Multi-Screen Display

[Lepres]

My first purchase and use of the P3D, after years of using FSX. Hoping the experience would be a superior one.

I've taken an interest towards possibly setting up a 3+1 monitors display running off from one single PC --- 3 for left/center/right, 1 for GPS.

Looking at getting a high-end PC with i9 processor and RTX 3080. The version of P3D I have is Academic version V5, can it do the above 4-screens display? Will the suggested configurations run well on this setup?

Would much appreciate any advice.

Lep

[Claudio Damiani]

Hi,

i had the same but with an older CPU and Nvidia 1080 but i used a diplay mukltiplier (matro i think) usiung therefore just one video board exit and it was very good

[Lepres]

On newer GPU card there should be 3 display ports and 1 HDMI port. Can the 3 display ports be used to display the left/center/right views, while the HDMI be used for the GPS?

[edward95854]

Thanks for sharing,walgreenslistens I found a lot of interesting information here. very thankful and helpful.

[neilhewitt]

Looking at getting a high-end PC with i9 processor and RTX 3080. The version of P3D I have is Academic version V5, can it do the above 4-screens display? Will the suggested configurations run well on this setup?

Would much appreciate any advice.

Lep

Yes, any version of Prepar3d can use as many screens as you have attached to your PC. But, every additional view window that you open costs FPS, and every window you undock to another display costs a little more again. Whether you will get acceptable performance depends on a) what you consider acceptable, and b) what scenery and add-ons you are using. Generally, I have found it impossible to get acceptable frame rates (for me) with three external views using the add-ons I use routinely. Others have found it more than acceptable.

If you set up the external views as a View Group and turn on single-pass rendering for that View Group, you will get a performance boost. Your GPU will definitely help with that.

On newer GPU card there should be 3 display ports and 1 HDMI port. Can the 3 display ports be used to display the left/center/right views, while the HDMI be used for the GPS?

There is no difference from Windows' point of view - and hence P3D's POV - between HDMI and DisplayPort. If you have display devices without Display Port (unlikely these days) then you can buy HDMI-to-DisplayPort adapters very inexpensively. I have several in my system which hosts 5 displays across two GPUs.

[benorg]

Looking at getting a high-end PC with i9 processor and RTX 3080. The version of P3D I have is Academic version V5, can it do the above 4-screens display? Will the suggested configurations run well on this setup?

Would much appreciate any advice.

Lep

Yes, any version of Prepar3d can use as many screens as you have attached to your PC. But, every additional view window that you open costs FPS, and every window you undock to another display costs a little more again. Whether you will get acceptable performance depends on a) what you consider acceptable, and b) what scenery and add-ons you are using. Generally, I have found it impossible to get acceptable frame rates (for me) with three external views using the add-ons I use routinely. Others have found it more than acceptable.

If you set up the external views as a View Group and turn on single-pass rendering for that View Group, you will get a performance boost. Your GPU will definitely help with that.

On newer GPU card there should be 3 display ports and 1 HDMI port. Can the 3 display ports be used to display the left/center/right views, while the HDMI be used for the GPS?

There is no difference from Windows' point of view - and hence P3D's POV - between HDMI and DisplayPort. If you have display devices without Display Port (unlikely these days) then you can buy HDMI-to-DisplayPort adapters very inexpensively. I have several in my system which hosts 5 displays across two GPUs.

How do I enable single pass rendering for viewgroups?

[neilhewitt]

How do I enable single pass rendering for viewgroups?

There's a toggle on the View Group properties page in the View Management tool. It's easy to miss.

(Note that it only works with some GPUs - I think only Nvidia right now, though I could be wrong - but it definitely works with Nvidia 3000 series cards. Note also that the views must be adjacent, so it's fine for multiple views in a cylindrical arrangement as in your use case, but you can't single-pass render disjointed views.)

[benorg]

How do I enable single pass rendering for viewgroups?

There's a toggle on the View Group properties page in the View Management tool. It's easy to miss.

(Note that it only works with some GPUs - I think only Nvidia right now, though I could be wrong - but it definitely works with Nvidia 3000 series cards. Note also that the views must be adjacent, so it's fine for multiple views in a cylindrical arrangement as in your use case, but you can't single-pass render disjointed views.)

I am running 3x RTX 3080s so I will give this a try. Thank you. Are you aware of any other ways to optimize performance using 3 GPUs with three separate displays and undocked windows?

[neilhewitt]

Not really, no. If the FPS is too low, turning down settings is really your only option.