Froglips

My boards arrived too. They are simply flawless. I have never seen such fine work.

I am working on adding Icebear's airport maps to my Helios profile. I am going to display the maps on the Doublesight 9" monitor that normally displays my Abris. I have the toggle all working to switch between the Abris and the map screen. I have one issue that I simply can't figure out for the life of me. I have resized the maps to be a maximum of 575 pixels wide. The Doublesight is in portrait position so has a display resolution of 600 x 1020. The maps don't seem to be displayed at their image size. I have examined how Icebear set up the image display and I don't see anything that seems to be driving the images to a larger size. Any ideas out there?

CAT, I note my order says "connectors" instead of "cables". How come? Froggie

1st class is good for me too.

I know there are a few of you who have discovered both Helios and SoftTH. I was getting single digit frame rates when I ran Helios with my four monitor set-up. I have a 26" 'camera' monitor, a 21.5" touch screen for the Helios display, and two USB monitors for the Shkval (10" Mimo) and Abris (9" Doublesight). The USB monitors and Helios were causing the horrendous frame rate hit for sure. I my config.SoftTHconfig file below you will note that display 2 (head 1 to SoftTH) is turned off for BS. There are disadvantages and advantages to doing this. Advantages BS and Helios are not both trying to write to the same monitor and the SoftTH output rectangle is significantly smaller. The disadvantage is you cannot output things like the Abris and Shkval to a monitor that BS cannot see. The big advantage of SoftTH v2.06 (just released) is the framerate limiter. I have cut the resolution to the Abris and Shkval in half (512x300) and set the maximum frame rate to 5fps. This has not created any visual difference I can see. I am running a pair of 560Ti cards in SLI. I am getting 25fps on the runway and down in the trees. I was getting 7-9 fps in the same places. If I can help give me a shout. I am hardly an expert but I got one machine working. [main] renderResolution=2944x1624 nonlocalFormat=RGB16D keepComposition=1 smoothing=1 debugD3D=0 zClear=1 vsync=0 tripleBuffer=0 screenshotFormat=jpg dllPathD3D9=auto dllPathDXGI=auto dllPathD3D11=auto [overrides] forceResolution=0 antialiasing=0 processAffinity=1 FOVForceHorizontal=0 FOVForceVertical=0 [head_primary] ;Camera view sourceRect=0,0,1920,1200 destRect=0,0,1920,1200 screenMode=1920x1200 [head_1] ;ABRIS view devID=2 sourceRect=1920,600,600,1024 destRect=1920,600,600,1024 screenMode=600x1024 transportResolution=300x512 transportMethod=nonlocal16d noSync=1 fpsLimit=5 [head_2] ;Skhval view devID=3 sourceRect=1920,0,1024,600 destRect=1920,0,1024,600 screenMode=1024x600 transportResolution=512x300 transportMethod=nonlocal16d noSync=1 fpsLimit=5

Night shift:( Take it easy CAT, we are all patient.

I have reinstalled DX runtime. d3d9.dll is in BS's bin directory where launcher and the other exes are located. I am mystified. The SoftTH logo doesn't appear when BS starts hence, no SoftTH loading. WTF?

I fried a motherboard which required a complete reload as I switched to a Asus Sabertooth 990FX. I had finally figured out how to make SoftTH play nice with BS and Helios and deliver 22fps+. Now I have 2 560Ti cards in SLI, 16gb of RAM, and a faster CPU. So everything is reloaded now after several weeks of work (PITA). The reload of BS seemed to go well. It runs at about 20fps w/o full screen enabled and running 4 monitors including two frame rate sucking USB monitors.. So wierdness, d3d9.dll is not in the Eagle Dynamics/KA-50/bin/x86/stable directory anymore. There is a version in the main KA-50 dir. So I rename the d3d9.dll to d3d9.dll.orig and drop the SoftTH version of the file into the KA-50 dir (with a copy in the stable directory for good measure) with the config.softTHconfig file but no SoftTH logo appears. I have searched for d3d9.dll in my PC. It is in about a dozen places but ONLY in the KA-50 dir in the game. It would be nice to know where BS is looking for the d3d9.dll file. If there is a config file that I should be tweaking, please tell me where to look for it:) Froggie

