anyone tried this

Guys,

I got a nice idea from a fellow Dutch builder (Rob van Dijk). Let your fs server pc produce 2 outside views. The upper half is 0 - 90 view and the lower half is 270-360 view. The projector is on top of your cockpit. In front of you, there are 2 (flat)mirrors. The upper one projects the view to the right and a bit to the floor. The lower one to the left and a bit to the ceiling.

In our hobby , you would need a wide view . The view has not to be very high. Most cockpit windows will not be more than 20 cm in height. With this method you would get a view that is twice a wide as with a normal projection and twice as low, without any distortion.

What do the visual specialist overhere think of this idea. Is it feasible? Has anyone tried it?

regards


Norbert Bosch

This would be the endresult

Thats a fantastic idea, actually. The biggest challenge is getting mirrors that will be the same and diffuse the light at the exact same intervals.

Regards,

Trev

That's a neat idea! ... lateral thinking - I like it.

Can someone explain in more detail how the mirrors are positioned????

Dude!! That is Brilliant!! Will you be trying this??

Roberto

I think I've seen this kind of stuff in Teuge a couple of years ago with the guys that later started FlightIllusion. They had a sim with a few mirrors that projected on the back of a round screen that was just in fornt of the cockpit.
Looked nice but had one drawback; you could only choose between day or night. Dusk and dawn didn't work.

JWS

I wonder what it looks like in a turn... in a 20 degree left turn do the two halves split and both show a 20 deggree turn or will they stay together somehow?

@JWS

Not completely. I know the teuge sim. Their visual system is done with mirrors too. But with more mirrors and in a far more complex way.
They split the mirror vertically with 2 mirrors, and by 2 other mirrors the view is projected more from the side, so the distortion will be less then when the view would be projected direct to the curve screen.
See the pic below:

@pylet.
That would be no problem. The pc produces 2 windows above each other , and no instrument view.
In a right curve you would see the second pic in this post.

@ Impalazoo
Take a mirror of 60 x 80 cm (or whatever your screensize will be with a projector that you use at the distance you use it). Cut the mirror in 2 equal parts in a horizontal line. Lift the upper part at the left a bit to the front. The lower part must be lifted to the front at the right side (left and right fro the pilots view)

PS No, I did not do any experimenting with it. But will be investigating it when I am beginning with that part of the sim. More work to do on other parts of the sim at the moment.

regards

Norbert

I am also wondering, how much light will you loose using mirrors? How much does the final picture suffer?

Another thing I was wondering about, maybe this is a bit stupid, but I am not so into projectors: lets say the throw distance needs to be 4m to create a picture size of 2m. When using mirrors the distance traveled can be increased without actually needing the 4m straight, right?

So if I have a 2m space between projector and mirror, and 2m space between mirror and screen, would this be the same as having a 4m throw distance?

Theoretically yes. However The type of mirror you need is "Front reflection" not rear reflection. Otherwise you can get a ghosting effect on the screen.

Best regards.

Trev

Not tried, but will be adding to my really good ideas list for when I get my first projector :)

Hi all,

a good idea for sure but one little problem I see. It for sure is something
that should be investigated. The problem is that in the setup of norbert
(beginning of the thread) the picture comes from one source, the mirrors.
When you display that in back projection onto a screen which is rounded
around the cockpit there will be distortion of the picture at the ends of the screen around 0degree and 360 degree.

Greetz Peter

I guess I have a thick head here, because Im not understanding what's going on with this concept.

Is there one, or two projectors?

Also, someone mentioned no dusk or dawn. Why would that be?

Hi Tomlin,

nope, only one beamer which projects an image build up out of two FS windows which occupy only half of the view (upper half and lower half). The upper half of the screen is an FS window with the forward left view, the lower half of the screen is an FS window with the forward right view. This image is projected onto 2 mirrors which are one just above the other in that way that the lower part is beamed onto the lower mirror and the upper part of the screen shines on the upper mirror. Then by adjusting the mirrors a little you can move the image from the upper mirror (forward left) to reflect next to the image of the lower mirror (forward right). Thus at the end you get a wide image of the foward left and the forward right next to eachother but only half the height of what the normal beamer would produce.

I also do not understand what this has to do with dawn/dusk.
Anyway, in a previous post there was a nice drawing of it but the remark from norbert was that in this case less distortion. But the same setup (with side mirrors too) can also be used here. Let the beamer shine onto the two mirrors which split horizontally the image and let them reflect each horizontal part onto each side mirror, then via back projection to the screen.

I already did a short trial today to get the 2 FS windows on my screen,
upper half the forward left, lower half the forward right, zoom out to get them aligned but there would be more tweaking necessary to get this to work.
And then the biggest problem would probably the distortion in the screen of the beamed image..

For sure someone should try this out....

Greetz Peter

PS : I went to visit last weekend the gathering at Le Bourget. There was someone there (but did not get the chance to talk to him) who used a beamer which projected an image of over 3 meter wide. Resolution was not that great (I think probably 800x600) but the beamer was maybe only 2 meter away form the screen.
The projector itself had a mirror system with two sperical mirrors

Hi Peter,

I thought I might chime in here. I actually curve my screen around aprox 1.5 feet on each side, I do find a little distortion, but not as much as you would expect. I was told by someone once that because the lens of the beamer is rounded you can in essence round your image a tad. I personally find that the miner distortion out at the edges gives you more of a sensation of movement as the image rolls off the screen instead of disappearing off the screen.

Just thought I would share a little.

Trev

I am understanding this now a bit better (I think). Basically you have the FS server simply show on it's screen two window'd modes of your forward L/R views. I am impressed with the idea if it works!

Is there anyone known who uses this brilliant setup and if so, is more data available, like pictures, dimensions etc.?

Norbert,

Looks nice! My guess is it won't work unless you equal the distances light has to travel. If you don't you'll get problems with focussing your image. I think this quite a big problem. If anyone has a solution to this, it might work though. Maybe it would need an extra lense on the beamer to compensate for the curvature of the screen.

Greetings,

Erwin.

Gentlemen ,

How I could adjust the views , in order to have two views , one from 0º-90º and other 0º-270º ?

I am not thinking forward right , forward left , because this way we do not have the center of the runway .

thanks and regards

Alberto Kunzel