Airliners - Can you read PFD? How do you fly?

[Room112 27]

I have a TrackIR and lean forward to read items on the PFD, like the altitude hold level on the CRJ that seems so small. 

[Jazz 1,046]

The suggestions of using TrackIR to move closer to see clearly are all well and good but as a long-time TrackIR user and one that refuses to fly without it I'm afraid to say that advice does you no good at all when scanning during an approach. One still needs a reasonable FOV so one can scan with eyes with minimal head movement. Easily achieved but a point worth mentioning I think.

 

[Ianrivaldosmith 5,317]

As others have said, a large screen is your answer. 50 inch or biggger. 

[robert young 2,897]

8 hours ago, MattNischan said:

This is already the case. The pixel resolution of the displays matches their real life counterparts.

Gotta disagree with Robert here. I stare at avionics YouTube videos every day and rarely are they something I would call "clear" or "readable" (my life would be so much easier if they were). This is just a simple case of not having sufficient pixels in the view. In a 1080p screen at a normal seating position you might only have 400px or less of screen.

Of course, you can still set your view like the old FS 2D panel views and smash your virtual face up against the screens with a sliver of windscreen at the top, and then I think you'll find they're just as clear as the old days. 😉

Hi Matt,

I meant the hi-res views you occasionally get of PFDs/MFDs on very good quality filming of real flights. But I also meant the image you get sitting in a G1000/3000 equipped aircraft. I'm always stunned by the immense clarity of the speed tapes, Altitudes and other relevant info. It is true that if you are in TAA mode in MSFS and you zoom in sufficiently you can get reasonably close to crispness, but the image quickly degrades when panning away or zooming out a bit. Of course you can't blame it on MSFS alone as it is the monitor quality. I have to set up zoomed in quick views of my displays while I set up routes and altitudes to get decent clarity - and I also find tweaking with Reshade and Nvidia filters can help to eliminate blur or over-sharpening which are both equally disruptive to display clarity.

BTW this is not a criticism of Wt's work on your G1000 etc. Your team has done a fantastic job. The worst culprit is the Aerosoft CRJ which emulates an already very poor Collins PFD where the altitude readout is absolutely tiny and Aerosoft didn't apply their intelligence to make it larger even if it is not strictly "accurate". It is almost impossible to adjust the altitude with the ALT knob and focus on the readout at the same time.

Edited March 4, 2023 by robert young

[David_CSA 36]

Thank you all for your inspirational replies. There are certainly several ideas among them which I tried or will try.

Having the need not only to read easily e.g. the altitude tape in FBW A320 but also to access any instrument view at any moment I guess I will go in the direction of setting up custom views and combine this with getting the Streamdeck.

Thank you again!