Seeking best connection method for optimal multi-monitor-performance

OK so I got the indicator backgrounds scripted and tested and put them in the Mod section for the next one that uses this kind of monitor arrangement.

--> http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=92461

They came for a price, my girlfriend is mad at me bc I talk only in lua to here now...and out-comment her all the time :D

So now I will fly one evening before I start doing the performance tests and the summary.

I actually haven't sit in the cockpit even since the monitors were horizontal and the sides weren't mounted! :)

Better make sure you balance the 2, if not you'll lose one.

:D well that would give me another room for another pit, rofl.

...just kidding, she loves my hobby actually. Though all she did so far was taxing into the tower...but that she does good.

She tries to eject right before and flip the ATC guys off when flying by :D

Adjusting everything back to windowed mode and without SoftTH felt pretty stupid and inefficient I must say.

Anyways... running the first instant mission this way on High settings with this setup gave me 27fps (min 22 max 30)

Reverted everything to SoftTH I have 45fps (min 35 max 49)

Pretty impressive I think!

With a bunch of lua modifications to enhance details and viewing distance of structure and cities etc even more I still fly 38 (min 33 max 43)

since my display inputs are limited to 60Hz I cap my frames at 30 for smoothness anyways so...

PERFECT!!!

I can't seem to get the black polygon in place over my underish 1024x768 monitor...

Can someoneplease help?

All I get is some blue, slightly transparent thing... :wallbash:

Attached is my monitor setup file... without the black thing... If someone would be so kind to insert the black polygon...please... :thumbup:

I use windowed mode... with helios for A-10C MFDs and the entire below monitor for Shkval when in SU-25T...

I started to test SoftTH ... and it gave me a FPS boost apparently, but with a price: heavy stuttering. :(

I tried to give a look at what to adjust to solve/mitigate it.. but didn't found anything.

Initially I tough it was because of SLI, but it remains even disabling it.

I have no problems with single screen in full screen or in windowed mode (no SoftTH).

Any idea?

Stuttering or low FPS?

Low FPS is cured by making sure Aero desktop is not disabled in SoftTH config.

Stutters are caused by many things like using half rate Vsync or DCS settings.

People have been raving and recommending softTH for ever. What took you so long?

Stuttering, the FPS seems fine apparently. I've also tried to use a single monitor configured into SoftTH and the problem remains.

I didn't used a multi-monitor solution before, or to be exact I did years ago then I abandoned it, as I use mainly the A10C, and I've already a big monitor (30"), it was ok to move around the cockpit to look at things (ie: the MFD are big enough). Now I exported the MFD to the tablet (the plan is to use it for the CDU l8r), but first I wanted to check the performance with SoftTH, because in windowed mode the FPS drop is a way too high.

PS: i'm doing the test with my second monitor (24") not with the tablet, as I wanted to eliminate any possible issue from the equation.

I did more tests and noticed something odd... I'm progressively disabling the AA and the HDR.. however.. with this config i'm having 75fps in full screen with no SoftTH; with softTH using the same monitor alone and the same config i'm having the half: 37FPS. There's must be something i'm doing wrong, or eventually SoftTH isn't capable of taking advantage of the SLI (as DCS in full screen does...).

Some progress. Settings one of these two to "1" solves the issue (no stutters and same FPS as full-screen):

compatibleVB=1

enableVBQuirk=1

I finally gave up on all this multi monitor mumbo jumbo...

I turned HDR off, render the game in the upper monitor and exports on lower one...

I simply can't spend any more time on this... too bad for the sun HDR rays but I'll use it when it gets fixed...

I usually ain't a quitter, but after two days - I give up... :doh:

:cry:

Me too... after only 1 day, and after have spent hours to setup it, I had to remove SoftTH because it doesn't supports alt-tab ...a feature that is a way too important for a simulator (at least for me), since often you need to look at external material, docs, whatever .. and you're forced to quit the mission.. basically unusable.

Don't give up. just lower your standards. triple screen main view with the mcfds, radar, cdu, and clock on another screen. If you have a well setup headtracker, using the cockpit buttons is easy.

John

Don't give up. just lower your standards. triple screen main view with the mcfds, radar, cdu, and clock on another screen. If you have a well setup headtracker, using the cockpit buttons is easy.

John

Not sure what you mean.. I already have a multimonitor setup, headtracker and all.. I've removed SoftTH because of alt-tab bug, that is a problem independent by my configuration.

Sorry...I didn't notice the activity on this thread.

Still any help needed?

regarding alt-tab:

The Alt-tab sux a bit but there are workarounds.

