MarkDH

You need to measure the height of the screen (just the visible area) and how far away you sit from it. You then plug these numbers into this formula and it tells you the zoom factor. 'atan' is a trig function you will find on your calculator (if you're using the Windows 7 Calc program you need to be set to 'scientific' mode, then press 'inv' then 'tan-1' to get this function). If you are still struggling, just post the two measurements here.

If you want it life-sized, z = 34 / (2 x atan(h / 2d)) where h is the physical height of the display and d is the distance from the display to your eye. This assumes you have WideViewAspect ON. If it's OFF, multiply the result by 2560/1080. (Make sure your calculator is set for degrees).

Well a couple of minutes with Google shows you're just wrong about that. In fact if you followed the original Kickstarter campaign you'd know that Rift's main innovation is ultra-low-latency head tracking.

So you're talking about the stereoscopic display and you have convinced yourself that this makes a big difference to your flight sim. You probably missed the part where I pointed out that stereopsis is irrelevant for the outside view - there's a nice quote from this article that says we are "effectively one-eyed for distances greater than about twenty feet". That article also goes some way towards explaining why we are better at perceiving depth than we predict from the limits of stereopsis (and why one-eyed people can play tennis). We already know that a stereoscopic display is largely an irrelevance for flight sims - nvidia cards have had stereoscopic 3D since about 2008 but hardly anybody uses it for flights sims. Which is why a monoscopic Rift would be much better for flight sims at the current state of the art. But the Rift isn't designed just for flight sims, so we probably won't get it. And people seem to enjoy the game-like experience of sitting in a 3D virtual cockpit. I'm not knocking this, I'm just saying the 3D VC experience isn't the totality of a flight sim and in my estimation isn't worth the great compromises it requires.

What 'conversion'? When you talk of 'a real 3D display' you're either talking about stereoscopic vision or about the fact that the Rift's head tracking creates an impression of being inside the sim. For the latter, we already have that with TrackIR (slogan: 'put your head in the game'). For the former, it is generally accepted that stereoscopic vision only contributes to depth perception up to about 20ft away and hence your stereoscopic display, cool though it is, is only really relevant inside the VC. Everything outside the windows is just like it is on a flat screen (or in real life). Personally I would like to see a monoscopic variant of the Rift, which at least would have a sensible horizontal resolution. Of course that still doesn't mitigate the elephant in the Rift's room, which is that it shuts out those parts of the world that aren't (and don't need to be) simulated.

Forget the '2x', the Rift's resolution is 1080x1200 - i.e. a 1.3Mp display, which is lamentable in comparison to modern desktop displays (barely better than 720p). My vote to the OP is you'll be much better with a 4K display at maybe 55" and a TrackIR, assuming your PC can keep up with 4K. It's a more natural aspect ratio than the super-wide and with the TrackIR you'll get as much presence as you really need. Okay, you won't get a stereoscopic virtual cockpit, which is what I suspect is the thing that makes people rave about the Rift and its ilk. But you will be able to do all the other things that the Rift denies you - write on a pad, drink your coffee, flip your switches, etc, etc.

I am talking about the actual field of view - i.e. the number of degrees of your forward view that will be filled by the screen. Obviously you have to adjust the zoom factor to maintain the same sized picture. If you are using a realistic zoom factor* you won't get much distortion on either of these screens at this viewing distance. (* 0.8 for the big screen, 1.2 for the little one if you have WVA=True. 0.5 for the big one and 0.7 for the little one if you don't.)

It depends what you mean by better. The 30" monitor will be sharper (100 dpi vs 90 dpi), but 90 dpi is okay and the 49" will give you a much wider field of view. But the real problem is it's also twice as many pixels, so your performance will suffer. You don't say what your specs are but 4Mp is marginal for my PC, 8Mp would be impossible. I think there's also a bit of tap-dancing you need to consider to make sure your PC can even drive a 4K monitor.

Er, yes it did. Between 30:39 and 35:00 there is a detailed discussion of the difference between the aileron spring mechanisms, with annotated photographs and diagrams.

Then I guess you didn't watch the video I linked above. This includes a detailed description of the differing aileron mechanisms, with pictures.

Yes, I'm there are quality control issues. But also the design change only improves the pitch stickiness, it doesn't eliminate it.

I'm not sure what your question is, as you say you have software already. If not, look at Air Manager from Sim Innovations. That will do what you need. You can look at my latest couple of Twin Otter videos to see it in action.

The FOV on the 34" is 1/3 narrower than on the 55". It's hard to see how this is 'so much better'.

I don't understand what you mean by this - the largest 21:9 displays commonly available are 34", which is only 80cm wide. A 55" 4K display is about 50% wider (and hence so is the horizontal FOV).

Yes, of course that's how it's supposed to behave. I misunderstood your previous description as saying yours didn't do this. I still don't know what you mean by having to use F9 and F12 together.

It doesn't work that way for me! Pause and un-pause work just as you'd expect them to. Maybe this is a problem with the P3D version of EZCA.

I can't understand why you'd go 4K for a 27" monitor. At 40"+ it's probably worth the performance compromises you will undoubtedly have to make, but at 27" I doubt you could tell the difference from a 2560x1440 monitor.

I would say if you have to hold your head still you have not set it up correctly. It's a head tracker, of course, so moving your head is going to move the view. But the vendor's name is 'Natural Point' and if it's intruding so much then something is not right. I think the problem is most people (me included) start by trying to use TrackIR out of the box, with generic profiles that can't possibly work well for everyone. A good profile will have a flat spot around the centre position so you don't have to hold your head still. This is like setting a null zone on your joystick but much more sophisticated because you have complete control over transition into and out of that null zone, independently for each of your six degrees of freedom (actually twelve, since as some have observed here it can be asymmetric for, say, left/right or up/down, etc.) It pays to spend time on this so it works naturally for you and for your particular setup. I am really surprised there have been no third-party tools for setting up a TrackIR profile. (Or perhaps there have and I heven't noticed them!)

