Six Monitor Flight Sim Goodness

I finally got my second nVidia GeForce 8800 GT card in, so that I could run all 4 virtual monitors (two 15" touch screens, one 8" touch screen, and the three 19" monitors that make up the virtual TH2Go main display) in Vista. After multiple fatal crashes with just about every nVidia driver I could use when running FSX, I finally disabled DX10 preview in FSX and it all works just fine. Frame rates seem moderately stable with my medium high to high detail settings (no AA or anything fancy) in sparsely populated areas at 10-15fps...not great...but tolerable. I'll go work on tweaking and overclocking for performance later.




I've really been irritated fighting having to resetup all my flight panels on the auxilliary monitors each time after you crash (grin) or restart a flight. I've been running in full screen and saving the setup, but when you reload, all the panels popup onto the main display (????). I'd read a lot about trying it in "windowed" mode, but also a lot of cautions that this can hurt performance too (ESPECIALLY if you have a window even SLIGHTLY over lap from one monitor onto another), but that it seemed to fix the save issue (though you have to always launch the same flight, and then load new plane, location, time, flight plan, etc.). Still a little bit of a PITA, but not nearly as much as having to drag all the panel and resize them onto all the auxillary monitors. And performance doesn't seem too bad, and you can mostly hide the window top frame off the monitor edge and have the windows start bar "autohide" down to get 99% of the visual (yeah, there is a slight issue with the border all around that you can see, but it isn't bad).

And, OMFG, how much do I love having the DECM (Dual Engine Control Module) and AutoPilot on that 8" touch screen, and I wont even start in about how beautiful the 15" touch displays with all the interactive touch glory of the PFD/MFD is. For now, the Baron 58 Beachcraft is one of the BEST planes I've found with a full compliment of glass cockpit and all the other stacks. Many of the others default FSX planes, it seems, have skimped on the 2D panels available in favor of the virtual cockpit (which is ok for most setups on a single monitor, the VC is better). I'm sure a little work can drag most of the panels up to snuff on many/most of the planes, it just does suck to have to do it for planes that should have a pretty complete set already. I love tapping the AP vertical speed rate up and down and having it control my climb outs and everything. Even get to see the little trim wheels on the panels twirl. Becareful, though...grin, NAV autopilot will turn you right into a mountain if you aren't up at altitude yet (a problem when climing out on runway 30 in Cascade, ID U70).

Now, my biggest problem is not having monitor cables long enough and enough desktop realestate for all the monitors to be positioned appropriately. It is close to getting time to begin the garage prototyping of the cockpit, I think.