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Adding two monitors

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Adding two monitors

Postby georgem1956 » Fri Aug 31, 2018 11:28 pm

I wanted to run this by the forum before taking the plunge. I want to add two additional monitors to my system. Since it's a gaming computer and is using an NVIDA graphics card, am I correct in assuming that to add additional monitors I'll have to add a second graphics card with two ports?

Thanks
George
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Re: Adding two monitors

Postby wkitty42 » Sat Sep 01, 2018 8:32 am

which NVIDIA card do you have right now?

some cards come with various connectors on them... at least the DVI (IIRC) connectors might support two monitors... DVI connectors are the ones with the white rectangle socket with three rows of holes all together with a small gap and then four holes in a square... half the holes are for one monitor and the others are for a second monitor so it takes a DVI splitter cable for two monitors... but it looks like many cards today are using DP (aka Display Port) and/or HDMI... i think but am not sure that that means one monitor per port... some cards may have three or four ports on them... it may be that you can connect three or four monitors to that one card...
"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up."
"Why not?" said Gurder.
"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."
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Re: Adding two monitors

Postby Isaak » Sat Sep 01, 2018 5:05 pm

You can indeed connect multiple screens to one GPU, as long as it has multiple connectors. I have a pc running with 2 GPU's, connecting 5 screens. The main GPU connects to 3 monitors via 2 DVI connectors and a HDMI. Thr second one uses 2 HDMI connectors. If you need help setting up your multiscreen xml's, feel free to ask, it took me quite a while to understand the code.
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Re: Adding two monitors

Postby georgem1956 » Sat Sep 01, 2018 6:31 pm

Hi wkitty42, I currently have the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti. I can't find the amount of ram on the card but its running the simulator cleanly.
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Re: Adding two monitors

Postby georgem1956 » Sat Sep 01, 2018 6:43 pm

Ok. looking up this video card I see that it already supports multiple monitors. It has 3 ports, The main port which I'm currently using, and HDMI port and one more that I don't recognize.
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Re: Adding two monitors

Postby wkitty42 » Sat Sep 01, 2018 8:17 pm

according to https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/products/10series/geforce-gtx-1050/, that card has 4G of RAM with 768 CUDA cores...

looking at the ZOTAC version of that card, i see HDMI (top), Display Port (middle), and Dual Link DVI-D (bottom)... this DVI is black instead of the white that i'm used to seeing... it is listed as Dual Link DVI so it drives higher resolution monitors... the -D means the DVI output is Digital only...

it would appear that your card can provide for up to three monitors on the one card... one connected to each port but more research is needed to know for sure...


EDIT: fixed closing url tag...
Last edited by wkitty42 on Sat Sep 01, 2018 11:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up."
"Why not?" said Gurder.
"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."
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Re: Adding two monitors

Postby georgem1956 » Sat Sep 01, 2018 11:07 pm

yeah, I was able to connect 3 monitors. Now I guess I need to dig into xml config to get FG to span all three monitors. I've set display settings to extended desktop and the mouse travels from center to left stopping at left-most side of monitor and from center to right monitor stopping at right-most side of the monitor. I saw a reference to xml config somewhere, above I think. So Im off to digging into that part of getting this to work.
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Where is the xml file?

Postby georgem1956 » Sun Sep 02, 2018 1:30 am

I see a lot of help with the xml file and setting up cameras however I haven't found a mention yet as to where the xml file is....any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

George
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Re: Adding two monitors

Postby georgem1956 » Sun Sep 02, 2018 4:02 am

ok, never mind. found them. Got them working. now just have to make a few tweaks to size them right...
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Re: Adding two monitors: Success!

Postby georgem1956 » Sun Sep 02, 2018 5:44 pm

My three monitors are working. I found this page to be of great value in explaining what the variables are under the <camera> tag.


https://sourceforge.net/p/flightgear/fg ... ultiscreen

For windows 10 the preferences.xml file is under Program Files(x86)/ProFlightSimulator/data. You'll have to give yourself permissions to write to this directory in order to edit preferences.xml

My only problem, and I think I'll create a new thread for it, is that the mouse will no longer perform any actions. It'll move aorund, I can change modes and the mouse will work but when I try an action, nothing happens.\\
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Re: Adding two monitors: Success!

Postby wkitty42 » Sun Sep 02, 2018 8:06 pm

georgem1956 wrote in Sun Sep 02, 2018 5:44 pm:For windows 10 the preferences.xml file is under Program Files(x86)/ProFlightSimulator/data.

:shock: unless i'm highly mistaken, that's not FlightGear... that's fork of FlightGear and we do not support it here... they have their own support... i think the proper FlightGear directory for a true install of FlightGear would be Program Files(x86)/FlightGear/data...

plus, FlightGear no longer uses preferences.xml... the file name was changed to defaults.xml some time in the last year or so...
"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up."
"Why not?" said Gurder.
"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."
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Re: Adding two monitors

Postby georgem1956 » Mon Sep 03, 2018 1:10 am

Huh....Ok so how do I get the real FlightGear?
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Re: Adding two monitors

Postby georgem1956 » Mon Sep 03, 2018 1:13 am

Ok, found it. Never knew. Downloading from SourceForge now. 1.5GB file.
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Re: Adding two monitors

Postby georgem1956 » Mon Sep 03, 2018 1:16 am

I downloaded "Pro Flight Simulator which is a launcher for what is was calling FlightGear. So I've uninstalled it and will install FlightGear when it finishes downloading. Thanks wkitty...
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Re: Adding two monitors

Postby georgem1956 » Mon Sep 03, 2018 4:46 am

Definitely a different program. Data in under Program Files, not (x86). default.xml is there. This one is much better graphically. Starting over with the monitors....oh well...
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