Multi-monitor set-up guide & help (unofficial)

[Congo_Toey]

@ratcatcher, I don't think there is anything wrong with ur CPU or memory, I run 5 24" monitors with an I7 980x at stock speed, what I have found with dcs graphics engine is that it does not take advantage of mulit gpu configurations such as crossfire or sli. Therefore having 2 5870's won't help you anymore than having only 1. What is needed when going to multi monitor high resolution graphics is 1. A high performance gpu and 2. A lot of graphics memory on the gpu that is being used to render the graphics.

 

I have a single 5870 eyefinity 6 graphics card with all 5 monitors connected to it, it has 2G of graphics memory, and I get between 30 and 40 frames per second, my resolution in the sim is set to 6030x3440. I use a combination of eyefinity and softh to get this. Here is a link to a picture of my setup,

 

I think if you have standard 5870 graphics cards then you will only be using 1G of memory, and your total screen memory requirements may exceed that when you add the total of your 4 monitors rendering resolution together.

 

S

[MadTommy]

nudging in again here,,,, those using 2 monitors,,, are you using the "Phantom Monitor fix"? Thanks

 

No not using it.

 

But you are misunderstanding the 'primary' monitor thing.. it has nothing to do with which way around they are physically or which one has the cockpit on it.

 

The primary monitor has to be on the left. If you are not willing to make your left one the primary monitor afaik you will not get it working.

[Ratcatcher]

@ratcatcher

 

Hey thx for the replies Congo & fzfq3m ( btw that's a really hard name to repeat, where did it come from??? :lol: )

 

Congo, your experiences with a 5 screen set up ( bloody nice setup btw :thumbup: ) makes me wonder about going down the same route as yourself, and changing gfx card.

 

I had a look at some multi monitor gfx's and saw that ati do a 6950 "flex" that supports up to 5 monitors, would that be quicker than your 5870 6?

 

Also have you tried exporting mfd's and such onto your 4th monitor, looking at your screen shot it looks like a no, but wondering if you have messed about with it at all?

 

Currently I'm running HELIOS without any issues ( well other than the latest patch has apparently messed up some of the buttons!!! ) & I must say I am loving what it brings to the table.

 

I really like the way I can monitor (no pun intended ) my instruments by just flicking my eyes down instead of having to move my head using trackir. Sounds a small point but really helps my scan and feels much more natural. ( The fact that my trackir doesn't seem to like to pan down in game hasn't helped )

 

Currently I'm getting on ok not having the mfd's exported and hasn't stopped me from getting back into enjoying what is quite simply an astoundingly deep and fulfilling sim!

Edited July 26, 2011 by Ratcatcher

[Fakum]

No not using it.

 

But you are misunderstanding the 'primary' monitor thing.. it has nothing to do with which way around they are physically or which one has the cockpit on it.

 

The primary monitor has to be on the left. If you are not willing to make your left one the primary monitor afaik you will not get it working.

 

Thanks MadTommy,,, I dont think Im missunderstanding it? I know I had no issue in Black Shark, but had to use the phantommonitorfix to acheive it,, as I understand, there are differences between A-10 & BlackShark, and they cant be set the same way. With that being said,, I read through these 30+ pages again in here today, what I have gathered (through bleeding eyes) is that you can have the MFCD on left secondary and cockpit on center primary, but you have to change the positions of the monitors via the GUI of your video card software before playing the game, then switch back to normal config when finished,,, at least thats what I got? Gonna have to sift more between the dual monitor, 3 monitor, 4 monitor, 5 monitor portions of this thread again onse I start actually trying to config this,,,,

[MadTommy]

Fakum, i think you are making this more complicated than it needs to be. I suppose i don't understand why you can't make the left monitor the primary monitor in windows / gfx gui and use it for your MFCD and the non primary monitor, your right one, for your cockpit. This way you get the results you desire in game and the only difference out of game is where your taskbar is.. is that really a problem?

 

If you manage to get it working with your right monitor as the primary one pls let me know, but as far as i know this simply does not work.

[Congo_Toey]

Hey thx for the replies Congo & fzfq3m ( btw that's a really hard name to repeat, where did it come from??? :lol: )

 

Congo, your experiences with a 5 screen set up ( bloody nice setup btw :thumbup: ) makes me wonder about going down the same route as yourself, and changing gfx card.

 

I had a look at some multi monitor gfx's and saw that ati do a 6950 "flex" that supports up to 5 monitors, would that be quicker than your 5870 6?

 

Also have you tried exporting mfd's and such onto your 4th monitor, looking at your screen shot it looks like a no, but wondering if you have messed about with it at all?

 

Currently I'm running HELIOS without any issues ( well other than the latest patch has apparently messed up some of the buttons!!! ) & I must say I am loving what it brings to the table.

