USB monitors, running BS in full screen, and other worldly mysteries

[Froglips]

 

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.