Monitor Setup X-plane 10

[mh-60s]

9368

Hello all,

are there people out there who know if it this monitor setup (X plane 10) is possible: 3x 1920x1080 monitor, 1 landscape and 2 portrait. It is also important to have the horizon line at approx. 1/3 distance from the top of the landscape monitor.

I still need to buy a new video card so a lot of options on that side.

Thanks

MH-60S

[xplanematt]

Heli sim? :) X-Plane doesn't do the screen rotation, but your video drivers probably do. Aside from that, you *can* push to three screens with one PC, if you are using some of the newer Nvidia cards, or ATI's Eyefinity, but you will have better results if you use three dedicated PCs. One thing to consider is that a spanned view over three displays on one PC will give you one big front view in X-Plane. With three dedicated PCs, each view will be focused on a different viewing perspective. So if you pitch up, for instance, the view on the front screen will simply drop, while the views on the corner screens will drop some, but also rotate (because their perspective is slightly to one side, not straight ahead). This may or may not be what you want, depending on your screen geometry. Are the screens going to all be facing exactly the same way, or are you going to angle the corner screens in? (More realistic.)

[nebulawars]

I been playing around with 3 projectors, displaying pictures onto tree walls kinda like a cave. Anyhow.. there comes my insights regarding x-plane and multiple screens.

1. X-Plane can not by itself display on multiple screens, you need the OS to turn them into a huge desktop first.
2. X-Plane only displays one directional view, what I mean by this is, if you FOV only looks good between ~45-75.
Going higher FOV then that will distort your view on each side, it was described like this in a forum text on the net somewhere.
"It rendered in one plane, its like you put your nose up to a flat screen and look to the side they are very distorted"
3. It is possible to have multiple screens with multiple display directions, if running X-Plane on multiple PCs or on the same PC with some tweaking, picture quality goes down the drain tho, cause of sharing the same graphic-card (I guess the bus gets sustained).
4. It is possible to tweak the pitch and roll of the display, you can 'tip' the screen a bit forward to get your "1/3 distance from the top of the landscape monitor". It will not exsaxctly be the same, but I guess it will work for your display setup. This does not work using multiple screens displayed using multiple computers if you intend the pictures to align to create a bigger picture, cause they would draw graphics overlapped cause of the tilt. If someone knows how to of-set the horizon for multiple computers displayed on a cave wall, then please tell me :)

I guess at your setup you don't need as big FOV and that creating a huge desktop of it all is not a big problem.
Offset of horizon could be done by tilting the screen in the settings of x-plane.

Good luck with your build!

[xplanematt]

X-Plane allows adjustment of the screen's vertical center, is that what you need? It's in the rendering options. Btw I have found that XP10's rendering holds up quite well until you hit around the 128* mark horizontally (as I recall). Beyond that, it starts to distort very badly. I believe we are seeing a natural limitation of the planar correction that OpenGL (or Direct3D, for that matter) does when taking such a huge viewing field and attempting to map it over a flat plane.

It's good to consider that the flat image we have been looking at for years on our flight sims, the simple straight-line horizon, is incorrect. It's just a compromise to make things look presentable on our little monitors. As soon as you get into big visual systems and curved displays, the rules change.

There is a huge array of rendering options available if you have a commercial USB key, but that's not really financially practical unless you are doing a "big sim" setup and need the cylindrical or spherical projection ($700 for one commercial key). I will say, however, getting the sim software to generate a spherical (NOT planar-corrected) image is the *ONLY* way to really do non-flat visual systems right (you can sorta do cylindrical in MSFS with tons of tiny views that are all offset by a few degrees horizontally, but you are getting a chopped up approximation instead of one smooth view).

Unfortunately, really good visuals are one thing in flight simulation that cannot be done easily or cheaply.

Matt

[GodAtum]

Does paying $700 make it a lot easier to generate a spherical projection using 1 PC with Xplane?

[nebulawars]

Haven't downloaded it yet, but 10.30 states the following in the release notes:

http://www.x-plane.com/types/release-notes/
"Dome projection EXPERIMENT allowed without key. You can test dome and cylinder projection for your setup before buying a Pro Key."

So I guess you can test it out and see if its worth $700.. I for one will download it this evening :-)

[GodAtum]

More info:


(New to beta 4): The cylindrical projection controls have been reworked; X-Plane now provides an arbitrary grid to correct for warping from a cylindrical projection surface. By calibrating the warping grid, you can compensate not only for projecting onto a cylinder screen, but also for the projector being titled or off-center from the cylinder. A panorama projection applies on top of this to make a perfect multi-screen projection setup.
The projector grid can now be added by keyboard commands. Use Ctrl+Arrow (or Cmd+Arrow) to select a node. Then use arrow or Shift+Arrow to move that node (new in beta 8).

