I have a Philips 43" monitor which is displaying annoying patches on the display and is getting worse. I am also considering a rebuild of my cockpit and thinking about the Odyssey Ark 55" monitor from Samsung. It's a lot of dosh and I'm wondering if anyone around here has one of these and can offer their thoughts?

Edited August 19, 20232 yr by Rockliffe

I have one - but it's sitting in it's box unopened as yet - I am moving house so all in a state of flux right now - hope to have the move completed in a couple of weeks - then I'll be able to make comment - having said that - it's in a bloody big box!!!~

15 minutes ago, Rattso said:

I have one - but it's sitting in it's box unopened as yet - I am moving house so all in a state of flux right now - hope to have the move completed in a couple of weeks - then I'll be able to make comment - having said that - it's in a bloody big box!!!~

Ah, great. Yeah, I've heard they are monstrous in weight as well as size! If you can remember to return and give your thoughts I'd be really grateful. Cheers. 

I'm interested in your feedback too. 

holy cow, that thing looks insane

I use Flightsim on a 43" 4k monitor and it's great - I recently bought a 55" 4k for elsewhere in the house and briefly tried it as an MSFS monitor - it was incredible, my main takeaway sitting in the Fenix cockpit was - "it feels like everything is full size 1:1 scale", i.e. the buttons, screens etc

trouble is I use this PC for everything, and having to turn your head significantly when using Windows generally was too much of a headache on a 55"

55" 4k is about 1/5th of the price of that monitor!!!

My 55" Ark arrived today. It looks great and has neat features. That said - I spend a lot of time in MSFS, and I need to point out that it is probably not the best monitor for it.

This was an upgrade from an old 50" Vizio that had me stuck at 60 FPS. The 165 FPS offered by the Ark is great and frame rates out of MSFS are fantastic. But! The curve makes some cosmetic ... issues.

For example - when you're sitting in the TBM 930, with the default camera views, it looks like the copilot yoke is a lot closer to you than the pilots yoke. Because, well, according to the curve immersion, it is. Instead of being a flat view, it sort of bends the entire aircraft around the curve.

Then I rotated the TV into cockpit mode - which is a bit of a pain to adjust your computer display settings all the time, I imagine, and also re-configure the game graphics. But! Got it all set up.

Initially wasn't impressed with the default view - yes, you can see the switches above you and what not, but again, the curvature at the bottom was pulling the instruments in a bit too close, and not having a good peripheral of anything was annoying. But went to load up a flight plan annnnd.. low and behold, the buttons on the Garmin weren't working. Could not touch the touch screen at all, but the button to clear the initialize screen worked fine, so it could just he an odd bug.

So. Great screen. Probably fantastic with some good camera mods, but out of the box it looks.. less than stellar for MSFS. 

 

On 8/25/2023 at 7:39 PM, Godsblade said:

My 55" Ark arrived today. It looks great and has neat features. That said - I spend a lot of time in MSFS, and I need to point out that it is probably not the best monitor for it.

This was an upgrade from an old 50" Vizio that had me stuck at 60 FPS. The 165 FPS offered by the Ark is great and frame rates out of MSFS are fantastic. But! The curve makes some cosmetic ... issues.

For example - when you're sitting in the TBM 930, with the default camera views, it looks like the copilot yoke is a lot closer to you than the pilots yoke. Because, well, according to the curve immersion, it is. Instead of being a flat view, it sort of bends the entire aircraft around the curve.

Then I rotated the TV into cockpit mode - which is a bit of a pain to adjust your computer display settings all the time, I imagine, and also re-configure the game graphics. But! Got it all set up.

Initially wasn't impressed with the default view - yes, you can see the switches above you and what not, but again, the curvature at the bottom was pulling the instruments in a bit too close, and not having a good peripheral of anything was annoying. But went to load up a flight plan annnnd.. low and behold, the buttons on the Garmin weren't working. Could not touch the touch screen at all, but the button to clear the initialize screen worked fine, so it could just he an odd bug.

So. Great screen. Probably fantastic with some good camera mods, but out of the box it looks.. less than stellar for MSFS. 

 

Interesting observation you have about the perspective, it's something that I've been aware of while researching my options. As someone who has spent their entire career behind the camera, my subjective observations about the aesthetics and visuals, maybe a little more critical than most. While I understand the 'science' behind a curved screen, at first seems like a great idea, but now I'm not so sure. In the running at the moment is the 48" Asus, which I think may win the race. 

Edited August 26, 20232 yr by Rockliffe

well the house move is now sorta completed & a friend & I unboxed it - assembled it & it now takes pride of place on my desk - have tried it out on a few games - Civ VI EQ2 - both were an 'eye opener' to say the least - so off to fly in FS2020 - started with a C152(I have 4000+ hours instructing on them) - so always my go to aeroplane to test suff out & not worry about any complicated stuff - well to say there is a lot of 'real estate' to play with is an understatement - am now in the process of getting the colour/contrast etc to my liking - it will obviously take a fair bit of fine tuning to find the right balance.

Whereas the G9 I had had "width" this one has "height" so that aspect will take some time to adjust.

The most stupid thing I did when getting everything out of the box was of course to take the little tabs out of the remotes - I also have as my TV a 55" curved Samsung monitor - several years old - well guess what happened - the new remote promptly took over the TV & wouldn't work with the Ark - also the original remote for the TV now would only turn the TV on & off! Well much gnashing of teeth & heaps of frustration I actually read the manual & found the was a way to repair the pair - so as to speak - now both remotes work as advertised.

Also I had to set the tobii up again & have it working reasonable well over so much screen area - so a couple of days work to get it sorted.

But on the whole it seems to be a completely new experience.