Greetings:

Mel sent these in. I've strung them together in a panaramic view. (It's very wide, so you'll need to scroll.) Also note that I reduced the image size so it would fit, but as a side result the picture has lost much of it's sharpness and detail, but it should give you a pretty good idea of what the view over 6 monitors would look like in practical terms.

Ben
============================================

These are 3 views of 3 separate computers running 3 Matrox Parhelia video cards while powering 6 TFT monitors.

The "scene" is approaching 30L at Minneapolis with FSMeteo running in a 747-400.

- The left screen is a HP 2.0 ghz and is the side window view
- The center screen is a Dell 2.4 ghz Northwood and is the front window view
- The right screen is a Dell 2.2 ghz and is the right window view

What's worth noting is how the colors all match up....something VERY hard to do on 6 monitors with "other" video cards.

Regards,
Mel

• RE: Parhelia pix from Mel,Tarmack, 20:23z, 08-26-02
  • RE: Parhelia pix from Mel,Mike_Greenwood, 22:38z, 08-26-02
    • RE: Parhelia pix from Mel,Simtech, 00:08z, 08-27-02
      • RE: Parhelia pix from Mel,Ben_Chiu, 01:53z, 08-27-02
      • RE: Parhelia pix from Mel,Tarmack, 12:13z, 08-27-02
• RE: Parhelia pix from Mel,TD, 09:52z, 08-27-02

Ben,

ROFL!

That has got to be the WIDEST message I have ever read and I must say I was 'tempted" to reply "With Quote" to see if it would stay that wide with a reply!

Your magic with the keyboard, HTML, and a Paint program is apparent....well done!

There are some very eye catching areas of the world with this 6 monitor setup....I particularly like to make approaches into 8 Left at Honolulu.......enter a holding pattern over the Las Vegas VOR at sunset, and any fly by of a mountain....whether it be Fuji or McKinley....just to watch the scenery slide by from monitor to monitor.

Surprisingly.....the MOST REAL time of flight with this setup is when you are IFR.....to see all 6 monitors go white as you enter the clouds.......REALLY makes you "hunch down" and pay attention to the PFD and ND to keep that "blue side" up.

I have the monitors arranaged in a "half moon" type of arc.....the space across from monitor 1 to monitor 6 is about 7 feet. I PAINTED each monitor "face" with flat black paint so that in the normal dim lighting setup of the home cockpit you cannot see anything but the monitor screen illumination.

My wife thinks I am nuts to "ruin" 6 TFT monitors for resale with such a painting action.....not me....I am gonna run em until they die!!

Regards,

Cap'n Tarmack

Hi Mel,

>>That has got to be the WIDEST message I have ever read and I must say I
was 'tempted" to reply "With Quote" to see if it would stay that wide
with a reply!

Your magic with the keyboard, HTML, and a Paint program is
apparent....well done!<<

I had to go in "live" to see it, since it looked normal (sans pics) with our offline reader. Ben sure knows his sh...err...stuff!

BTW, give the OLR a shot, I *know* you'll like it!

--Greenie
**6 miles SSE KSJC**

-= VPC OffLine Reader Version 1.2 =-
Registered to: Mike Greenwood
-OLR.PL v1.76-

Hi Ben,

I am soooo eager to try the Parhelia but very skeptical from the various comments I've read from people using them. In the above picture the thing that really strikes me is the superb color seeming as the gentlemen mentions. With seperate vid cards and monitors you usually end up with "seperate worlds" if you catch my drift. With the Parhelia however, it becomes one huge world.

What worries me however is the broken lines (lack of anis. filter) noted above in this gentlemens picture. The horizon line and many of the airport features including the runways are penalized with the dreaded "jaggies". And the ground textures are not crisp as the Nvidia cards running the Omega drivers. I wonder if this is a penalty of 800x600 and not the card?

Would love to hear more...........

Thanks to all,

Robert G.

Greetings Robert:

> What worries me however is the broken lines (lack of anis. filter) noted
> above in this gentlemens picture. The horizon line and many of the
> airport features including the runways are penalized with the dreaded
> "jaggies".

As I mentioned in my original post, the panoramic view had been resampled down to fit the forum width (the original screen resolution was 1024x768 per monitor). The resampling process tends to blur images and add jaggies, so I'd reserve judgment to actual screen shots rather than my scaled down composite picture.

> And the ground textures are not crisp as the Nvidia cards
> running the Omega drivers. I wonder if this is a penalty of 800x600 and
> not the card?

This is question that only Mel can answer.

Ben

-= VPC OffLine Reader Version 1.2 =-
Registered to: Ben Chiu
-OLR.PL v1.76-

Robert,

I don't think the pictures that were published on this forum do real justice to the actual views on the monitor....mainly due to the need to resize and degrade quality for graphic size.

I have used 3 Nvida Ti4600 cards with 128 megs of memory in these same computers prior to the install of the Parhelia...and in my opinion the Parhelia cards produce a superior 'depth' of terrain, a superior color quality, and even superior sharpness IF CONFIGURED TO THE MAX in the slider area of setup.....my current settings are the default High selection in FS2002....as that setting enables the 30 fps frames that are so important to my server that is driving 5 other computers via WideView, WideFs, USB outputs to Aerosoft MCP and Goflight hardware.

At the time of the PrintScreen capture I had been running for over an hour with FSMeteo weather on and I am certain that the two "side view" computers were beginning to exhibit some memory degradation....as later was mentioned with no view of the Mall of America.......I do have that scenery on my hard drives....it is that after an hour or so of running.......memory depletion is noted when running WideView from Luciano Napolitano.

I am not a vendor for Matrox, nor for Nvidia.......all I really am is a darn good customer of both. Grin.

However, with way too many hours of flying FS2002 it would be awfully hard to disuade my views that the Matrox card is superior, at least in my installation.

To come to that conclusion was a bit difficult for me as during the time my partner Rob Howard and I ran the PFD Web site where we marketed the original PFD 747 software we simply HATED Matrox video cards due to their inability to run OpenGL.....as advertized. We could never get our PFD software to run acclerated in OpenGL.......unless we used a Nvidia card.

So....I have a happy medium here...I run 4 computers providing the INSIDE views with Nvidia cards and the 3 computers with the OUTSIDE views running the Matrox cards.

Regards,

Mel

It almost looks real, although the scenery really needs the big repair hangers on the south end of the field, and the Mall of America should be visible. (Shoot, it is good enough that I can almost pick out the Techbabe's house... )

>Greetings:
>
>Mel sent these in. I've strung them together in a
>panaramic view. (It's very wide, so you'll need to
>scroll.) Also note that I reduced the image size so it
>would fit, but as a side result the picture has lost much
>of it's sharpness and detail, but it should give you a
>pretty good idea of what the view over 6 monitors would
>look like in practical terms.
>
>Ben
>============================================
>
>These are 3 views of 3 separate computers running 3 Matrox
>Parhelia video cards while powering 6 TFT monitors.
>
>The "scene" is approaching 30L at Minneapolis with FSMeteo
>running in a 747-400.
>
>- The left screen is a HP 2.0 ghz and is the side window
>view
>- The center screen is a Dell 2.4 ghz Northwood and is the
>front window view
>- The right screen is a Dell 2.2 ghz and is the right
>window view
>
>What's worth noting is how the colors all match
>up....something VERY hard to do on 6 monitors with "other"
>video cards.
>
>Regards,
>Mel
>
>

http://www.flightadventures.com/misc/pix/pana

"TD - Virtual FAA investigators are on line 2, AGAIN!!!"