For example have the software open like TS and email etc and you should be able to bring them on top of DCS with alt-tab while DCS will freeze flickering in the BG until you click it or "blind alt tab" it again.

I can even bring my task bar on top and start programs and then go back.

Keep in mind than once you are finished with your construction that we can use this "unused" space that I marked with red to get the different avionics exports on your other screens via SoftTH.

This by using the "Black" view-port trick: #12

 

 

 

this is 1920x820 - sure:it will not be "HD" - but much more than we need for readable gauges and MFCDs and radio exports.

 

The great advantage is that you can still stay with a total 4080x1920 in-game render while spreading the "avionics info" at the other screens.

 

 

Just make sure that your HUD is readable - if not: How To :HUD Export A10C DCS-World for Real HUD

 

So you build a real HUD and just make your Track-IR deadzone great enough - so it will always match your HUD -view again when looking straight.

Is there any way that SoftTH would allow me to recreate this layout on a single 50" screen? Obviously I won't be able to angle the sides in as I would with three separate monitors but I'm thinking it might still give me some extra situational awareness of the ground in front/below me if the cockpit/HUD only occupies the upper middle section of the screen, with the space below it blank (with a 2nd Helios monitor in front of it anyway) either side recreating the two side monitors in the above config.

I had enough of landscape and the feel of peering through a letter box to fly along with the stretched sides.

Got mine all in portrait mode except for my helios monitor which stands alone outside of DCS world.

Having them in portrait gives me a res of 3400 x 1920 using nvidia surround mode and measuring diagonal corner to corner its the same size as a 42 inch screen but with much more detail.

Plus on the upside fps has gone up to 50fps when in the huey on the ground in free flight and when airborne it jumps to 70 fps i'm happy with that.

I did try it using softh but that dropped frame rates to 5fps.

Is there any way that SoftTH would allow me to recreate this layout on a single 50" screen? Obviously I won't be able to angle the sides in as I would with three separate monitors but I'm thinking it might still give me some extra situational awareness of the ground in front/below me if the cockpit/HUD only occupies the upper middle section of the screen, with the space below it blank (with a 2nd Helios monitor in front of it anyway) either side recreating the two side monitors in the above config.

Its the same thing. You can imagine this setup as one screen with your instruments.

To see ground left and right is just a matter of FOV (zooming out) and leaning sideways with you trackIR. I still use ONE virtual camera on this setup!

The stretching you would have with one screen too but you want to match your in-game FOV to the extended real FOV (where you sit in relation to your screen) so you zoom out.

The setup is almost the same as if you have a big screen and sit very close to it, just mine is "curved" so the distance to the screen is closer to be consistent.

Looking from left to right you have to turn your head in a bigger angle which is your real life FOV so you zoom out to have the ingame the same which then causes stretching due to limitation of most realtime-engines.

And in both cases real-time graphic engines are usually not capable of calculating lens distortion(grids) so things get ugly.

Try to display a 150degree camera in a standard viewport in a 3D software like 3dsmax...useless but you can render(not real time) it correctly with a special camera that calculates the distortion.

There are however apparently 3rd party software that do that as post processing but you have to consider extra CPU and or GPU usage for those which costs fps again.

Its the same thing. You can imagine this setup as one screen with your instruments.

To see ground left and right is just a matter of FOV (zooming out) and leaning sideways with you trackIR. I still use ONE virtual camera on this setup!

The stretching you would have with one screen too but you want to match your in-game FOV to the extended real FOV (where you sit in relation to your screen) so you zoom out.

The setup is almost the same as if you have a big screen and sit very close to it, just mine is "curved" so the distance to the screen is closer to be consistent.

Looking from left to right you have to turn your head in a bigger angle which is your real life FOV so you zoom out to have the ingame the same which then causes stretching due to limitation of most realtime-engines.

Thanks. Yeah, looking at the photos here http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1519135&postcount=49 it does seem that the wider view is achieved by having a wider (zoomed out) FOV as I think I'd normally (with my desk and 24" monitor) be much more zoomed in so that I could read the HUD, whereas in the photos it looks like it's too zoomed out to be readable.

So I'll just try a wider FOV on my 50" TV and see how that looks to me.

Thanks. Yeah, looking at the photos here http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1519135&postcount=49 it does seem that the wider view is achieved by having a wider (zoomed out) FOV as I think I'd normally (with my desk and 24" monitor) be much more zoomed in so that I could read the HUD, whereas in the photos it looks like it's too zoomed out to be readable.

