Outside view with 3 monitors

[davemuir]

Hi all
i need some info please
i will be doing the outside view on my 2 seater 737 sim using
3 monitors with a triple head to go -what size of monitors and model
of monitors would do this that would be wide enough for the sim.
front view and 2 monitors at 45 degrees
Any help and photos would be most welcome-
thanks
dave

[Goldmember]

If you look in my profile, you might see a picture of my solution. Otherwise pls pm me and I'll send them. Basically, I used 3 18" monitors in a straight line. Exactly 1.5m wide, easy to constuct.

[davemuir]

Hi gold member
Nice set up of your monitors but I am
trying to creat some sort of wrap around with the monitors
One forward .left hand and right hand
At 45 degrees I just need to know the sizes of monitors to get that will give the same width of the cockpit
Many thanks for your reply
Regards
Dave

[Goldmember]

If I were to make it again, I would go for your idea as well. Screens are cheaper now; for the larger sizes, take TV's. Just buy screens with mounting holes in the back. In my setup, I attached aluminium profiles to the back so the screens hook over the supporting bar. To get the 3 screens exactly aligned, I just put some thick tape under the profiles until they were right.

In your case, you could make 3 support bars instead of 1, position them under an angle to get the wrap around effect. Let me know if you need detailed pics of the construction.

[davemuir]

Hi goldmember
many thanks for your wealth of information
aye you are right the cost of monitors and TVs
have come down in price ,
what I need are 3 monitors of the same size and refresh rates
as they are going through a triplle head to go
my idea is a fwd ,left and righthand at 45 degrees and rear left and rear
right hand monitors through wide view so what I am trying to find out
is the correct size for the 3 front monitors 19 ,22 or 24 inch -
looking at your setup if you we're to position the left and right monitors at 45 degrees would it be the correct width of your cockpit as you are using 18 inch ones
thanks
dave



i

[davemuir]

Re: Outside view with 3 monitors
Hi goldmember
many thanks for your wealth of information
aye you are right the cost of monitors and TVs
have come down in price ,
what I need are 3 monitors of the same size and refresh rates
as they are going through a triplle head to go
my idea is a fwd ,left and righthand at 45 degrees and rear left and rear
right hand monitors through wide view so what I am trying to find out
is the correct size for the 3 front monitors 19 ,22 or 24 inch -
looking at your setup if you we're to position the left and right monitors at 45 degrees would it be the correct width of your cockpit as you are using 18 inch ones
thanks
dave






i

[Goldmember]

No I think they should be bigger. If I would angle the monitors, they wouldn't reach to the sides of the cockpit anymore.

http://www.mycockpit.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=7565&d=1361797510

If you aim at the point where the window frame meets the glare wing, you should be able to calculate the width of the ideal monitor (sine, cosine and the whole shebang I'm afraid). Then you find out what monitor size comes closest to this width and change the angle from 45 degrees to whatever fits. When my pit was in the concept phase, I remember that the result was 30" or 32" but I can't remember if I calculated with wide screen monitors or 4:3. Another way is to just try by folding a measuring tape where you want the screens and get the ideal width from what you read.

Oh, I was on my ipad this weekend so I couldn't see if I had posted pictures of the construction. Here they are, it's simple, cheap and strong enough (though you need balls to hook the monitors up the first time :-D).

http://www.mycockpit.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=7566&d=1361798144

http://www.mycockpit.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=7567&d=1361798144

[davemuir]

Many thanks goldmember I will go along the route of
using the tape measure as I will be using wide screen acer monitors the monitor frames will be painted the same Boeing grey as the rest of the sim so it gives the illusion of window frames .
thanks again for all your info
cheers
dave

[Goldmember]

My pleasure, do post pictures of the result!

[birdyguy]

Hi Dave,

I like the idea of your set up as well, Really would enjoy seeing pictures when you have it completed.

[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 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXry4oG5L8E&feature=share&list=UUnkkT6z2izlO8GATzUElCTA)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 (http://www.kennair.com.au/boeing-777/778-viewing/). 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