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Multi-Monitor Support in Flight Simulator 2004
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 includes improved support for display on multiple-monitors. Here's what's new and different about this feature:
* Flight Simulator 2004 now supports simultaneous hardware acceleration on multiple displays if you have more than one hardware accelerator, either a single video adapter that supports multiple monitors in hardware-accelerated mode or multiple video adapters. Previous versions of Flight Simulator supported only one hardware-accelerated display.
* Flight Simulator 2004 supports up to four hardware-accelerated displays or windows simultaneously. For example, you could have two 3D accelerated adapters, each of which supports two displays.
* Each video card in a multiple-accelerator configuration must meet the basic 3D requirements for Flight Simulator (8 Mb of video memory, full 3D hardware acceleration, and DirectX 9 compatible drivers).
* For best results, in the Settings Display dialog box in Flight Simulator, the setting for full screen resolution for each video adapter should match the desktop resolution for the corresponding display.
* Note that, as in previous versions of Flight Simulator, some windows (e.g., avionics, the kneeboard window, and the GPS) are not rendered in 3D. Using multiple accelerator cards does not improve performance when these windows are displayed. However, the main instrument panel, virtual cockpit, all exterior views, and the ATC window are rendered in 3D, and when displaying these windows or views on secondary displays, performance will be much better than when using a similar configuration in previous versions of Flight Simulator. The improved multiple-monitor support in Flight Simulator 2004 directly uses the secondary 3D device rather than copying the display of the primary device to the second display.
* Note that running multiple displays always affects performance compared to a single-display configuration, because additional information is being created by the simulation and sent to the video hardware and monitors.
How to use multiple accelerators
To set up multiple accelerators, you must start with Flight Simulator running in windowed mode so that you can move windows off the primary 3D accelerator.
To switch between full-screen (hardware-accelerated) mode and windowed mode, press ALT+ENTER or, on the Views menu, click Full Screen.
From windowed mode, drag the title bar of each window that you want to the position you prefer on the display connected to the secondary accelerator.
While moving a 3D window, you may see a hesitation while crossing the boundary to the secondary device, because the secondary device has not been configured and has not loaded the textures and other details. After the 3D window is in position on the secondary device, that scene is rendered with the secondary 3D adapter and with full hardware acceleration. You can return to full screen mode on each display after the windows are placed.
Note that multiple full-screen setups are not saved in the Flight Simulator or Flight configuration (.cfg) files. However, you can save a Flight while each display is in windowed mode and then switch to full screen mode after you launch Flight Simulator.
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