Outside view with 3 monitors

[Kennair]

Dave you may not like the answer, depending on your budget, but to get a wrap around view for a full size 737 cockpit you will need 60" LCD TV's. Take a look at Scott's setup on Youtube to see how this works. He's now using 5 TV's for a full 210 degree view but that's probably a bit of an overkill for most. He's also using X-Plane but the setup applies equally to FSX.

Good luck,

Ken.

[davemuir]

Hi birdyguy Thanks for your kind reply ,I will post you all the pictures of the build so farIf you type in 1davemuir into youtube you can see my build so far in my garden shed RegardsDave

[davemuir]

Hi ken,
many thanks for your info I had a look at the video and I must say it looks good the only trouble is I only have 8 feet by 8 feet to play with which I think would be too small an area for me to work with
Regards
dave

[Kennair]

Hi Dave,

I'm using 3 narrow bezel (20mm) 42" LCD TV's for my outside view as can be seen HERE. These span a width of approx. 2.2m so should fit into your 8 foot area (2.4m). The smaller the screens however the greater the crab effect if not sitting directly in front of the center screen. This is lessened by either moving the screens so you are centered or using larger screens. In your case this won't be possible as it wasn't for me also. You can tweak the aircraft config file to have the view favour the Capt side but this is at the expense of the FO view (if that matters). My cockpit, although being a B777 is actually the same dimensions as the 737 due to space constraints and the 42" screens only just fit around the glareshield, anything smaller would be compromised. I must say that you do get use to the crabbing after a while and it isn't particularly noticeable. My commercial sim uses projectors across a 10m curved screen and you still experience some crab effect, so unless you go to a collimated display this can't be overcome completely.

Ken.

[davemuir]

Hi ken
the monitors look really good ,did you put them through a triple head to go
also what model of TVs did you use ?
regards
dave

[Kennair]

Yes these go through a TH2GO as for some reason my GTX680 video card won't work in surround to these monitors. The model is unknown really as they come from Kogan which is a cheap online electrical retailer here in Aus but they are probably of Chinese origin. They work great however particularly for my purpose. They are also LED backlit which makes them light as a feather.

Ken.

[davemuir]

Hi ken,
many thanks again for your info ,
so you can use any tv with a triple head to go ?as long as all 3 have the same refresh rate ?,it's just that I don't want to purchase 3 TVs and they don't work
is there a model or serial number on the rear of your tvs
regards
dave

[Kennair]

Dave if the TV takes a HDMI input (and they all do) then you can use it. Just get 3 DVI to HDMI adapters for the TH2GO and use HDMI cables to connect the TV's. If you have a 600 series nVidia card you might try using its Surround function in which case you could do away with the Matrox. In my case this failed to work but you might have better luck. Really no difference in performance between using surround or the Matrox however it just save one extra piece of hardware in the chain. Yes its best to get three identical TV's so all parameters are equal but this isn't essential. The only caveat with the TH2GO is that all monitors be the same resolution but not necessarily the same physical size, however it would be odd to have monitors of different sizes depending on your usage.

As for my model and serial number, these are fairly arbitrary as they are rebadged by Kogan and mean pretty much nothing. If these were name brand units such as Sony, Samsung etc it might have some relevance but not so. As I said it doesn't really matter, LCD TV's are very similar to standard computer monitors, they just have TV tuners and audio capabilities added. They are completely at home being a computer monitor however and very cheap High Def alternatives. I think you could feel confident in buying any modern LCD TV without issue.

Ken.

[davemuir]

Hi ken,
That's a wealth of information many thanks for all that info I've taken everything you've said onboard and now I know which TVs to go for
regards
dave