Data projectors, wide screens and sims

[Guest Pieter]

Did ever this thought come to mind? Well, a few weeks ago I presented a workshop during an international conference. I had to entertain 30 delegates in two sessions of 3 hours each on the principles of confocal laser microscopy. This was done during a very bad spell of an infectious laryngitis. By Friday afternoon 17:00 I had no voice left...However, after a week of antibiotics and all other muti the doc could throw at me, I can now actually type this without drifting into the drugged haziness clutter of noise in my brain.To cut the proverbial long story short. I had as an aid in my quest with croaky voice not to bore people of fame, a good data projector for my MS Power Point presentation and to enlarge the images of the microscope for such a large group of people at one time.I furthermore took the liberty to lure the projector to my home for the weekend. One can buy these large TV screens nowadays at the price of family car, if not a small apartment (over here anyway). Silly, IMHO, to spend that much money on a TV (sorry if a stepped now on someone's toes). I have a nice, uh say Hi-Fi and my youngest son (still spending his last year at university, at cost, in my house), has one of those smaller, but powerful music centres as well. I connected them respectively to front and back speaker outlets on the PC soundcard, including the projector to VGA output, slid a DVD into the drive and we sat back and had home entertainment on a wet windy weekend like never before. I'm hooked, the data projector, costing a tenth of a wide TV, threw a picture of 4x2m (only because we could not find a larger room in the house!), and we enjoyed the "Dolby surround" of the hi-fi's as bonus.The rest is obvious... Sunday morn early, still weakened by the drugs and cold fever, I loaded "the sims" one by one. I magnified the data image projected on the wall so that the cockpit took the dimensions of a real plane, and I had the feast of siumlation of my life despite my grogginess. I reluctantly took the projector back on Monday...Have a nice weekend

[PeterR 9]

Yep. Projectors are great as long as the room is sufficiently dark. Many years ago (mid nineties), I was around during the setup of a very large projection system (something like 20'x10') for a conference in a hotel ballroom. Suffice it to say, the day before the conference I just had to "test" the system. Loaded up Descent and talk about fun! Didn't have FUIII back then but I could imagine what it would've been like. HUGE.You can find projectors on eBay but they're generally expensive. Also, the bulbs don't last too long.Peter http://bfu.avsim.net/sigpics/PeterR.gifBFU Forums ModeratorRenegade/Seawolf Design Group (RSDG)[table border=2 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=1][tr][td][table border=0 cellpadding=8 cellspacing=0][tr][td bgcolor=#6f0000]http://bfu.avsim.net/sigpics/logo75t.gif[/td][td align="center" bgcolor=#FFFFF6]Bush Flying Unlimited"At home in the wild"Looking for adventure? Come join us! * [link:bfu.avsim.net|Web Site] * [link:www.cafepress.com/bfu,bfu2,bfu3,bfu4|BFU Store] * [link:bfu.avsim.net/join.htm]Join!][/td][/tr][/table][/td][/tr][/table

[Guest R_Driscoll]

What resolution did you run at? Could you see a lot of pixellation effects due to larger image size?Sounds like great fun though!

[Guest andy9164]

I've done this with my PS2 and GT3. Hook it up to the hi-fi, speaker either side of you, project it on the wall. Full scale racing, great fun. Even got a realistic bang on the side of the face when I hit the tyre wall (or was that my wife slapping me across the head and telling me to turn it down.Trying it with my PC and FU3, now there's a thought !!!Andy

[PeterR 9]

>What resolution did you run at? Could you see a lot of>pixellation effects due to larger image size?>>Sounds like great fun though! Higher resolutions are better, of course, to combat pixelization. However, it's also important to not be too close to the screen. I was about 10 ft or more from the big screen I tried.Peter http://bfu.avsim.net/sigpics/PeterR.gifBFU Forums ModeratorRenegade/Seawolf Design Group (RSDG)