 

I really like the way I can monitor (no pun intended ) my instruments by just flicking my eyes down instead of having to move my head using trackir. Sounds a small point but really helps my scan and feels much more natural. ( The fact that my trackir doesn't seem to like to pan down in game hasn't helped )

 

Currently I'm getting on ok not having the mfd's exported and hasn't stopped me from getting back into enjoying what is quite simply an astoundingly deep and fulfilling sim!

@ratcatcher,

 

Agree the gfx card is awesome not sure how much gfx memory it has, I recommend that you should get more than 2G. I have been thinking about upgrading to something like that as well. One thing you need to be careful about is that sometimes ATI put more connectors on the back than can actually used. I am not sure about this card, but for sure a previous card if you used one port on the card it meant you could not use the other.

 

As for exporting mfd's no I have nit tried it. My reason is very simple with my set up I can pretty much see all the gauges and instruments in my centre and lower monitors without needing to move my head too much, the side panels I can also see just by turning my head with track ir just a little bit. I am thinking about upgrading my monitors to the acer 23" touchscreen ones, as then I don't need to use the mouse to click the cockpit and it will be much more realistic to touch the switches and dials on the screen.

 

At the moment although running at full high res, I don't have the distances for trees and clutter very high and I don't use HDR at all, so I am thinking to upgrade my graphics card to one like you are thinking about so that I can get the full gfx effects.

[Fakum]

Thanks MadTommy, little misunderstyanding here I suppose? based on the instructions, I should be able to do all that, the only inconvienience (if you will) would be to go in and out of the gfx gui every time you want to play the game.(keeping the main screen in the center is actually a priority based on PC use etc) I was trying to figure out if there was a way to avoid that, much like setting up Black Shark, thats all,, and I did not know if folks were finding "phantommonitofix" of any benefit for this? Thats pretty much it,, I havnt started the setup yet because I wanted to research 1st, and boy did I! lots of stuff to sift through,,,,

[Congo_Toey]

Guys does anyone know a way to resize the multi player GUI so that it all fits on one screen? I seem to remember on blackshark somebody posted a way to keep the GUI in a window while still slowing the sim to go full screen, but I can't find that anywhere now. For me it's impossible to use multiplayer at the moment as all the buttons are off screen.

[shu77]

Its dropped off this Original Post by the looks, but you jus tneed to add UIMainView = Viewports.Center to the bottom of the config (see the examples for more info)

[Congo_Toey]

Its dropped off this Original Post by the looks, but you jus tneed to add UIMainView = Viewports.Center to the bottom of the config (see the examples for more info)

 

That does not work for me as I only use one camera across all five of my monitors.

[Quirkitized]

For those of you that need the multiplayer menus fixed for multi-spanned displays, just view my Nvidia Surround thread: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=74802. It works for other type of setups.

[Congo_Toey]

For those of you that need the multiplayer menus fixed for multi-spanned displays, just view my Nvidia Surround thread: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=74802. It works for other type of setups.

 

Actually I have tried it, and it does work well for triple monitor setup, as it resizes the x axis to fit on the single centre monitor.

 

However I have five monitors in a sort of cross configuration 3 horizontal and 3 vertical. So when I try your fix it now stretches down the three vertical monitors. I have tried adjusting comparing the files you with the original and wow, there are so many changes to make.

 

Before in Blackshark somebody posted a change to the view.lua file that could put all the GUI menus into a window say 1920x1080 but would still run the sim in you full screen hi resolution mode that is set in the options.

 

I am bit by bit trying to go through avery multiplayer menu file to adjust the vertical but it is very hard to make sure that I dont mess anything up and that I dont miss something. Just looking for an easier option here.

[Quirkitized]

Congo, see this post. It might help you, it helped make it easier for me with my mod. But I still had to do lots of manual editing, but who knows might help.

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1086335&postcount=10

[Congo_Toey]

Congo, see this post. It might help you, it helped make it easier for me with my mod. But I still had to do lots of manual editing, but who knows might help.

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1086335&postcount=10

 

 

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You I can now use the multiplayer menu for the first time, although the test doesnt line up and I can actually see the servers in the list, but I can now connect with my friends :D

 

that is good enough for me for now

[CyBerkut]

@ratcatcher,

 

As for exporting mfd's no I have nit tried it. My reason is very simple with my set up I can pretty much see all the gauges and instruments in my centre and lower monitors without needing to move my head too much, the side panels I can also see just by turning my head with track ir just a little bit. I am thinking about upgrading my monitors to the acer 23" touchscreen ones, as then I don't need to use the mouse to click the cockpit and it will be much more realistic to touch the switches and dials on the screen.

 

A potential issue to be aware of with using multiple Acer 23" touchscreens... The last time I checked, you still couldn't really do an Eyefinity multi-monitor setup with them and have the touchscreen functions work properly.

