Hi Guys,Sometime ago , I

You know, I've been flying on a projected display for a couple years now, but I have been centered on the display since I built a single-seat cockpit.I'm in the planning phase for a two-seat flightdeck and was interested to hear your problem.I also find it interesting that no one has really discussed this much, here or elsewhere.I wonder how big a problem it has been for the community? I see shots of homebuilt flight decks and the runway appears centered on the 'pit, not the pilot. Yet no discussion in general on this.I'd hate to move the viewpoint if I don't have to. It just wouldn't seem natural having the centerline of the display to the left of the centerpost.I wonder if this is just another problem in simulating reality that we're compensating for, often without knowing we're doing so.I'll tell you one thing, I'm going to move my cockpit 30" to the left tonight and see what happens.I'm very curious about anyone else's experiences with this as well.Chris

Brother Leilson, I have seen the light!I moved my cockpit over to the position I would sit in a two seat flight deck, and I UNDERSTAND what you were saying.It was very disconcerting, always feeling as if I were sliding to the right and wanting to correct for the slide was awful - I kept wanting to give her rudder to swing the nose to the right.Oh boy, I'm glad I found this out before building the flight deck.As I see it, I have two options:1. Move the center of the projected screen in front of the PF (pilot flying), which will almost always be me. But I wanted to build the deck so I could share the experience. And moving the projector when the PF changes is not pratical (180 lb CRT projector, heavy and would lose convergence).2. Investigate this eye-point modification mentioned in the earlier thread. I went to Project Magenta's website, but could not find the referenced "Pilot's Eye Point" thread. If I modify the eyepoint, is that going to change the vanashing point on the screen to be off center, as needed, or is it just going to move the whole frame?And if I do change it, there doesn't seem to be a way to change it "on the fly"(no pun intended) if the FO wants to take the bird.Intruiging!Let's hear from other builders who've dealt with this! What did you do to solve it?Chris

Small update:I found the earlier thread... don't know why I couldn't find it:http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...ing_type=searchI'll play with this some, but I still want to hear others' experience.

have you seen much of a difference when changing the eyepoint?Are you able to post some before and after shots?Gaz

This is a problem that's been around for quite some time, and it frustrates me very much. But I've come to the conclusion there isn't a thing you can do about it, unless you go to the collimating mirror setup. Which I will not do, just cost too much.I think the most critical part of the centering is the approach, once in flight it's hardly noticeable.Even with a single projector setup it's difficult to move the centering, but with multi-projector setup it almost becomes impossible.The best solution is a mirror setup. That's my wish, SIGH... :(

Well Gaz, I have fooled with eyepoint some on my testing PC but not in the cockpit yet.Here are a series of shots where I adjusted the eyepoint. The instruments at the bottom make good reference points.I used the default 737 from FS2002.http://www.chrisanders.com/eyepoint.htmWhat you can see in those screenshots is that while the viewpoint relative to the centerline changes, the vanishing point DOES NOT.So, as Matt said, there isn't much you can do about it (without the collimating mirror rig).I'll try flying with 0 lateral, and see if it is acceptable.If not, I'll center the screen on my position and swap seats when I want the FO to fly, especially land.Stay tuned for my test results... but I'm pretty certain we know what those will be :(Chris

Could this problem be magnified by projecting onto a flat screen as opposed to a curved screen?Gaz

Could this problem be solved by using a 4 monitor setup, or is that just not possible in Flightsim. With everybody buying TFT's these days there are plenty of surplus monitors. And you can set both eyepoints to the perspective needed....

In flightsim you can basically use as many monitors as you want using wideview or widefs, but doesnt look very pleasing due to the large borders of the case and really is to small if building an airliner flightdeck

I don't think a curved screen would help much if at all. I like the idea for a better field of vision, though. I agreee with Gaz, the multi-monitor setup won't work well in a flightdeck, especially since each monitor would have a different vanishing point!In the Avsim news, there was this interesting entry:http://www.bugeyetech.com/avsim_files/fse.htmlI don't think it'll solve the parallax problem, but it is a promising display technology.I flew with a 0 lateral view tonight, and while it helped a little the main problem of vanishing point positioning remains. It was very disconcerting.I will plan to center the display on the captain's position and just hot-seat it until a future solution. Some day we'll get hi-res head-mounted displays and that'll help.Of course for us home-builders we'll need a slick tactile feedback interface to simulate sitting in a flightdeck :).That could be a few years :(.For now I'm thrilled with what we can accomplish!Chris

EUREKA!The answer (for me at least) is a combination of modifications to both the aircraft.cfg AND panel.cfg files.As you can see below, the vanishing point is now left of center, directly in front of my flying position, and the centerline is disappearing in the center of the screen.you can check out the photos at:http://www.chrisanders.com/eyepoint.htmIn the panel.cfg file I added the lines:[Views]VIEW_FORWARD_DIR=1.25, 0.0, 10.0If your cfg already has the lines, just modify them. The third number is viewing angle in degrees. I adjusted it to 10.0 which moved it 10 degrees right of center.Then I modified the aircraft.cfg file as such:[Views]eyepoint=43.7, -5.25, 3.55 I changed the middle number to -5.25 feet left of center - this centered the centerline.Now the motion is correct and you can land the plane!What about the FO position? Well, it would be simple enough to save one config for the Captains position and another aircraft for the FO seat. Then you would simply have to load the appropriate aircraft when the PF changes!What do you think?Chris