Widescreen and FS9

[tonymadge]

I bought an Acer 22" widescreen the other day. Now I went for the Acer due to reviews and also I have two 17" monitors one being an Acer which is brilliant.
So this new acer was to replace my CTX 17" which is ok but not a patch on the 17" acer.
Ok so far so good, installed it and looks good, put it next to my other acer and its just lacking something, its a bit flat in quality. I have spent numerous hours setting it up and trying various settings and I have it almost near the original acer.
Next FS9... ok ok I know the 2d panels look stretched but the VC seems to be fine, generally it was great trying FS on a wide monitor made the experience much better especially using VC..Oh dear what have I said!
Anyway my question is..Ok took a while to get here!
I ran FS9 at 1280 x 1040 or something similar on the 17" on the new one it has to be 1920 x 1080 But I take a huge hit in frame rates for example I tried Hamburg aerosoft scenery with full weather etc and in old settings it was hitting 30 to 50 in widescreen it was struggling to get over 25, trouble is running it at any other resolution looks bloody awful. I am guessing I need a better graphics card??

I am not fully happy with the widescreen acer and thankfully I got it from Argos so I can have upto 28 days before I return it and get a refund...

[DaveB]

Hi Tony

Well.. I guess the native res of your new monitor is at the upper reaches of what your graphics card can produce otherwise you'd see it trundle along nicely. I take it that it performs super-dooper in every aspect until you throw flightsim at it :think: You won't see any stretching in VC as there's nowt to stretch but it could be that the VC's you're looking at are pushing the pc as it's constantly having to render 3D bits rather than display a 2D bitmap. That might be the ultimate price you have to pay for using VC's mate. Perhaps FSX might be a better bet for you :o

Widescreen monitors are a bit of a prat for replacement on older systems as I found out recently. One of 2 Neovo 17" tft's I have died (not the one I use I'm glad to say) and the local store had a 19" widescreen at a reasonable price so Ibought that as a replacement. I fiddled around for ages trying to get it to look as sharp as the Neovo then the penny dropped.. the onboard graphics chip cannot display at the native res of the widescreen monitor so everything is slightly stretched including the fonts We live and learn :roll:

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[Effoh]

Tony,

Can you drop to 1680 x 1050 or 1440 x 900 and see what happens? You need a res that gives a 1.6 ratio if you divide length by height for best results....1920x1200, 1680 x 1050, 1440 x 900 etc..I'm not explaining that bit well but hope you get the gist?

512mb 'may' be stretching 1920....depending on which forum you believe!

HTH


Rgds,


Colin

[jonesey2k]

Depends on the card tbh. Mine only has 512mb of vram but it powers through most modern games just fine at that resolution with brute force. Only games I have trouble with is GTA4 that requires at least 1gig to display all of the textures in that res(If you turn around quickly it takes a second or two for the textures to "pop" into life) and Fallout 3 because of the massive draw distance.

I'm really tempted to get myself a nice shiny GTX295

[tonymadge]

Thanks for the tips on resolution I will give it a try I thought my card was good enough but sadly it seems that when I tried COD4 it was as bad, its almost like I never did the upgrade!
So will persist before going back to 4:3. I could go for a GTX275 as overclockers have them on special at the moment, but I have to stop somewhere before I get my goolies chopped off by purse string holder

[tonymadge]

Ok I think I am getting somewhere now... I found that in full screen mode my frame rate was worse by 100% than in windowed mode but AA was not working.
So I deleted the fs2004 profile in nHancer and I had the good fps back but sh1tty graphics :brick: So I think its a matter of playing with the settings and finding the best I can get :think:

If anyone has good fs9 profiles they would be happy to share with me so I can try I would be grateful
You can mail them to me at [email protected]
Cheers
Tony

[Techy111]

Surely the purse holder will let you stretch to an 8800GTX...? Some good buy now prices on e bay Tony....

My Monitor is a 22" HannsG....love it to bits...only 1650x1080....but runs everything smooth as a nut....including the darkside...

Tony

[tonymadge]

I guess I could do that but then no doubt a new PSU would be needed as the 8800gtx sucks a fair bit.... I have tried different resolutions but it looks rubbish unless I go with the default one. Still havinga bit more success with FS2004 Profiles I have tweaked it a bit and find much to a lot of folks dismay that having FS9 do the AA looks neater and crisper and gives better fps, still a work in progress ;-)

[tonymadge]

Well I have decided that I would need a 275GTX and amore powerful PSU I guess £250. Well that aint gonna happen so its back to my two 4:3 monitors and I am getting great performace, I will re visit widescreen when the GTX is cheaper and I can stretch to it all.
Cheers for all your help on this one guys