 

So I'll just try a wider FOV on my 50" TV and see how that looks to me.

Don't look at those they are all kinds of stretched because I used a cheap panorama stitching app and you dont sit that far away as it seems here.

Maybe use the cockpit frame as reference.

The middle monitor is kind of like you would normally fly the outta monitors just add more to it.

I still have zoom on on a rotary so I can always adjust or zoom in on cockpit or ground looking for targets.

For example check this here out where I'm zoomed in a lot most of the time.

This video was more meant for testing the camera though and parts of the cockpit are not working and the camera is higher than my eyes so not everything lines up as it should.

Don't look at those they are all kinds of stretched because I used a cheap panorama stitching app and you dont sit that far away as it seems here.

Maybe use the cockpit frame as reference.

The middle monitor is kind of like you would normally fly the outta monitors just add more to it.

I still have zoom on on a rotary so I can always adjust or zoom in on cockpit or ground looking for targets.

 

For example check this here out where I'm zoomed in a lot most of the time.

This video was more meant for testing the camera though and parts of the cockpit are not working and the camera is higher than my eyes so not everything lines up as it should.

What I don't really understand (maybe because it's impossible), is how I might be able to get a wider view on a single monitor. With 3 monitors, I guess you use a higher resolution, with the normal 1920x1080 mapped to the central monitor and the rest mapped to the side monitors, so to achieve the same sort of thing with a single monitor, I guess I'd have to use the central third of the screen, 640x360, for the normal view and then 640x360 for the extended left view and the same for the right, which doesn't sound like it would work.

Even if it would, my 50" TV is actually only 1280x720 (acutally 1024x768 but it uses square pixels apparently to resolves 1280x720) and whilst it accepts 1920x1080 to produce a picture where everything is smaller, it's obviously not able to display all the pixels and must be skipping the ones in between the actual pixels, so everything's a bit less sharp and it's better to run games at 1280x720 (even if it was 1080P it would be a struggle to read everything in text heavy games from my normal seating position) but probably that's not good enough to be able to spot things clearly in DCS World.

I was aware of this limitation when I bought the TV recently but I really wanted a Plasma rather than a LCD as they look so much better for TV/Movies and I also wanted a Panasonic as they make the best Plasmas (or do until March when they're stopping production anyway) and I couldn't afford the extra for a 1080P model and from my normal viewing distance, I wouldn't be able to appreciate the extra detail anyway. Obviously if I built a cockpit I'd be sitting much nearer and would be able to but I don't know if/when I'll be able to do that, so I couldn't really factor that into my purchasing decision and I was mindful that I might want to spend money on the Rift or similar in the near future anyway.

A wider view is achieved by increasing the FOV (zoom out) which you most likely do all the time when flying to look for ground targets or bring the HUD visually closer. It doesn't matter on how many monitors you display it.

If maximum zoom out is not wide enough you can change the max FOV per aircraft type in some files... I believe view.cfg? not sure cant check right now.

But there are many posts in this forum about changing min and max FOV.

The resolution has nothing to do with that. Resolution just determines image quality and with that how good you can spot targets on the grounds etc.

In fact I run 1024 resolution on the outside monitors because I don't need them super crips since they are only peripheral view and when I turn my head there my trackIR brings it to center screen.

Most realistic of course is when your default FOV in game is the same of your setup (your position in the cockpit or rather the angle of both side of your monitor(s) and your eyes).

So the more your screen(s) surround you or the more you have to turn your head from right to left the more you can/have to zoom out (increase FOV) to match that and stay accurate.

But if you don't care so much about that accuracy you can just zoom out as much as you like in order to get your wider view.

I don't think it's that simple though. To get a wide view like this http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=1677969 (just to give another example) on a single monitor, you'd have to set the FOV quite high, which will result in the centre/cockpit part of the view only occupying the centre 1/3rd of the screen. So if it's a 1920x1080 monitor, now the cockpit is being displayed with only 640x360 pixels, whereas in a 3-monitor setup, the cockpit is being displayed with 1920x1080 pixels.

To be honest though, I'm only really flying the KA-50 at the moment where the cockpit blocks most of the side view anyway, so I'm not used to what the view from the planes looks like or how much I'd need to zoom out to be able to see as much as is shown in those photos.

Well it is that simple but there are draw backs like you said.

And unless you get super close to your monitor it will be strange to look at a wide FOV on your monitor that is rather a 40 degree to you.

Plus of course the planar mapping the DCS camera creates does its part in previous posts mentioned inorganic or non existing distortions.

Can You use softTH with SweetFX?