Geometric distortion in a triple-monitor setup for MSFS 2020

[Fred Hsu 3]

Boy, do I love MSFS 2020. It is clearly the next gen sim. And this is from someone who is invested in XPlane 11. There are many minor missing features such as replays, rewind/resume, TrackIR pause, etc. I am sure in time these will be addressed in future updates. Most importantly, there are workarounds today.

But one major issue remains without a workaround. And it only affects a small population of people trying to fly with triple monitors, or super duper ultra-wide monitors. That is, MSFS doesn't yet support such views. Current attempts using Nvidia Surround produce distracting distortions which does not actually help with flying.

I am trying to raise awareness of this issue, so that it can be prioritized by Asobo properly. Or perhaps some smart members will figure out ways to tweak config variables such as WideViewAspect and the like, to make this work today.

This long article shows lots of pictures taken in the last two days, to illustrate this issue:

https://xinhaidude.com/2020/08/22/geometric-distortion-in-a-triple-monitor-setup-for-msfs-2020-compared-to-xplane-11/

Here is one of many illustrations from the article:

[D-man 10]

Thanks Fred... and well said.

The other issue (and more important to me) is the Light Scaling for triple monitors. The lights and esp landing/airport lighting is so large I cant fly MSFS2020 at night at all. Anyone find a fix for this... please share ASAP.

[andradef 59]

I also use three monitors and hate that distortion. It makes the pillar between the windscreen and the side window look HUGE. This is because MSFS is setup as the "wall of monitors" is setup in XP: your monitors are assumed flat in front of you, hence the stretching on the sides. However, in my case I have three curved monitors that wrap around me. The distortion is very annoying. 

[Fred Hsu 3]

57 minutes ago, andradef said:

I also use three monitors and hate that distortion. It makes the pillar between the windscreen and the side window look HUGE. This is because MSFS is setup as the "wall of monitors" is setup in XP: your monitors are assumed flat in front of you, hence the stretching on the sides. However, in my case I have three curved monitors that wrap around me. The distortion is very annoying. 

Think of all the GPU cycles being wasted to render these large, distorted pillars, for no benefits.

[Fred Hsu 3]

7 hours ago, D-man said:

The other issue (and more important to me) is the Light Scaling for triple monitors. The lights and esp landing/airport lighting is so large I cant fly MSFS2020 at night at all. Anyone find a fix for this... please share ASAP.

You can see some of these in my screenshots as well. 

But I also found that you could the flashing airport beacon lights from like 30 miles away. This is true on a single 4K monitor. I don't know if this is realistic. Perhaps it is.

[Tuskin38 6,458]

On 8/22/2020 at 3:14 PM, Fred Hsu said:

Or perhaps some smart members will figure out ways to tweak config variables such as WideViewAspect and the like, to make this work today.

Try this option under 'graphics'

Edited August 23, 2020 by Tuskin38

[Fred Hsu 3]

1 hour ago, Tuskin38 said:

Try this option under 'graphics'

I had that ON all along. It did nothing that I could tell. Sigh 😞

[Lurk 3]

I'd like to chime in and "raise awareness on this issue" as well, as the op has stated.

I've been a long-time simmer on three 27'' 16:9 monitors, first with Eyefinity and now with Nvidia Surround at 6048x1080 with bezel correction.

Despite other simulators like Euro Truck Simulator 2, Project Cars 1 and 2, Assetto Corsa and X-Plane11 have built-in three monitor support with the ability to successfully and easily eliminate graphic distortion on the side monitors, for some reason Microsoft Flight Simulator has always been lacking in this respect.

I've found that the only way for me to have a satisfactory experience with the Flight Simulator is to take advantage of the graphic engine's ability to maintain aspect ratio when stretching the window while running in windowed mode.

I simply run with the sim's window centered on my middle screen and stretch it on both sides so that it reaches slightly over the center of the side monitors, while keeping my desktop background black to avoid distraction. In this way graphical distortion is minimized when not totally absent.

The downside is obviously the presence of the window frame on the top and the fact that running windowed probably causes a performance loss vs full-screen, but this is for me truly the only way to enjoy the sim on three screens until MS addresses the issue (not holding my breath).

I'd be glad to keep participating in this discussion as the sim moves forward to a (hopefully) bright future.