KA-50 collective This is what the collective should look like. Since this picture I have added all the labels using dry transfer lettering. You can see the USB interface controller for all the switches and buttons on the underside shot. http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=73807

I was using two USB monitors for displaying the Abris and Shkval in my BS pit. I did get it to work but the FPS are under 20 most of the time. I learned a lot during my trials and tribulations of trying to make this set-up function so thought I might share with the forum. The FPS hit from USB monitors is cumulative. I can get 30 fps with one but more like 18 with two. I think when they make a USB 3.0 compatible monitor this may be possible but not enough bandwidth with USB 2.0. I have a DoubleSight 9.1" and an iMo 10". The quality of the DoubleSight is far superior to the iMo. Same resolution but the display sharpness and color rendition is heads above on the DoubleSight. SoftTH was the vehicle that made it even possible to get to 20 fps. It allows me to run BS in full screen mode and yes, Helios works with it just fine. In fact, SoftTH allows a Helios user to do something pretty unusual, disable the Helios display(s) so they are not part of the DCS render area. Doing this allowed me to reduce my render area by nearly half. The way SoftTH works has some interesting pluses and minuses. If you have two video cards it uses one as the primary rendering card, a second card is just an output card. The cards do not have to match. SLI is not supported. So you can have a high end (read expensive) primary card and some inexpensive secondary card to get up to six video outputs. No SLI means the primary card really has to carry all the work. I have a Palit 560Ti 2GB. It is the only 2GB card I have found. The SoftTH readme is not correct for the 2.05 alpha version currently released. Several areas are wrong. I rewrote the readme for legibility and correctness but have not heard back from kegetys on whether it is technically correct or not. This section is wrong: transportMethod: Transport method used for this head. Possible options: auto - Autodetect output method local - Use shared surfaces nonlocal - Copy data through system RAM (32bit) nonlocal16 - Copy data through system RAM (16bit) nonlocal16d - Copy data through system RAM (16bit + dithering) noSync: Do not wait for this head to be presented. For a very slow output device this allows the game to render at a high frame rate while the output is updated at a lower rate. noSync is not an option for transport method, it is a separate switch, on a separate line noSync=1 to decouple sync from main display (0 to not) According to kegetys, to make use of the noSync option and have locaL drives follow any of the nonlocal setting (16 or 16d) the transportMethod must be set to auto. I am now switching from my original cockpit design to one built from Gadroc's that has the Shkval and Abris on a central Helios display. The two USB display are "disabled" in SoftTH but still usable as Helios displays. They will become side console displays. I believe that since the do no display the DCS output that BS won't take the same fps hit. I will report back. Froggie PS If anyone wants to give SoftTH a try just drop me a line. I am hardly an expert but I will try to help.

Got SoftTH working thanks to a guy named PwrUsr over on ketgetys.net. That is the good news. The bad news is that the USB monitors are just killing the frame rates. I am in Full screen mode and getting 20 fps. Every graphic option is set to low. The Abris is set at a 512 x 300 transport because lower is unreadable. The Shkvall is set to 150 x 256. It looks "OK" making me think it is pretty low rez. Off to look for a 17" VGA touchscreen. Bummer. The set-up looked so cool.

