Simviation Forum - Multi Monitors

Jul 7^th, 2005 at 12:42am

Gunny04 Offline
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Alright, say when I get a computer I want more then 2 monitors (2 on one GPU) then say 2 or more, would I need to get a second (low spec) Computer? and if so, How would I link them togethor? I'm just looking way into the future when I'm able to set up a flight cockpit, cheers, Gunny

AMD athlon 3800 Venice Socket 939 64 bit at 2.4Ghz, 6100K8MA-RS Foxconn Motherboard, 1gb (2X512) OCZ Platinum PC3200 Ram, EVGA 8800GTS 640MB OC, 500 Watt NZXT psu, and Windows Vista Ultimate Total hard drive space 530gb

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Reply #1 - Jul 7^th, 2005 at 4:39pm

JBaymore Offline
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Gunny,

Welcome to the Dark Side Wink

. Now you are started down the path to bankruptcy.

It depends on what you want those other monitors to DO.

The first step is setting up a 10/100 Mbit LAN. Wired LAN cards come at about $10 each and a five port switch will set you back about $40 these days, new. Pretty easy to set it all up.... particularly with XP. Follow the instructions that come with the stuff.

If you want exterior scenery display, (more "windows" in your plane)... then the other machines need to be about as capable as the main FS machine to keep your framerates up. Scenery display is the real taxing stuff. You'll need FSUIPC and WideFS and Wideview to do that. All told about $50 in payware.

If you want them to display 2-D stand alone guages... maybe stuff like FreeFD, then they can be older junkers. I have a PII 300 MHz machine that works fine just running the FreeFD PFD at 1024 x 768.

Dual dispalys for instruments is not often accomplished off of one machine very well. Most use OpenGL... and that apparently will only run accelerated on the primary monitor. Most people use one machine for one "function" with one monitor. On the primary machine you cvan get two displays.... and even three if you add a second gfraphics card.

For Project Magenta stuff... they have a guide to the hardware required. And they have a demo that you can download and try to see if your network is "up to snuff" to run their stuff. If it runs theirs... it'll run FreeFD.

Keep us posted.

best,

....................john

Intel i7 960 quad 3.2G LGA 1366, Asus P6X58D Premium, 750W Corsair, 6 gig 1600 DDR3, Spinpoint 1TB 7200 HD, Caviar 500G 7200 HD, GTX275 1280M, Logitec Z640, Win7 Pro 64b, CH Products yoke, pedals + throttle quad, simpit

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Reply #2 - Jul 7^th, 2005 at 7:38pm

Gunny04 Offline
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Will do, I dont plan to start for many months yet, but I have some, errrrr scrap parts from an old comp (900Mhz Intel celeron prolly OC to 1.2) and some other stuff, Thanks for info will do when I get job, Cheers, Gunny

AMD athlon 3800 Venice Socket 939 64 bit at 2.4Ghz, 6100K8MA-RS Foxconn Motherboard, 1gb (2X512) OCZ Platinum PC3200 Ram, EVGA 8800GTS 640MB OC, 500 Watt NZXT psu, and Windows Vista Ultimate Total hard drive space 530gb

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Reply #3 - Aug 15^th, 2005 at 5:03pm

The_Mickmeister Offline
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I'm considering this system:

-Gateway media center w/ Pentium D 830 GM

-1 gig SDRAM

-250 gb Sata HD

-Envision monitors

-A8N-SLI motherboard

-(2) NVidea GEForce 6600 GT gfx cards (128 mb)

Does this sound like it would give me 3 seperate 3D views with a decent frame rate? What about antialiasing? I'm also wondering why the place that's putting it together said that they can only use 128 mb graphics cards - they can't do 256. It seems odd that with all this other high tech stuff, you would use 128 mb cards.

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Reply #4 - Aug 15^th, 2005 at 6:19pm

JBaymore Offline
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Mickmeister,

Hi and welcome to the "Homebuild Cockpit" forum.

Give this post a bit of time to be read and you should get some knowledgable responses to your question. I am not "up" on SLI that much..... so I can't say for sure. Let me give you some "background" info though:

In general from looking around at simpits ........ people don't seem to have very good luck with more than two 3-d views....... but that mostly has been with AGP/PCI cards.

Most people who use two monitors on a single graphics card use one output for exterior display and one output for guages. The guage screen is far less demanding than another 3-d view. And there are some issues with running graphics acceleration on undocked full screen views on multiple monitors.

The typical solution for what you mention up til now for multiple exterior views appears to have been running a single high end machine per exterior view desired and then linking them on a 100 mbit LAN with FSUIPC, WideFS, and particularly WideView. The speed of display of the SLOWEST machine will be the limiting factor on framerates.

One issue of this approach at the moment however is that the WideView program apprently does not pass AI traffic data across the machines nor weather data. So you'll get some variation in the pix on the monitors (ie a cloud will not be in the same place). Plus you have to have the exact same scenery files installed in every machine.... or you'll get other anomalies also.

Anyway..... I'll let someone who knows more about your hardware give you the more definitive answers.

best,

....................john

Intel i7 960 quad 3.2G LGA 1366, Asus P6X58D Premium, 750W Corsair, 6 gig 1600 DDR3, Spinpoint 1TB 7200 HD, Caviar 500G 7200 HD, GTX275 1280M, Logitec Z640, Win7 Pro 64b, CH Products yoke, pedals + throttle quad, simpit

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