Monitor position

[tiburon]

Let's see if I can explain the question I have.
I'm building half a 737 cockpit, only the captains side. The visuals are realized by 3 20" monitors connected to a TH2go box.
In the real world the middle of the cockpit windows would be over the eicas panel.
So that's the question : should my middle monitor be over the eicas panel or should it be in front of my face (over the PFD/ND panel) ?

Martin

[roppeca]

I have my cockpit with captains side only , I have 3 lcd monitors for display FOV ( TH2Go too ) and my central monitor is in front of my face ( over and between PFD/ND and EICAS panel...happy landings !

[tiburon]

So you don't have the feeling your view is offset ? How about the runway center lines ? Where are they in relation to your panels ?
Right now they are on the imaginary line between MCP and EFIS

[roppeca]

Not for now 'cause I have only 3/4 of the entire cockpit...when I have 2 places in a full panel I'll center my FOV.

[P1IC]

Be careful of angle of view. In big tin, the captain's eye is no more than 2 feet left of the flight deck centre. And the pilot is looking forward about at least 200 feet while taxying, probably a good deal more, and certainly a good deal more on short final. If he's looking along the centreline, a simple trigonometry calculation will place his angle of view at around 0.5 degrees right of straight ahead, at the very most. You should set up the monitor on which the runway centreline is displayed to place your eyes at the same angle when looking ahead and right at a fairly distant point on the centreline. This will almost certainly not place the monitor in the centre of your setup.

To help with that placement, I suggest you measure the distance from your eye to the monitor when placed with the centre of the screen straight ahead, and then move the monitor right by one hundredth of that distance. That will be about half an inch! Which just is not worth sweating over.

[tiburon]

So if the effective difference is just half an inch from the center why bother to offset the monitors at all ? Don't you see the monitors as the actual physical windows of the plane ? In which case you'd have to offset them 2 feet ?

[P1IC]

So if the effective difference is just half an inch from the center why bother to offset the monitors at all ? Don't you see the monitors as the actual physical windows of the plane ? In which case you'd have to offset them 2 feet ?

Absolutely not! If you move a window, the scene behind it stays just where it is. If you move a monitor, the scene moves with it.

[tiburon]

Yes, of course.

[roppeca]

You are right P1IC...I´m eager to chech all of you say in a real 737 cockpit...I have not complete my virtual cockpit MIP...after that , I'll fix my virtual FOV...thanks for sharing tiburon and P1IC that interesting fact !

[wledzian]

If you're just building for a single pilot, put the center monitor directly in front of your eyepoint. If the camera is in the same place, it will look correct to you.

[roppeca]

Oh yes wledzian , actually is... my center monitor is in front of my eyepoint , the camera is in the center too , no problems , but when I'll upgrade my MIP , that centerline will not be in my eyepoint , and I'll have the feeling of an offset view as Martin comment...I´ll need to check that 'cause as P1IC say..." be carefully with your angle of view " jeje...and that's a fact !...

[P1IC]

With a two-pilot sim, it's really impossible to give both pilots a correct-looking view. To do that, each pilot when looking at the same point on the centreline, would need to have his angle of view about half a degree away from dead ahead. So the thing they are both looking at would need to be at least 200 feet away. Not possible. You could provide two monitors off the same feed using a y-splitter, one directly in front of the Captain and one directly in front of the FO, but that's probably the only way you'll get that outside view looking correct for both.

Of course, that would put an end to thoughts of a wide angle wraparound, and immersion would suffer. The real Level D sims must solve that somehow, although maybe not, since the FO is probably the training captain, and he won't care.

[wledzian]

The level-D sims solve that with a cross-cockpit collimated display. There's a section of this forum dedicated to collimated displays.
http://www.mycockpit.org/forums/forumdisplay.php/322-Collimated-Display-Discussions

[P1IC]

Thanks, wiedzian, I didn't know that! I hadn't looked in that section. Very cool.