New setup PeterP, I am sorry that I am not communicating clearly. I will try harder. I have a configuration of SoftTH that doesn't crash in windowed mode. I cannot select full screen to get the FPS improvement I crave. If I select Full Screen, the simulation launches but only a black box is displayed in the center of the main screen. It appears that the simulation gets minimized to someplace off screen and I cannot alt tab to bring it back. The simulation is clearly running as all the instruments are working and I can hear the tower in the background. This set-up shows the "camera" view on the main screen and the Shkval on the 1024 x 600 top USB display and the Abris on the 600 x 1024 USB display below it. The screen arrangement is similar to your Variant 2 with both USB screen to the right of the main screen. This was the smallest screen footprint design. My FPS sitting on the runway is 7. Unplayable. SoftTH has allowed me to "disable" the large touchscreen below the main screen. The Helios program displays my instruments on this screen. Everything works. Even the menus have moved to a position on the "camera" screen where I can read them. The physical set-up is shown below. The monitor file is shown below: _ = function(p) return p; end; name = _('Froglips2+2monitors'); Description = 'Camera on upper, Helios on lower,ABRIS on Doublesight, Shkval on iMo'; Viewports = { Center = { x = 0; y = 0; width = 1920; height = 1200; viewDx = 0; viewDy = 0; aspect = 16/9; } } Shkval = { x = 1920; y = 0; width = 800; height = 600; } ABRIS = { x = 1920; y = 600; width = 600; height = 800; } PVIDig = { x = 2720; y = 500; width = 244; height = 244; } The options file is shown below: options = { ["difficulty"] = { ["padlock"] = true, ["easyRadar"] = false, ["miniHUD"] = false, ["birds"] = 0, ["optionsView"] = "optview_all", ["permitCrash"] = false, ["immortal"] = false, ["map"] = true, ["radio"] = false, ["labels"] = true, ["tips"] = true, ["aftSwitching"] = false, ["cockpitLanguage"] = "english", ["units"] = "imperial", ["easyFlight"] = false, ["altTrimmingMethod"] = true, ["externalViews"] = true, ["iconsTheme"] = "nato", ["fuel"] = false, ["weapons"] = false, ["setGlobal"] = true, ["geffect"] = "realistic", }, -- end of ["difficulty"] ["views"] = { ["cockpit"] = { ["mirrors"] = true, ["reflections"] = false, ["russianHud"] = false, ["avionics"] = 1, }, -- end of ["cockpit"] }, -- end of ["views"] ["sound"] = { ["world"] = -14.5, ["radioSpeech"] = true, ["cockpit"] = 0, ["volume"] = 0, ["headphones"] = 0, ["music"] = -14.5, ["subtitles"] = true, ["gui"] = 0, }, -- end of ["sound"] ["graphics"] = { ["multiMonitorSetup"] = "froglips2+2monitors", ["color"] = "32", ["heatBlr"] = 0, ["scenes"] = "medium", ["water"] = 2, ["fullScreen"] = false, ["visibRange"] = "Medium", ["aspect"] = 1.3, ["textures"] = 1, ["shadows"] = 2, ["effects"] = 3, ["width"] = 2944, ["lights"] = 2, ["height"] = 1644, ["civTraffic"] = 0, ["resolution"] = "1920x1200", ["haze"] = 1, }, -- end of ["graphics"] } -- end of options The config.SoftTH file is shown below: [main] ;Display1=Camera Display 2=Helios(disabled) Display3=ABRIS Display4=Shkval renderResolution=2944x1624 nonlocalFormat=RGB16D keepComposition=0 smoothing=0 debugD3D=0 zClear=1 vsync=0 tripleBuffer=1 screenshotFormat=bmp dllPathD3D9=auto dllPathDXGI=auto dllPathD3D11=auto [overrides] forceResolution=0 antialiasing=2 processAffinity=1 FOVForceHorizontal=0 FOVForceVertical=0 [head_primary] ; DISPLAY 1 -Camera view sourceRect=0,0,1920,1200 screenMode=1920x1200 [head_1] ; DISPLAY 2 - ABRIS view devID=2 sourceRect=1920,600,600,1024 transportResolution=300x512 transportMethod=nonlocal16d noSync=1 [head_2] ; DISPLAY 3 - Shkval view devID=3 sourceRect=1920,0,1024,600 transportResolution=512x300 transportMethod=nonlocal16d noSync=1

I have actually found a message that describes the problem and the solution. The sausage is a very messed up display of the start-up image. I need to create a solid black image at 24pp depth to replace the default image. It is to be the same resolution as my screens. The problem is I don't own Photo Shop. Paint won't create a 24pp png file. Any suggestions of programs in the public domain to do this?

