Two Monitors Question

[coolmanak]

Hello everybody. I've got a set of questions, so I'll get started.

First off, I'm planning on buying these two products to form the basic shell of my simulator. http://www.fspilotshop.com/product_info.php?cPath=1_9&products_id=1165
http://www.fspilotshop.com/product_info.php?cPath=1_9&products_id=1166

Does anybody have any feedback on either?

Secondly, I'd like to have two monitors set up. One big one to serve as the main window, and a second to display all the gauges. I don't want to buy something like TH2G, I'd just like to have both hooked up. How might I go about doing this?

Thanks for the help,
Coolmanak

[Michael Carter]

Welcome to the site.

You could build a much nicer simulator than what they offer with $100 bucks worth of lumber. Same for the seat.

If you only want two displays, nearly any video card today has two ouputs you can use.

[autocadplease]

The Sim Cockpit stuff looks good if that is the level of realism you are after.

In order to run two displays on the same computer you need either two video cards or a dual head video card. With either setup, you would undock the views to achieve separate displays. The problem with this setup is that flight simulator will have to render two displays and your performance (frame rate) will suffer. Most people run a network and use Peter Dowson's WideFS to run other software on other computers. FSXpand is an example - so is Project Magenta. There is some freeware available too.

[Michael Carter]

There's little if any frame rate hit running only instruments on a display.

I'm running three displays with no hit at all on an average FS9 machine.

[fweinrebe]

There's little if any frame rate hit running only instruments on a display.

I'm running three displays with no hit at all on an average FS9 machine.

Mike, do you have TH2G for those 3 or is it 2 cards on the one PC? I am considering buying a second NVidia card, I have a 9500 GT and is thinking of buying another additional card to get 3 monitors hooked on the outside visuals of MSFS. My motherboard can handle 3 cards.

[Michael Carter]

Three monitors on two cards in one PC.

[autocadplease]

There's little if any frame rate hit running only instruments on a display.

I'm running three displays with no hit at all on an average FS9 machine.

What gauges are you running? No frame rate hit - WOW. I didn't know that was possible. Everytime I attempted undocked muti-displays my frame rates were hit (at least 30+%). I thought FS uses the computer's CPU processor power to render addition displays and does not utilize the video card's GPU processing capability?

[Michael Carter]

Well I hope my $56 bucks bought more than just a third monitor port.

The gauges are from the DF 727 and the 727 by R. Probst. The system has been locked at 25fps since I've owned it almost 18 months now and runs great.

After adding a third monitor there was actually an improvement using updated video drvers. Not in frame rate, but overall speed of rendering and more detail.

Mega-Heathrow and Frankfurt will lower the frame rate to 21, but I can't see that unless I check it. As soon as I taxi out of the ramp area it goes back to 25fps.

There's nothing remarkable about my computer system other than to say the main video card runs on it's own power supply. The system supply was too small for the current consumption of the main card. The additional power supply doesn't even break a sweat powering the card accoording to the external indicator lamps.