Choosing the right monitor for your virtual cockpit

[Thomasso 224]

Keep in mind that going Ultra Wide will probably give you unrealistic perspective in the cockpit. In real life, the pilot only sees a fraction of it at a time.

Great solution for this is Track IR or VR.

[GCBraun 2,390]

4 hours ago, canadiantree said:

How so? I though high refresh rate monitors were only good for fast paced games like first person shooters. What would the benefits be for a flight simulator? 

Well, I am easily achieving 60fps in P3D V5 and possibly constant 100fps+ will be doable in MSFS with next-gen GPUs. More FPS means more fluidity overall, so of course Flight-Sims also benefit from it.

Edited May 10, 2020 by GCBraun

[AerOdyssey 240]

Don't forget to get a display certified HDR 600 MINIMUM !! https://displayhdr.org/certified-products/
In flight sim the Hdr is very important with Sunbeam and shadow effect ! 

( in oled screen even 500 nits it's good because your black level is really = 0 )

Edited May 10, 2020 by topatov

[orchestra_nl 923]

3 hours ago, Thomasso said:

Keep in mind that going Ultra Wide will probably give you unrealistic perspective in the cockpit. In real life, the pilot only sees a fraction of it at a time.

Great solution for this is Track IR or VR.

The perspective is allright but you do see less of the cockpit. For GA it might be less of an issue than for airliners with their big overhead panels.
I did use Track-IR for FSX and hope it still worls for MSFS.

The video that Jean-Jaques posted shows a super-ultrawide. That might make things much more awkward.

38 minutes ago, topatov said:

Don't forget to get a display certified HDR 600 MINIMUM !! https://displayhdr.org/certified-products/
In flight sim the Hdr is very important with Sunbeam and shadow effect ! 

( in oled screen even 500 nits it's good because your black level is really = 0 )

My monitor is from before HDR. I would certainly recommend HDR nowadays.

[Richard Jacks 23]

On 5/10/2020 at 4:44 AM, Thomasso said:

Keep in mind that going Ultra Wide will probably give you unrealistic perspective in the cockpit. In real life, the pilot only sees a fraction of it at a time.

Great solution for this is Track IR or VR.

What is your suggestion, maybe two or 3 monitors side by side vs an ultrawide?

[Thomasso 224]

2 hours ago, Richard Jacks said:

What is your suggestion, maybe two or 3 monitors side by side vs an ultrawide?

My recommendation is 1 huge main monitor (ideally 3840x2160) for the sim and 1 smaller secondary for charts / add-on management. TrackIR is a must with this setup in my opinion.

Or if you wanna go all-in, go VR and pray that the new simulator will be compatible 😄

🙂

Edited May 17, 2020 by Thomasso

[Richard Jacks 23]

Just now, Thomasso said:

My recommendation is 1 huge main monitor for the sim and 1 smaller secondary for charts / add-on management. TrackIR is a must with this setup in my opinion.

Or if you wanna go all-in, go VR and pray that the new simulator will be compatible 😄

🙂

I have never tried TrackIR but that does seem the way to go with a 49" ultrawide...also if the plane I am flying has a HUD, even better!  I am guessing that a 2080ti will handle that along with a smaller display for addon management

[Thomasso 224]

1 minute ago, Richard Jacks said:

I have never tried TrackIR but that does seem the way to go with a 49" ultrawide...also if the plane I am flying has a HUD, even better!  I am guessing that a 2080ti will handle that along with a smaller display for addon management

TrackIR makes all the difference (if you don't have VR). Once you try it, you'll never want to fly without it. 🙂

Ultrawide monitor makes sense with TrackIR I guess because you can be zoomed in and just pan around with TrackIR. But if you zoom out and try to squeeze the cockpit (like a B737 one) on the screen, then the result will be highly unrealistic.

