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The easy way to get a big screen is to buy a wide screen monitor.
The not-so-easy way is to hook up multiple monitors to one or more video cards in the same machine. Depending on a number of factors, OS, Video card, driver software etc, you will get varied results. On my G5 Tower I could use 2 video cards to have a block of 4 monitors, 2 x 2, but not 3 in a row. Currently I have a wide LCD panel and a normal ratio LCD panel side by side, and I can get a wider view, but the 64K video card prevents me from filling every inch of screen with X-Plane.
The main problem with these methods is that they user the same processing engine to assemble the picture, not a big deal these days, but for a large multi-screen installation, it does slow things down.
X-Plane is built to do multi-screens via a network to multiple computers and monitors. That is, you gather all of the old computers that you can find and bind them altogether is one big simulator.
Hooking them up is handled by either manually assigning IP addresses to the hardware, at system level, or by using a router/switch DHCP method that lets it happen automatically. This ain’t an IT guide, so I leap this bit and assume that you have a network that allows machines to talk to each other.
Nominate one computer as the Master machine, this usually has the main monitor attached and it’s usually the one that you sit in front of. It doesn’t have to be this way, you could have a really fast machine with ###### graphics that hands out to graphical work to many Slave machines.
Two important points to mention here, the folder structure and file names contained within each X-Plane System folder should be the same. And each machine should have the same version of X-Plane.
[edit] As of V9beta, all machines need to have the same basic hardware, Power PC vs Intel/AMD.
X-Plane Network setup.
To many this step is no big deal, and once you do it once you’ll never give it a second thought. Whatever happens, don’t hit the enter/return key!
While getting this altogether I discovered that it was easiest to duplicate the preferences folder and then throw the contents of the original folder into the trash. It is best to get it all working before doing any tuning.
Fire up the main machine and then each Slave machine. Start up X-Plane and find the Inet settings. In version 7 and 8 you want the Inet 2 tab in the Data in/out menu. The wide box at the top will have the IP address of that machine showing, if the network is up. It is also the area where messages are displayed.
In the box below that is a big lump of text and check boxes. On the main machine we will be using the top group of items. When we click and check a box a place for an IP address appears. Editing can be a pig sometimes, so click in the left end of the box with the default IP, 255.255.255.255, delete it and enter the IP address of the first Slave machine. Hit tab, not enter/return to finish.
master78.jpg (83.09K)
Number of downloads: 1198
On each Slave machine we locate the entry that mentions the IP address of the Master machine, and we click in the check box and enter the IP address of the Master machine, this will be the same on each Slave machine.
slave78.jpg (84.06K)
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Summary of IP Settings.
The boxes on the Master machine contain the IP addresses of the Slave machines. The single entry on each Slave machine should be the IP address of the Master machine.
If everything is OK, there is a message appearing in the top of the screen that says that the Master machne is sending data.
In Version 9 (beta16) the settings are under two tabs. On the Master machine the Slave IP addresses go under the Inet 1 tab.
master.jpg (78.62K)
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The IP address of the Master machines goes under the Inet 2 tab.
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If you have used V7 or V8 there was a feature introduced to automatically find Slave and Multiplayer machines. I have found that this feature searches too fast and never seems to find anything.
In V9 once the Master machine is set up and has the Slave Ips, the Slave machines may find the address of the Master machine already entered in the right spot on the screen. It was a little slow, but it did work.
OK, as long as everything is in place the Master should be sending out location data, and the Slaves should be using it. If a Slave is slowly rotating the picture, then there is a good chance that the Master IP address is set to a Slave or itself.
Setting up the Screens.
Some people just press ‘q’ or ‘e’ to adjust the view, which is quick, but results may vary.
The right way to do it is to open the Render settings and near the bottom of the screen is a group of boxes that adjust the relative view based on the position of the pilot or camera view.
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These settings adjust the lateral and vertical offset of the Slave screens. Remember that they adjust the position and viewing angle relative to the pilot’s position.
The first entry is the viewing angle or pitch/heading. The second box is the relative shift to the left or right, in units based on the screen size of the Slave’s window.
For a one unit shift to the right we see monitors and windows arranged below. The default Field of View of 45 degrees is used.
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Number of downloads: 828 The paper Triangle shows the Slave’s viewing position.
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If we set a lateral angle of 45 degrees the monitors and windows would look like this.
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See that a line drawn across the front of the Slave monitor (right) will intersect the screen of the Master monitor (left). This becomes a problem with increased FOV angles.
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You can see some mis-alignment of the windows due to the lateral angle offsets.
If we had entered a lateral angle of 45 degrees and a lateral offset of 1, then we are twisting the Slave screen around and moving it to the right.
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I filled in the gap to make the result clearer. The Slave is on the right, the Master is on the left.
To show what increasing the FOV will do, below is, from left to right, Master view, Slave view with 45 degree twist, and finally one unit of lateral offset, with a FOV of 90 degrees.
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Number of downloads: 812
They don’t fit because the FOV does not match the width of the monitor. Changing the offsets and angles and FOV should make it all fit together.
Enough? Other factors to be considered include variation in dot pitch on screens, viewing angles of LCD panels, and a quirky thing where there may be some vertical shift between the forward view and side views, and a difference between 2D and 3D views.
In a multi-screen set-up, most of the time the views shouldn’t move, just your head, so you can tune and get the best fit knowing that there should be few changes.
CAUTION, Things are never as they seem. Combinations of angles and offsets may not always give a predictable result.
Stop Press
9.20beta has a number of changes.
Previously 'multi screen' pretty much meant several other monitors, similar size and shape.
920beta introduces settings to alter the shape of the image in the x-plane window to take into account distortions caused by projection systems, etc. It would also seem that not all video cards like these changes, I adjusted the screen to be a trapezoid and the image turned to craap, the menus were OK. As these settings are applied without a reset, it is possible to mess around with them and see the results for yourself.
There is also an option to allow for edge bleeding, which fades the edge of the image so that overlapping projections are not as obvious. (I hope that is the intent)
The old style settings are simplified and are at the far right of the render settings window. Now you just get to adjust 3 screen position angles, Horizontal, Vertical, and rotation. The screen width and FOV will adjust how much overlap there is between screens. On a simple test I had two default size windows, with a FOV of 45 and a horizontal offset angle of 45 and they aligned OK. I also tried a Q&D wide screen 2560x768 and 1200x768 with a vertical offset of -20 and a horizontal offset of 20 (down and to the right), this gave me a great helicopter view and made landings easy by watching the lower screen and getting a better view of the ground.
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X-Plane 9.30beta3 (may have been there earlier)
Forcing Master Render settings onto Slave machines is now an option under Render Settings (top, center of screen). This was an issue if you were running machines with different graphic capabilities, as the Main settings imposed on Slave machines.
This post has been edited by dad: 01 March 2009 - 06:48 PM