 

I have three of the Acer 23" touchscreens (using Win 7). The touchscreen calibrations are fine when setup as an extended desktop. [i play three simultaneous instances of Eve Online, one per screen]. Putting the screens into an Eyefinity group doesn't allow for proper touchscreen alignment. I have not seen a fix/work-around for this.

 

Of course, if you're doing Helios instead of relying upon the built-in clickable cockpit, then an Eyefinity group wouldn't be used for the touchscreens, which would avoid the problem.

[Congo_Toey]

A potential issue to be aware of with using multiple Acer 23" touchscreens... The last time I checked, you still couldn't really do an Eyefinity multi-monitor setup with them and have the touchscreen functions work properly.

 

I have three of the Acer 23" touchscreens (using Win 7). The touchscreen calibrations are fine when setup as an extended desktop. [i play three simultaneous instances of Eve Online, one per screen]. Putting the screens into an Eyefinity group doesn't allow for proper touchscreen alignment. I have not seen a fix/work-around for this.

 

Of course, if you're doing Helios instead of relying upon the built-in clickable cockpit, then an Eyefinity group wouldn't be used for the touchscreens, which would avoid the problem.

 

Thanks very interesting I hadn't thought about that.

 

What I am thinking to do is use the centre screen of the triple screen eyefinity as one touch screen and a second touch screen below that, that is not part of the eyefinity group, do you think that would work?

[CyBerkut]

Thanks very interesting I hadn't thought about that.

 

What I am thinking to do is use the centre screen of the triple screen eyefinity as one touch screen and a second touch screen below that, that is not part of the eyefinity group, do you think that would work?

 

I can't say it with absolute certainty, but I do not think you will get the desired results for the center screen of your eyefinity group. Until such time as Acer comes out with Eyefinity-aware drivers for the T230H's, I think we are out of luck.

[Congo_Toey]

I can't say it with absolute certainty, but I do not think you will get the desired results for the center screen of your eyefinity group. Until such time as Acer comes out with Eyefinity-aware drivers for the T230H's, I think we are out of luck.

 

Maybe if I dont use eyefinity, and I setup the centre screen as my main screen then, extend the desktop to the other 4 screens and use softth to render all screen it might work, what do think?

[shu77]

That does not work for me as I only use one camera across all five of my monitors.

 

Yeah Im not a fan of Eyefinity, I think youre better off running the 5 screens seperately and using viewports on each myself.

[Congo_Toey]

Yeah Im not a fan of Eyefinity, I think youre better off running the 5 screens seperately and using viewports on each myself.

 

I dont have an issue with setting the view, I have tried 1 big screen versus 5 viewports and to be honest the 5 viewports helps the fps a bit, bit looks really weird when looking around the cockpit, I have setting one big screen covering monitors much better.

 

However my question was in relation to the acer touch screens working or not?

[CyBerkut]

Congo, I don't really know what to tell you, on that. I don't have DCS: BS installed on my desktop machine (and don't have DCS: A10C), so I'm not in a position to test it out at this time.

 

My *suspicion* (having seen the eyefinity issue with being stretched across multiple Acer Touchscreens) is that the separate viewports approach that Shu77 mentions is probably your best bet. However, you should probably give SoftTH a shot, as it may be a sufficiently different approach that it works.

 

At the moment, I have no immediate plans to get into flight simm'ing on the desktop. I have a "Maybe some day I will..." plan in the back of my mind that I have been working towards (Partially what led to the purchase of the three Acer T230H touchscreens), where I would use Helios (or something like it) on the touchscreens and use a TV for the outside view.

 

I'll be interested to see what you find works best for you!

[Gadroc]

Thanks very interesting I hadn't thought about that.

 

What I am thinking to do is use the centre screen of the triple screen eyefinity as one touch screen and a second touch screen below that, that is not part of the eyefinity group, do you think that would work?

 

 

That won't work for a native windows 7 touch screen (aka one that uses the built in capabilities of windows 7). Windows 7 maps a digitizer to a monitor and with Eyefinity the monitor and Windows sees the Eyefinity group as one big monitor. So when you touch the left third of the touch screen that will map to the left hand monitor in the Eyefinity group, etc.

 

There are some third party touch screen which do not use the direct Windows 7 support and can be manipulated to represent a partial monitor in Windows. The older 3M drivers could do it with unsupported registry settings (I had two Dell 15" touch monitors mapped onto one dual head 2 go at one point). I foresee this being less and less common as time goes on.

[Congo_Toey]

Thanks to you both I wont be buying the touchscreens for while, but when I do I'll taking your comments on board and let you know how i get on.

[CEPEGA]

is it somehow possible to show the loading screen picture (when starting the mission) centered only on the center monitor? i'm using a 2-screen setup. And the loading screen spreads over both monitors wich looks weird.

[Congo_Toey]

I dont know where, but I bet that there is place somewhere to chanfe that, im this sim you have to search high and low for days to find what you want, but so far there has always been a way for me.