy, home of a famous soccer team as well as being known for having given birth to FIAT, a once (sigh) renowned automobile factory. Certainly not a town that has been getting a lot of attention from vanilla FSX (to say it mildly) in terms of overall fidelity, and that was not easy to bring close to reality were it not for the hard work of some passionate simmers and a bevy of different (rather costly) beautiful add-ons which all required extensive efforts and tweaking only to reach a result (and I'll be once again mild) that doesn't come even close to what I experienced 10 minutes ago on Google's latest version of their planet-hopping software, running as smooth as butter on an old MacBook Pro which is now warmly resting on my legs as I type. Every main building, every roundabout, every pedestrian crossing, patch of grass, sidewalk, just about every landmark, even the less noticeable and insignificant, faithfully reproduced as I slowly made my way to the threshold of LIMA's 36L runway. Only thing I was missing, as you might have guessed, was a plane. Which brings me to the point: as I started imagining a weather system to crown it all, I also asked myself why, with such technology and such level of astonishing detail coupled with seamless performance, as of today we still don't have a flight simulator to go with it? I understand the amount of money that's being put by effortless developers to integrate their incredible software into a dinosaur such as FSX; the add-on business for our beloved sim cannot simply stop from one day to another, but the incredible potential I experienced in 10 minutes of Google Earth reeks of wasted simming potential and makes me truly and genuinely wonder why we still can't fly the way we should when today we (me, you, the developers) all now it is finally possible. Care to discuss? I certainly hope so. Cheers to you all. Luca

free? Alpha 1.5 is being sold for 39$ on their site.

allow me to second this!

if you are interested in dynamic head movement and reaction to turbulence and terrain, might be a good idea to start with a basic tool such as 3D Real Cockpit Effect. http://www.thefsps.com/fsx/fsps-3d-real-cockpit-effect.html thinking of giving it a try myself. Personally I only need a little more shake-shake-shake in my cockpit : )

currently in FSX nirvana. Thx Steve!