Hi Mel,I've been sucked in and fooled by all the enthusiasm and publicity and pictures and sales talk and bought a Matrox Parhelia plus three identical 15" TFT screens running at 1024 x 768, because I actually believed that I could get a stretched single 3D view across all three screens at that resolution and with flyable frame rates.
Well, the stuffs arrived and I've connected it up, and it works, but if I try to stretch FS2002's forward view over more than 2 screens at 1024x768 each, it goes black!
I checked with my suppliers who swore they had it working across three at 1024 x 768, and flyable, but who now say that the third monitor was a second cockpit view adjusted to 45 degrees or whatever!
That's no good. it immediately halves the frame rate! I could do that sort of thing on my nVidia Ti 4600 and get better, yet still unflyable, frame rates. I assume those folk (SimWare in Belgium) don't really fly or have everything turned down.
I am running all this on a P4-2.4GHz so there's no shortage of processing power. All I'm lacking is the ability to get the three screens up and running at speed I expected and promised.
Have you any ideas? I got the latest Matrox Parhelia drivers from their website, but there's no difference with them.
Is this, as you say, a DirectX limitation, and if so how come the thing's being praised by so many for its "panoramic views"? Even Bubba Wolford (www.simhq.com) says this in a review from when the Parhelia first appeared:
"Flight Sim 2002 looked pretty good on the Parhelia but the resolution (right now) is limited to 800x600 or 2400x600 across three screens. "
but I've also tried 800x600 on all three screens and still only get 2 and a bit of FS before it all goes black!
Have you any idea how I get get what I want out of this kit? Right now I'm feeling a bit cheated and I'm half inclined to send the stuff back and get a refund.
Regards,
Pete
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