Flight Sim Rig Config

[Rumpus01]

My buddy wants to build a rig so he can play flight sim games, among other games. He wants a triple monitor setup.

I'm helping him build it, but I have a few questions myself as to how this setup should happen.

First, can someone give me a synopsis of triple monitor setup in general? I'm guessing they should all be the exact same monitors and anything over 1080p is going to be hard to run without putting an insane amount of money into GPU power. Can you just enable it using Nvidia control panel these days? I remember the last time I even looked into this, there was an extra hardware device needed.

For most gaming rigs, I would recommend an i5. For flight sim, I'm not sure if an i7 is a better choice. Admittedly, I have not fully analyzed the system requirements of the games, but I'd be asking anyways in case someone has experience with this type of rig.

Thanks for any info.

[BLEH!]

i7 for CPU, need some good horsepower for FSes

GPU: not so important, eyefinity is more forgiving than nvid surround, so maybe a 280/285(X) wiuld do.

16 GB RAM,

hope that helps

[The Ninja Kid]

I am a little confused as to why you need to ask some things, as far as three monitor setup goes and i5 Vs i7 given your post count on the forum. . . . .
that aside.
I've built a few flight Sims, it depends on the flight sim software itself as to what is really needed, some are more power hungry than others, in essence they are just another video game though.

matching monitors is a personal preference, i've built a few using a large center screen then smaller side screens, I myself gave away my two side 27" screens in favor of smaller 20" 4:3 side screens and you never saw the far ends of the sides anyway.

3x 24" 1080 screens should be dirt cheap and will do the trick nice, if he can stretch to is 27" screens do make a big difference as far as 'immersion' into the environment goes.

If he has a dedicated room sometimes even using some 37" LCD TV's can work well, still 1080, yes the refresh rate isn't as high and the ppi is lower but if its for a flight Sim this isn't really an issue.

depends how 'real' flight sim like he wants it. . . some pretty cool ones done using three 1080 projectors and custom curved walls that they project onto.

setting up the three screens in windows is easy regardless of being Nvidia or ATI.

Leroy

[Extraordinary]

I have 3 completely different aged and model LCDs, 2 x 23" & 1 x 22" @ 1080p each @ Eyefinity and because they are like 5 year range age from new to old, and one is a different size you can tell on the desktop, but soon as a game loads in Eyefinity, you don't notice at all

Side screens Ive found are more for immersion than detail or usefulness when you're gaming, the majority of games are just stretched on the side screens, and because you are only focussing on the centre one, it works fine - I rarely turn and look at the left or right screen in order to see something, you still play just looking at the centre one most the time and the side ones pull you much further into the game

Poor mans VR

[ron7000]

you really need to look into the flight sim software you are going to use.
triple monitor setup 'sounds' cool... assuming you are thinking middle screen is forward looking view and your side screens are showing a view 45°+ to the side. The flight sim or any software needs to support that, don't expect it to just happen because you just spent $$$$ on 3 monitors and some video cards.
I have xplane10, haven't used it much i only mess around in the winter when nothing else to do. I'm speculating- i have the desktop version of xplane but they also have xplane pro which is for realistic flight sim training and that version i would assume is what you would want for a 3 screen setup.
I have the system in my profile and a single 27" 1920x1200 hanns-g screen, and with all graphics options on high it does lag severely. with reasonable settings it's fairly good. for what you might be wanting with a 3 screen setup, would not surprise me if you could use a dual socket motherboard to support multiple graphics cards.

[Extraordinary]

Originally Posted by ron7000

you really need to look into the flight sim software you are going to use.
triple monitor setup 'sounds' cool... assuming you are thinking middle screen is forward looking view and your side screens are showing a view 45°+ to the side. The flight sim or any software needs to support that, don't expect it to just happen because you just spent $$$$ on 3 monitors and some video cards.
I have xplane10, haven't used it much i only mess around in the winter when nothing else to do. I'm speculating- i have the desktop version of xplane but they also have xplane pro which is for realistic flight sim training and that version i would assume is what you would want for a 3 screen setup.
I have the system in my profile and a single 27" 1920x1200 hanns-g screen, and with all graphics options on high it does lag severely. with reasonable settings it's fairly good. for what you might be wanting with a 3 screen setup, would not surprise me if you could use a dual socket motherboard to support multiple graphics cards.

To be fair, your GPU is getting pretty old in the tooth now, at that resolution a new mid range card would be able to run most things fine, 1GB vRAM is old school these days