How to display FSX on 7 monitors?

[djw4250]

I have been using FS9 with 8 monitors very nicely thank you! (Tried to attach a photo) However, I would like to move on to FSX and have run in to problems with so many monitors.
Hours of searching and reading has left me uncertain about the best way to proceed and I am having trouble reconciling/harmonising the differing opinions that I have found by using google.
For example I read that FSX will only handle 3 monitors and then I found a post in which the guy set up 8 using the FS9 methods!
Some refer to TripleHead2Go, others to Widescreen. Another recommended Panel Builder (which I bought and am embarrassed to say have had no luck getting it going). All of this apparently necessitates plenty of expense. I don't mind paying for a solution, but I don't want to continue lashing out on a guess.
In a nutshell:- If, when in the circuit here at Napier, I judge the moment to turn on to base leg by looking over my shoulder to the airstrip threshold, that is literally what I want to do in my simulator too.
Where can I find a thread or a post or forum that will cover the full story and clarify the way ahead?

[Mark Hurst]

I would like to move on to FSX and have run in to problems with so many monitors.

It would help if you say what the problems are that you have run into. As far as I know, if you can get Windows to see eight monitors you will be able to get FSX to see them. Performance will be a different matter. You don't say that you want all eight screens dedicated to an outside view, or whether some are for the panel or if you're running the panel on a separate computer. You suggest Panel Builder is an option but didn't get it to work, but again no info on what went wrong. PB ought to work and should be easy to get going, although in my experience it's not a very good product. Check out Air Manager for something that does the same and a lot more, and is an all-round better product.

For your outside views you will probably be better off with a combination of things, such as a triple-screen window for the front view. This needs nvidia Surround or, as you mention, you could use a TH2Go if you happen to have one. It may be that you can use two Surround views at once (with two GPUs) or a Surround and TH2Go together for the equivalent setup. The advantage is that performance is better with a triple-screen view. The disadvantage is the geometric distortion becomes more noticeable at the edges and so lining up adjacent views cleanly will be impossible. There are also other consequences of distortion, which is that the outside world looks wrong the further out from centre you look. Using three 4:3 monitors instead of 16:9 ones helps reduce this and it is important to calculate or empirically set the zoom factor to the right value to give you a roughly life-size display.

Finally, you will struggle to manage independent views in FSX. There is as far as I know no proper way to save them and you will be forever dragging windows around before you can start flying. You can use something like Opus FSI as a half-way view manager. You mentioned 'widescreen', but probably meant WideView, which is a radical option for running views synchronised across multiple PCS. Opus FSI can do this too but either way it is a can of worms and to be avoided if there is another way.

For the setup you want I can see no reason to stick with FSX over P3D, although there will be costs involved to upgrade software. P3D has viewgroups, which allow you to configure and manage multi-view setups rationally and as far as I can tell reliably. This also has the great advantage of reducing the effects of geometric distortion, so you can get your views to line up properly. And you are not stuck with having to have all your monitors in a nice straight line. Performance for multi-view viewgroups is (I think) better than for multi-window setups in FSX. Whether you can comfortably run eight views, I can't say, although I am doubtful. I run three 16:9s in a viewgroup and it struggles.

I have two videos on viewgroups in P3D if you want to go looking for inspiration.

[djw4250]

Mark, your response is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. I appreciate it very much. Thank you.

[djw4250]

Hi Mark,
I printed out your message and worked through it point by point and have "taken on board" many of the things that you pointed out.
As it turns out I have achieved a reasonably stable arrangement using, as you suggested, "a combination of things". I found that I could set up four of the seven monitors using NVIDIA Surround and the rest are working fine as independent views. My two GeForce 1070's are struggling to cope so I have backed off the video settings about 30% from maximums. Some more than that, such as water detail - zero. (I notice I am a "junior member" of Flt Sim.com - One day if I grow up I will invest another fortune in replacing my newly acquired gaming PC)
Setting up the views was just as you said it would be - fiddly. I have not noticed any distortion in the views because I have used several cockpit views that all are tending towards the magic 4:4 aspect ratio that you mentioned.
The good news is that having saved the flight as the 'Default' option, the views all pop back up where I had them last time. That means that subsequent and accumulating tweaks to views are gradually improving the alignments of adjacent views.
I checked out P3D and found that there is a scarcity of addon scenery for the regions that interest me, although I would, if stymied in my FSX endeavors, switch to it.
Sorry, for want of a link, I never found your two videos.

This is all by way of a thank you for your reply to my first question in 4 years!

[Mark Hurst]

Sorry, for want of a link, I never found your two videos.

Just click the big black thing in my signature, that should get you close. Glad you're making progress anyway.