[Fred Hsu 3]

1 hour ago, Lurk said:

I've found that the only way for me to have a satisfactory experience with the Flight Simulator is to take advantage of the graphic engine's ability to maintain aspect ratio when stretching the window while running in windowed mode.

I simply run with the sim's window centered on my middle screen and stretch it on both sides so that it reaches slightly over the center of the side monitors, while keeping my desktop background black to avoid distraction. In this way graphical distortion is minimized when not totally absent.

AAHH !!

I think this is what some people might have been alluding to, albeit not in clear languages that you just used. I'll give this a try to see if it's better in terms of reduced distortion. Thanks!

[Oliver Ooi 85]

1 hour ago, Lurk said:

Despite other simulators like Euro Truck Simulator 2, Project Cars 1 and 2, Assetto Corsa and X-Plane11 have built-in three monitor support with the ability to successfully and easily eliminate graphic distortion on the side monitors, for some reason Microsoft Flight Simulator has always been lacking in this respect.

Those games or sim you mentioned actually has three separate views for each monitor. For car racing sim, you wouldn't notice the performance degrade as much  because those games are a lot less demanding. When you activate multi views in XP11 or P3D, your fps will be cut at lease 50% because the rendering engine need to render 3 separate views instead of 1. Unless Asobo found a miracle solution, we will find the sim runs at very low fps if they include the similar multi-views feature, maybe thats the reason we don't see this feature in the initial release.

[Lurk 3]

25 minutes ago, Oliver Ooi said:

Those games or sim you mentioned actually has three separate views for each monitor. For car racing sim, you wouldn't notice the performance degrade as much  because those games are a lot less demanding. When you activate multi views in XP11 or P3D, your fps will be cut at lease 50% because the rendering engine need to render 3 separate views instead of 1. Unless Asobo found a miracle solution, we will find the sim runs at very low fps if they include the similar multi-views feature, maybe thats the reason we don't see this feature in the initial release.

Understandable, but then you wonder because from what I read it seems that the same distortion happens on single 21:9 monitors, whereas the game should be totally affordable performance-wise on those screens. I'm sure Asobo could come up with a solution for minimizing the stretch effect on ultra-wide resolutions without having to resort to splitting the view in three.

37 minutes ago, Fred Hsu said:

AAHH !!

I think this is what some people might have been alluding to, albeit not in clear languages that you just used. I'll give this a try to see if it's better in terms of reduced distortion. Thanks!

Let me know. The advantage of this method is that you can stretch the window on both sides to your liking and depending on the side of your monitors, until you are satisfied with the adjustment to the distortion.

As I said, major disadvantage is probably running windowed vs full-screen, although I haven't noticed a tangible degradation in performance to the naked eye.

[Reedy 2]

This distorted image on triple screens is indeed a pain but I'll go one step further and ask whether its even possible to even get Bezel correction working properly? I've got it set in NVSurround but it's not actually doing any bezel correction in game. I am running full screen and have tried a few different resolutions but I am still having that annoying discontinuity at the screen junctions. Others appear to have it working properly.

This kind of thing drives me crazy!

[Manny 1,293]

bezel correction is done in nvidia. not in the game

Edited August 26, 2020 by Manny

[Reedy 2]

Which I have done in the NVidia control panel, yet it doesn't seem to work in game.

[Jetman67 517]

On 8/23/2020 at 4:14 AM, Fred Hsu said:

Boy, do I love MSFS 2020. It is clearly the next gen sim. And this is from someone who is invested in XPlane 11. There are many minor missing features such as replays, rewind/resume, TrackIR pause, etc. I am sure in time these will be addressed in future updates. Most importantly, there are workarounds today.

But one major issue remains without a workaround. And it only affects a small population of people trying to fly with triple monitors, or super duper ultra-wide monitors. That is, MSFS doesn't yet support such views. Current attempts using Nvidia Surround produce distracting distortions which does not actually help with flying.

I am trying to raise awareness of this issue, so that it can be prioritized by Asobo properly. Or perhaps some smart members will figure out ways to tweak config variables such as WideViewAspect and the like, to make this work today.

This long article shows lots of pictures taken in the last two days, to illustrate this issue:

https://xinhaidude.com/2020/08/22/geometric-distortion-in-a-triple-monitor-setup-for-msfs-2020-compared-to-xplane-11/

Here is one of many illustrations from the article:

Isn't track IR pause there,