Someone has it working for Warthog PeterP, Can yo help me adapt this setup to my setup? I do not understand all the settings. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I've got 2 Samsung Syncmaster U70 USB-powered DisplayLink-driven monitors working as the MFCDs in DCS: A-10C right now, using 2.05alpha with Win7-64. I use 3 main screens (1280x1024, 1920x1080, 1280x1024) in addition to the 2 800x480 USB monitors. Here's my config.SoftTHconfig, maybe it will help you: [main] renderResolution=5430x1080 nonlocalFormat=RGB16D keepComposition=0 smoothing=1 debugD3D=0 zClear=1 vsync=0 tripleBuffer=0 screenshotFormat=bmp dllPathD3D9=auto dllPathDXGI=auto dllPathD3D11=auto [overrides] forceResolution=0 antialiasing=0 anisotropic=16 processAffinity=1 FOVForceHorizontal=0 FOVForceVertical=0 [head_primary] sourceRect=1355,0,1920,1080 screenMode=1920x1080 [head_1] ; Autodetected as \\.\DISPLAY2 at NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 devID=1 sourceRect=3350,0,1280,1024 transportResolution=1280x1024 transportMethod=auto noSync=0 [head_2] ; Autodetected as \\.\DISPLAY3 at NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS devID=2 sourceRect=0,0,1280,1024 transportResolution=1280x1024 transportMethod=nonlocal16d noSync=1 [head_3] devID=3 sourceRect=4630,0,800,480 transportResolution=800x480 transportMethod=nonlocal16d noSync=1 [head_4] devID=4 sourceRect=4630,480,800,480 transportResolution=800x480 transportMethod=nonlocal16d noSync=1

Ok. I am suitably chided. More detail. Screen layout DXDiag System DXDiag_Display1 DXDiag_Display2 DXDiag_Display3 DXDiag_Display4 Video drivers nVidia 275.33-desktop-win7-winvista-64bit-english-whql DisplayLink-5.6.31870 Everything appears below

If we get this working then we have a redo as I have a second USB monitor for the Shkval. Thanks for your help.

PeterP, The two monitor set-up with the USB monitors unplugged worked but it spread the cockpit across both screens. It needs to only display on the upper screen.

PeterP, Going to try your two display setup (USB monitor unplugged) tomorrow. If that works and the USB moniotr is the problem, is there anything we can do? Froggie

Great work PeterP. Still trying to get my setup to cooperate:)

Cat, Great. You have a PayPal account to receive payment? Froggie

Everything still works but when I fire up Black Shark, the background on the lower screen goes to glaring white (overdriven) with this black sausage across the middle. If I put a background on the Helios screen then it doesn't happen but I can't figure out how to get the Skhval and Abris to appear over the background. nVidia 560Ti 2GB RAM nVidia 275.238 (current) Windows 7 Ultimate Auria 26" 1920 x 1200, HP 21.5" touchscreen 1920 x 1080, Doublesight 9" USB 600 x 1024 Auria above and centered over HP and Doublesight placed side by side 2520 x 2280 This started about a week ago when I was trying to get the Doublesight configured for the Abris. The horizontal black sausage is amorphous in shape, just appears to be random. most of screen is overdriven white while sausage is dead black.

Bump

I am getting a very wierd thing going on with my system. I have three screens. A 26" main (camera) screen, a 21" touchscreen (Helios), and a 9" USB screen (for Arbris or other display). When I launch either Black Shark or Warthog the two lower screen go to overdriven white with the black sauage shape down the center of the screen. It doesn't look healthy for the screen and certain make a poor background for the instrument displays. Anyone have any ideas what the heck is going on? Thanks for your thoughts.

SoftTHreadme.txt Just seemed like the thing to do for all your help to me and so many others.

On my monitor lua. Not sure what was going on there. _ = function(p) return p; end; name = _('Froglips2+1monitors'); Description = 'Camera on upper 1920x1200, Shkval on lower 1920x1080,ABRIS on Doublesight 600x1024'; Viewports = { Center = { x = 0; y = 0; width = 1920; height = 1200; viewDx = 0; viewDy = 0; aspect = 16/9; } } Shkval = { x = 0; y = 1200; width = 920; height = 690; } ABRIS = { x = 1276; y = 1200; width = 600; height = 800; } PVIDig = { x = 900; y = 1500; width = 250; height = 250; }