2080 Ti will handle multiple monitors just fine, it could be maybe even considered a slight overkill 🙂

[eslader 1,778]

I'm on the anti-TrackIR bandwagon now. I have one, and could never get it to work well. It's either twitchy, or you have to smooth it down so much to make it too slow to respond to head movements. I was starting to wonder if I was getting tremors running TrackIR. Manipulating clickable cockpits without pausing the head tracking was pretty much impossible. And if you wear glasses and have large screens, it gets confused by the reflection of the monitors off your lenses. You'll be looking forward and all of a sudden the view starts snapping around to full deflection until you move your head just right to eliminate the glare.

I switched to a Delanclip with a modified PS3 camera running Opentrack software. It's more of a pain to set up, but once it's up and running, the difference is considerable. No more jiggly viewing, and head movements are smooth and timely, and it only ever sees the IR lights from the clip, not random reflections.

The best part is that you can get the setup for a lot less than TrackIR costs. They'll even sell you the already modified camera if you don't have one.

[Anthracite 131]

On 5/9/2020 at 12:17 PM, highflyer2020 said:

There's no point going higher than 60Hz you're unlikely to get anything higher than 60 FPS on 4k...that's not a criticism of the sim it' s just reality. 

I would highly recommend a  4k ultrawide though!

There is a point and we have no idea right now what FPS people were getting but you can pretty much guarantee there will be machines capable of 60+ upon release. Particularly if you drop some graphical settings. It’s sometimes a choice, but either way, with adaptive sync it will use it whenever it can. Playing at higher than 60 FPS offers a lot more for your eyes, makes animations more believable and makes images in motion far clearer.
 

Whether that’s something you personally want and want to pay for should be the deciding factor.

[Anthracite 131]

On 5/10/2020 at 1:10 PM, topatov said:

Don't forget to get a display certified HDR 600 MINIMUM !! https://displayhdr.org/certified-products/
In flight sim the Hdr is very important with Sunbeam and shadow effect ! 

( in oled screen even 500 nits it's good because your black level is really = 0 )

Hdr on monitors at the moment is a joke compared to an oled tv or even a qled tv. 
 

the issue isn’t how bright the screen can get, but how many dimming zones the screen has. Most of the consumer quality screens do not have enough dimming zones to offer a decent implementation of hdr. The asus  Proart range (at about £4000) offers just over 1100 local dimming zones. A £500 hdr monitor might give you 8. 

So yeah, 600/1000 can be okay as an introduction but I worry how many people are going to think hdr is a bit of a “meh” for graphics because of substandard implementations that don’t have good local dimming. I’d consider the proart to have the minimum required amount of local dimming zones to be considered a good implementation of hdr.  
 

I’d also advise against using oled screens for computers because the quality would degrade pretty quickly because of screen burn in. Oled looks great but there’s a reason monitors aren’t utilising the technology right now. It’s not a great fit for what monitors display.

 

Edited May 19, 2020 by Anthracite

[AerOdyssey 240]

 

8 hours ago, Anthracite said:

would degrade pretty quickly because of screen burn in

My friend have OLED LG C8 as computer monitor for 2 years and no burn in . This is why im going on the new LG 48CX 

[Anthracite 131]

1 hour ago, topatov said:

 

My friend have OLED LG C8 as computer monitor for 2 years and no burn in . This is why im going on the new LG 48CX 

2 years is a relatively short amount of time and would depend on use. 2 hours a day I’d expect him not to experience anything noticeable until around 4 years provided he is playing a lot of motion content. It depends on how long you want it to last, many people are happy upgrading after 5 some want longer.  I believe LG OLED panels are expected to last 100,000 hours, but their quality degrades substantially more during that time because of burn in, if they’re displaying static content. This is particularly true of the red pixels. All panels tend to lose brightness and colour over time but the compounds in oled are more prone to it - if you’re interested in oled and can wait a year, Samsung is looking to bring qdoled out in 2021 according to the rumours. That’s assuming corona doesn’t effect their timescale. These will have better efficiency, brightness, colour and lifespan.