Stormer,
Welcome to the Homebuilt Cockpits Forum.
The usual way is to link the PC's with a 10/100 mbit LAN. I am using a 100 mbit hard wired network with an 8 port Linksys switch as the "hub". Then on the computers you install the payware combo of Peter Dowson's FSUIPC and WideFS. The two of them are the "standard of the industry" for simpit builders...and bought together they are about $30 USD.
FSUIPC is the "Swiss Army Knife" for Microsoft flight simulator ;). It also gives you lots of functions that make the sim work better.
WideFS fools software located on networked PC's to thinking that the fs2004 program is actually running on each of them. It provides the data stream out of the FS program (all of the stuff that gauges work off of) and shares it with other programs that "look for" fs2004 running.
This however only works for stand alone third party programs/gauges. This is NOT the same as having the actual sim locacted on multiple machines. So this does not allow you to use stock "in sim" panels and such on the remote machines or show exterior views and such. You have to come up with gauge software like FreeFD (now apparently not supported / available), Project Magenta (big $), fsExpand (very nice), and so on. Look at the "Resources" links at the top of this forum for ideas.
If you want to run multiple copies of the fs2004 program "in sync" with each other, you need
another payware program called WideView. Wideview lets you have more than one instance of fs2004 running and have them in sync. This is how some of those folks with 7 to 10 monitors with outside views typically hook them up. You could also have the stock aircraft gauges showing in a custom panel donly display on one networked machine and the exterior views on another this way.
Hope all this helps and makes sense. Good luck. And welcome to "the Dark Side".
best,
...................john
by Stormer » Sat Apr 15, 2006 4:55 am 
Intel i7 960 quad 3.2G LGA 1366, Asus P6X58D Premium, 750W Corsair, 6 gig 1600 DDR3, Spinpoint 1TB 720
