Greetings fellow flight simmers. I spent several hours recently reading
the various threads here about FS2004, multiple monitors, best choice of
processor(s), HT (or not), graphics cards and drivers, etc. I have been
working with the MS Simulations Group (Mike Lambert et al) for about a
year, since being invited because I COULD make three monitors work, and
apparently they couldn't at the time of my introduction - I met Mike at
the MS booth at the AOPA Expo in Long Beach last year.
I'd like to introduce myself with a reply to this thread about multiple
monitors. Katy's suggestion about the Matrox card is valid; however,
although it an easy way, you will likely be disappointed because the
Matrox card does not offer the level of graphics (scenery acceleration,
etc.) that we expect from NVidia or ATI cards. Matrox is in the
information display, not game, business.
I was able to get three monitors running with limited success as
follows:
First, my system:
Windows XP Home, all the latest SPs, etc., and all the latest drivers,
etc.
MSI-6758 Mobo V2.4, 3.2GHz P4, 1G physical RAM (Kingston HyperX
PC4000)
Antec 430W TruePower PSU
80GB SATA HD (set via BIOS to be boot drive), 24x DVD drive
Xfx GF6800 AGP (Dual DVI) and Xfx GF5700 PCI (DVI+HD15) graphics cards
NVidia 80.85 driver
Three ViewSonic VP191b DVI LCD displays, running at 1280x1024 32bpp
native
FS9.1, MegaScenery SoCal add-on
CHP FlightSim Yoke, Pro Pedals, and Throttle Quadrant
It is important that the PCI card be setup as the primary VGA card via
the Mobo BIOS. I received some good help from MSI Tech Support in
optimizing the BIOS settings. I received no help from Microsoft or
NVidia, and will state for the record that I am very disappointed with
their lack of communication and the continued finger-pointing between
them via "video driver errors"..
If you can make your way through a few blue screens and false starts,
eventually the system will stabilize and you can extend your desktop to
all three monitors. For whatever reason(s), it takes several crashes
and restarts before the Nvidia drivers will get both cards working
together. I physically connect and designate the center monitor
(attached to the PCI card) as the primary (#1), where the FS2004 start
page appears. Note I have the three monitors arranged (on a
three-monitor stand) left-center-right, with the outside two angled in
30 degrees from the center one.
From there, I Open two "New View" windows (I like the Virtual Cockpit
view, at .75 zoom), then Undock and move one to the left and one to the
right, ALT-ENT for full screen, then use the hat switch to adjust each
view so they approximate the view from the pilot's seat; i.e., line of
sight out the left window, center view of the control panel and front
window, right view with the right part of the control panel and part of
the co-pilot's window, etc
With some tweaking of the seat and view positioning, you can get a
pretty good field-of-view visual that approximates sitting in the
plane. I fly a (real) Baron from my home airport, so that's my usual
choice of sim plane. I'm not happy yet with the perspective (i.e.,
side projections on the flat panels warps the view) out of the side
windows, and seek suggestions in how to improve all that. For now, I
simply try to line up the runway borders and horizon across all three
monitor views.
The above somewhat follows MS' instructions for multiple views across
multiple monitors, and, they are correct that you can't save the views
without the hack of moving them all back to windowed mode on the
primary page. So for each restart, it's a PIA to get the whole thing
set up again.
Performance-wise, I'm lucky to see about 15-20 FPS steady (without too
many clouds). And, depending on the amount of scenery being loaded
(like in a steep banking turn) that can decay to a few frames a second,
which will usually cause a system crash. I've given up on MS trying to
explain the cause of that crash - I really don't think they know -
other than some vague "..graphics bottleneck somewhere.." kindof
statements. In characteristic finger-pointing mode, they first blamed
it on my hardware, but with the big power supply and a desk fan
pointing inside the open side of the PC case, I believe I've ruled that
out. The crash error message I get (from FS) is a DX9.0c - related
error, and that ought to be a clue to them...
I am looking forward to trying a new AMD SLI- Mobo with a couple of
those big-ass 7800 cards, and see what the difference will be. All
things considered, FS2004 is a pretty good piece of software for $30 or
so. And, to be fair, I have enjoyed some quality flying, and good
practice for those instrument approaches, etc. I worked on jet (Link)
and powerplant (Gould/SEL) simulators 25 years ago, where we had
mainframe-sized machines with 1MB memory cards the size of serving
trays, and 80MB hard drives the size of washing machines, so I can keep
it all in perspective. But, I also feel strongly that MS should not let
stand a situation where their software is limiting the performance
offerred by the latest hardware.
RBT
--
richardt
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Multiple Monitors