[xplanematt]

WOO, that is awesome news!!!! It sounds like the "panorama" view actually allows coverage of more than 180*. I don't see how that would be possible, but my OpenGL knowledge is still fairly limited. Perhaps Austin is stitching together multiple OpenGL views into one. I would also surmise this view may actually "undo" the standard planar projection that our flight sims usually get (or perhaps this still occurs entirely with the dome or cylindrical projection controls).

So basically, X-Plane is now doing everything (and more) that folks have been stuck trying to do with Nthusim and the like. :)

GodAtum, I have not seen a commercial XP copy in action yet, but as far as I can tell from looking at what controls are available, YES it would be worth the $700 to get the projected view, and in fact the ONLY way to get a REAL, correct image for spherical or cylindrical projection. For spherical, for instance, we need a "fisheye" view. You don't get this with post-rendering correction. All the guys with Nthusim and similar products are getting a flat, planar image that is being smushed into shape to maintain its view on a curved projection surface. It can look good, but it's never going to look "right". It's not actually a correct view, in fact the only point at which this planar view is truly correct is at an infinitely small narrow section directly in front of the pilot (but for practical purposes, we can look at a fairly large horizontal viewing area before the limitations of a flat/planar image become obvious).

A picture is worth a thousand words...a fellow board member here wrote a spreadsheet that generates view config files for MSFS:

http://www.mycockpit.org/forums/showthread.php?t=23199

Look carefully at the image in his first post. THIS is pretty much what a correct "panoramic" view looks like for a CYLINDRICAL display (a spherical display is something different entirely, because we are correcting not just the horizontal view, but vertical as well). Note that MSFS is not doing any magic here, this is just a ton of individual (planar) views stitched together. But it gives you the correct idea. Judging by what is available in X-Plane's render options, a commercial key SHOULD allow you this type of view (or a "fisheye" view for spherical sections) natively. Then you might have to do some warping to correct for your particular setup...which, happily, is apparently now possible without add-on software! This is all very good news for my Sabreliner build.

I will definitely be trying the latest beta very soon.

Matt

[GodAtum]

I was trying out the latest beta but could not find the option for spherical or cylindrical projection :(

[nebulawars]

No, I couldn't find it either in the latest beta, maybe the real release has it or its hidden somehow (or never managed to get into the release).

I can however tell you what I read about the spherical view, since I stumbled over some early plugin implementation screen shot and description floating around on a webpage somewhere (sadly no url).

Apparently, someone wrote a plugin for X-Plane that create something that could become spherical view, from what I understand that plugin was used 'as is' or rewritten (cause of comments on code quality being so poor it was hard to understand what it was doing). Anyhow. A number of planar views are rendered, together with a distortion map as a shader inside X-Plane, and then stitched together to a full view. You can think of it as using multiple instances of X-Plane each displaying small FOV with a spherical distortion map applied, except its only one instance running of course. much like Nthusim but working with smaller patches, as Nthursim would work on a full FOV view (as I understand it, I might be wrong).

So in short: Render multiple smaller FOV views, apply distortion map, and then stitch those together to a wide view.

Edit: Can not find the url, I have really tried, anyhow I found an other page that basically describes how it works: http://www.elise-ng.net/simulator/index.php/design/design-vision/all-pages.html

[xplanematt]

Wow, I did not know that's how the Elise guys are doing their OpenGL code. Hats off to them for coming up with a solution, but that's still a "compromise" view that is not going to give 100% correct geometry. I don't see how it works with spherical projection, unless they are doing MANY renders indeed (actually, it looks like they are only doing cylindrical projection).

Since X-Plane allows a lot of control inside its OpenGL loop via the SDK, it may still be possible to apply correct geometry "natively" without grabbing lots of views (and hence, doing extra render work), in much the same way I assume X-Plane Commercial does its built-in cylindrical/spherical projection. I have a feeling it would not be easy, though.

Still, great work and clever solution by the Elise guys. This software would be quite sufficient for most of the visual systems out there.

Matt

[nebulawars]

The cube/sphere projection demo is hidden underneath the special menu. It do work and for real I would need it with my setup of projectors. but I just do not have the cash for that. warning tho before getting to excited, there is a HUGE popup totally in the way while trying it out. I wish they would lets us play around with it for 10 minutes or at some godforsakenforgottenairportsomewhere without the popup. demo mode is almost useless as it is right now, however I can tell that it is useful for us with projectors.