A question for fligt deck builders. What resolution do you use for your external view, 800x600 or 1024x768? Since there is close to a $1,000.00 difference between SVGA and XGA projectors, what's the downside of using SVGA (800x600) resolution?Richard

It depends on how big your screen it going to be.Also another BIG consideration for the overall quality of the graphics is the video card - specifically how well (fast) it does fullscreen anti-aliasing and anitropic filtering.My screen is 1.1m wide so all my observations are based on that. If your screen is going to be bigger then all this becomes even more relevant. My video card is a Geforce4 Ti4600.Firstly, with no antialiasing on the card the display at 8x6 is appalling. It's very pixellated, each pixel can clearly be seen and there's alot of 'snaking' on the side of buildings and texture swimming. It's bad.Bump this up to 1024 and it improves a great deal. Still shimmers, still get snakeing on the side of the buildings etc. but just tollerable.Now put maximium full screen anti-aliasing on and it's a different world. 8x6 with FSAA looks better than 1024 without. The shimmering and snaking is almost gone - very usable.Now bump the res to 1024 with FSAA and it improves again as expected - but not that dramatically to be honest.On my system, with my size screen, 8x6 is only useable (in my opinion) with the GeForce 4 doing its stuff in the FSAA dept. Then it is pretty good. I don't know how this would scale to larger screens (ie, how big you could go before it's too bad).1024 with FSAA is very nice and would let you go with a bigger screens than mine.So to sum up - a mighty graphics card that can do FSAA in the blink of an eye (so as not to loose you many FPS) will do much more for your image quality than the projector resolution alone. In fact 1024 is pretty lame itself with out FSAA.Hope this helps. Edit - I should mention that screen is rear projected so I'm sitting just under 1 metre away.PaulEGJJ

While I agree with Paul whole heartedly, he is failing to mention one thing. 1024x768 on a projector capable of projecting 1024x768, is worlds apart from 1024x768 on a projector capable of only projecting 800x600. By all means, save your money and bye the projector rated to throw the image at 1024x768. It is unbelievably a better picture.Here is an example of what I mean. Image 1 was projected on a projector capable of 800x600.Image 2 was projected on a projector capable of 1024x768.

and the screen to project an image such as in "Image 2" ? Do LCD projectors within the same price range provide a different "field of view" between models? geforce

Thanks Paul and Michael. Your input was very helpful, and cleared up other questions I had on lcd projector resolution.Richard

What material do you need to manufacture a rear projected curved screen? Any building tips?Cheers,Nick

Nick,Not sure what Michael is using in the pics he provided. Da-Lite http://www.da-lite.com makes rear projection screens. Not sure if you can by the material in bulk to make our own screen. The only problem with rear projection is, you need lots of room behind the screen for the projector to throw a wide enough view. Without 10 or more feet, you would need a mirror system to bounce the image off. Now those are expensive; over $2,000.00 just for a custom mirror system. Da-Lite's site explains all the details.Richard

Yes ours is a Dalite system. Roughly 2 grand.