Recomendations for multiple display (a small video wall)

[Alant]

Where do you start with this?
My target is my desktop machine.
I presume that I need a video card with multiple output sockets, one for each monitor.
Any recommendation as to how to find such a card?

Alan

[ludomotico]

Most video cards marketed to gamers have at least two outputs. Sometimes they are different "sockets" (HDMI and DVI, for example), but you can configure each "socket" independently.

Be aware there are low grade video cards with several outputs marketed to the office users. They don't have a good performance for 3D-intensive applications. Just look for any (at least) medium grade nvidia card designed for gamers. I say a nvidia card because it seems they have better support in FlightGear, but it is only an opinion based on the reports in this forum.

Keep in mind the performance will be obviously worse with two screens attached to the same videocard. If you are considering a serious video wall, you might be interested in having two video cards or even two separated computers.

[Alant]

Ludimotico

Thanks for that.

I have tried with a spare TV, and it works fine on the HDMI .

The frame-rate hit was negligible.

However when I tried using a second window, using the wiki cookbook at http://wiki.flightgear.org/Howto:Config ... ew_windows the frame-rate went below 5.

My current need is to show, and interact with, cockpit control panels. At the moment I have 2 options .
1 - pan field of view to show the relevant panel. If I do this I cannot see out of the (cockpit ) windows, nor can I see the aircraft instruments.
2- I have built some GUI menu panels which emulate the real aircraft panels. When activated these obscure he view of the outside world and the main flight instruments.

Perhaps the best solution will be use an Android phone/tablet to interact with my cockpit panels.

Is your Android code suitable for making an interactive AFCS panel?

Alan

[ludomotico]

FlightGearMap for Android has the potencial to implement an AFCS for a specific aircraft, but I'm not planning to develop the application any further. It was designed at first for Android 2.2 and it includes lots of hacks to support Android 4+, which made the development of new features tricky. An overhaul of the code would be necessary

I believe the way to go nowadays is coding a panel in html/jacascript for the web interface FlightGear offers since version 3.4. This way, you can use a browser to control the AFCS from any device or even an external window in the same PC.

Regarding the performance of a multi display
deployment, I'm afraid you must run some tests and decide which configuration is better for your system: a single window extended to several displays, defining different cameras for each display or different instances of FlightGear for each display. Different users have reported different performances for each configuration, so I guess the best configuration depends entirely on your specific hardware.