Resolutiuon problem and Multi Monitor use

Question

Good morning new to the forum.

 

I have been searching for about a week on this question and have not seen anything specific to it, or for the configuration problem I am having.  To start here is the PC configuration I have:

I7 processor 4.00Ghz Quad core

32GB Mem DDR4

(1) SSD 250GB OS drive

(1) SSD 960GB Drive (for Apps)

ASRock Z170 Extreme6 MB

EVGS Geforce GTX970 4GB mem GPU

(3) 27" monitors

(1) 19" touch screen

 Windows 10

Tp start I have spoken to x-plane support to ask a question about multi monitors, and the statement was that x-plane is for one monitor, but when they direct me to the hardware section, they point me to xforcepc which use a multi monitor setup with 1, 3, and 4 monitors, so right there I lost hope, where the developer sends me to a 3rd party website that does what x-plane tells me they cant or do not recommend.

 

first, I load x-plane 10 with one monitor 19" touch screen, takes about 5-8 minutes to load with a Cessna172, while on the ramp I get between 40-50 FPS, which is great, once a give it throttle, it comes down to about 5-10 FPS for about 5-10 seconds, the flight starts and 3-4 minutes into the flight I get spots of 4 to8 FPS  every so often.  I g=have set the rendering options to the recommended by x-plane, no cars, not too many clouds, details to minimum, water shadow/reflection off, etc... updated Bios, and latest GPU drivers

 

Now, my real question is, 1) How can I improve the frame rate, and 2) how are other users able to support multi monitor setups on one PC IF anybody has the hardware combo I have.  I have gotten to work with 4 screens, 3 in nvidea surround, and the 4th as independent running simplugins for instrumentation, but then the frame rates and x-plane loads takes a massive hit.

 

I know there have been questions about this on the past, but all of them have been answered like, read the manual, or short answers like no you cant.  I have done my research, and I have not found anything specific to this, just a lot of guesses, and thats why I am here, looking for some peers to help out.

Answer 1

Hi casa3872,

It sounds like what you want to do with your single computer + monitors & touch screen is flight controls on the 19" touch screen, and visuals on the 3x 27" monitors.  If that is correct, what you have heard from X-Plane support is true: this is just not possible at this time with X-Plane. 

The reason you see X-Plane working with multiple monitors is because you can "trick" the operating system into seeing those 3 monitors as a single, triple-wide display. You could even add your fourth monitor into the mix and have a single display that spans all four monitors. All three or four (or theoretically 20 monitors) would be functioning as one singe display and showing one single view. 

You cannot have three monitors showing the scenery and one monitor showing the controls if you only have one computer. You can set this up only if you have more than one computer and each one is running X-Plane independently.

The only two views X-Plane is capable of displaying if you are using one computer with more than one monitor is the cockpit/scenery view and the instructor operating station (local map) view. This is a limitation of X-Plane 10.

Comments

It is interesting, because the equipment that x-force recommends is the following http://xforcepc.com/index.php/flight-simulation/computers/quad.html.  this is a multi display setup on one computer.  there are ways of doing it on one PC as you can see and others have.

You can have 3 monitors (for example 27") using NVidea surround, using only front view scenery, and have the 4th monitor, touch screen using simplugins for your intruments.  I have done it, but the only problem is the resolution, you do not need to have multiple PCs if using an 970 or higher card.

 

Like I said, there are people doing it with one PC, with almost or less of the setup that I have which is higher than the recommended from x-plane

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Oh so you have been able to get the set up you want with a plugin? I was not familiar with that. Which one is it? As far as I know the default sim isn't able to handle it, or maybe none of us have the right hardware/software.

Answer 2

There are some tweaks you can do to improve your Nvidia set-up (especially stutter). Go into 3D settings and make an entry for Xplane.exe. Change the following entries,

Multi-display/mixed-GPU acceleration           Single display performance mode

Power management mode                             Prefer maximum performance

Threaded optimisation                                    Off

Vertical sync                                                   Adaptive

I have an I5 system which drives 3 HD displays quite successfully clocked at 3.3GHz with a GTX970.

 

Derry.

Comments

Thanks everybody for your comments.  So, I was able to configure X-Plane in two ways with one Computer.  Here is the hardware used, since I changed it a little from a he original post:

 

Asus rampage V Extreme/U3.1 (MB)

Intel Core i7-5930k, 3.5GHZ LGA 2011V3 (6 core) (Processor)

32MB DDR4 (memory)

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980Ti 6GB (GPU)

EKWB Extrme 360 cooling system

Corsair PSU 750

Corsair full tower

FC Audio

(3) 27" Asus monitors

(1) 19 touchscreen Asus monitor

***Load one instance of x-plane at extreme settings FOV 130, with scenery only on the he 3 monitors, use Simplugin.com instruments panel on the touchscreen monitor.  I am getting about 45fps

 

***For this way you need two installations of X-Plane on the same PC different directories.  Run both instances of X-Plane, one with scenery on the 3 monitors, and the other with the inside of the cockpit on the 19" touchscreen.  Note that one instance of X-Plant needs to be the master and the second needs to be the slave.

 

The 3 monitors are running at 5880x1080 resolution