Well this is clearly not right. I would guess your EZCA default view is set incorrectly. This can happen if you use the hat switch in EZCA. I suggest you do this: Start TrackIR and FSX but leave your hat off (sensor out of range) - this should show you what your default EZCA view is. It will also be what you get when you have your hat on, look straight forward and press 'centre' (F12 for you). If what you see is looking off randomly off-centre, you need to edit the EZCA view. I can't recall what the default keystroke is (for me it's CTRL+NUM2) but you get the 'ding, ding, ding' noise to shows you're editing. Move the view back to centred with the mouse, then exit the editor (CTRL+NUM2 again in my case). It should now work as you expect. Assuming this is what you find, try using the hat switch. For me this pans the view but also affects the default view - in other words the default view remembers what you've done with the hat switch, which seems fairly useless to me. Honestly I have not figured out how the hat switch works in EZCA so I avoid it. It helps that none of my proper flight yokes have hat switches (BTW, all this presumes you have actually installed EZCA correctly for use with TrackIR.) I should also say I am using FSX and EZCA 1.17, not P3D. But this sound like basic functionality, not something subtle.

You do not need 60fps. I am capped at 40 and usually get 25-40 and TrackIR works just fine. On my old setup (Core2 Duo at 4GHz with the same triple screen display) I got 25 fps if I was lucky and TrackIR still worked fine. If it's jerky and skips you need to sort things out so it gets enough processor time. You can do this with the EZCA process priority selector, and/or use AffinityMask. I would think a consistent 60fps is in any case very optimistic for many (most?) of us.

Gregg, I don't understand the problems you are having - except maybe the last one. Regarding that one, creating a usable profile that also allows you to look up at an overhead may be too much of a compromise, although you could edit the pitch axis curve to be super-sensitive at the outer extremes. However, you ought to be able to create separate views with EZCA and switch between them. That works fine for me - I am an EZCA camera view novice but I have a view to switch me over to the right hand seat in the Twin Otter so I can look out the right of the aircraft. The TrackIR works properly with whichever view is displayed. BUT it reverts to the default position of the view when you switch to it - so, for example, if I move my eyepoint up or down (I have a knob to do this on my panel), if I switch to the right seat and back, the seat position has reset to default. For your other problems, you need to say more. Mine works just as you say you want yours to - I look forward, press the 'centre' button and it centres on where I am looking. I never have to recentre it, even if I get up, go for a cup of tea and come back, just as long as I don't take my hat off. And when I look at, say, the GPS and press the TrackIR 'pause' (or EZCA pause), it stays looking at the GPS. When I unpause, it tracks back correctly with reference to the centre view I set before. Here's a question. Are you sure you have the tracking target set to 'TrackClip' and not 'TrackClip Pro' (upper left of the main TrackIR screen? That would cause your axes to be 90 degrees off and would be very confusing! The only other thing I can think is maybe your camera keeps losing the target. As others have said, you can check this with the 'camera' view to make sure you have three (and only three) solid green blobs all the time. It sounds like regardless of your headache problem your TrackIR is behaving oddly. Can you post a video and show the problematic behaviour? Here's a question. Are you sure you have the tracking target set to 'TrackClip' and not 'TrackClip Pro' (upper left of the main TrackIR screen? That would cause your axes to be 90 degrees off and would be very confusing! The only other thing I can think is maybe your camera keeps losing the target. As others have said, you can check this with the 'camera' view to make sure you have three (and only three) solid green blobs all the time.

On the assumption that this is the same problem as with FSX you can also just set WideViewAspect=False and control your field of view using the little utility fsxfov3.exe*. Evidently scaling of the lighting effects is affected by that flag (or perhaps by the screen width or the aspect ratio, I never investigated further). You could verify this by setting WVA=False and looking at your lights. [*You can find fsxfov3.exe here. In case you are worried by an unattributed google drive, you can get to this from here by selecting games/ and then Microsoft Flight Simulator X over at the right hand side of the page.]

Yes, as long as your lighting conditions are suitable it works flawlessly (well for me, anyway). And it's worth point out a common misconception that TrackIR needs re-centring because it 'drifts'. It doesn't drift and only needs re-centring if you shift in your seat. One caveat is you need to turn off 'recentre if out of range' (or whatever it's called), which is a dumb idea but I think is a default. Or maybe that's an EZCA default - either way, turn it off

Try zooming out a bit - is it more comfortable? If so, you probably need to tone down the sensitivity for your regular zoom factor. You have a big screen and using default profiles will mean the movements are bigger on you screen than on an average-sized one. Go to the place where you edit the movement curves for each axis and just click the button that shifts the curve downwards a couple of times. You will need to experiment to get it right. I suggest you also make sure you have a flat spot (or near flat) in the centre of each axis so the image will stay still when you're looking more or less straight ahead.

Yes, it is a better yoke. It is more solidly-built (has a metal frame inside the handle) and has a redesigned aileron mechanism that mitigates the basic yoke's pitch stickiness. It also lacks the firmware dead zone evident in the basic yoke. The gearing is a reduction gear for the roll axis, which allows the handle to move further for the same aileron displacement. In theory this means you have more precise control over the ailerons. In practice you really need FSUIPC (or, I think, the Saitek SSD software) to benefit from this because it doesn't work well with FSX's input scaling. Here is a detailed comparison of the two yokes if you want the detail. The SPAD driver is for Saitek panels BTW, not the yoke.