I’m curious how you all fly with just one monitor? I fly with VR but sometimes I really do not want to have that thing on my face. It’s hard to go back to a flat screen. I’m not able to have a huge monitor and have settled with a 32in 1920x1080 for now. Still it seems rather hard to line up turns for approach and the like.
So, I come to the community to see how you handle only having the one monitor. Do you constantly shift views with a hat switch? just trying to figure out how to make my flights more enjoyable and looking for recommendations. (Not interested in Track IR).
Thank in advance for any tips and tricks you can provide.
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I use TrackIR to track my head movement. While it doesn’t offer the 1:1 motion of VR, it only takes a short time to get accustomed to it and it works quite well.
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As a long-term and devoted VR pilot, I’m not sure why I’d ever consider going back to using a monitor, at least for the flying bit.
I have been known to set up my MCDU in 2d mode however, but the size of the screen real-estate doesn’t make too much difference for that.
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VR is my preference these days. I tried a monitor and TrackIR when I was without a VR headset for a while but struggled to enjoy it even though I have used it for a decade before switching to VR. I never liked using a hat switch and having a straight-ahead view only really does not cut it.
If for some reason I could not use VR anymore I guess I would go back to TrackIR.
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I enjoy using the program at different times on my laptop monitor or VR. On the laptop screen, I just move the camera around instead of moving my head wearing the Reverb. Both work fine.
My one monitor is effectively two 1080P monitors joined together and is 49 inches wide.
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As someone who tried VR but wasn’t happy with the rough edges at present, I currently prefer flying on a flat monitor. 
I use the hat switch on my Honeycomb yoke to pan the view around, and other yoke switches to flip between cockpit/external and drone modes.
I’d prefer if the hat switch were actually a mini joystick like on the Xbox-style game controllers, because that can give you smoother motion (a hat switch locks you into 90-degree and 45-degree angle motion only) but it’s pretty easy to use while flying.
I find it pretty comfortable – it’s not quite as cool as looking around naturally in VR with your head, but it’s not too bad.
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I fly with a 1440p 28" monitor which allows for great clarity and detail without becoming blurred or pixelated. Then I use the hat stick on my joystick to look around at pre-assigned camera views for all angles, then I use other button next to the hat stick to bring the camera back to a center view that is also custom (so you can see the main instrument panel as well as outside, you have to finagle the angle and zoom a little but you can get it perfect).
In this way, with just my thumb, I can have every view and angle covered and move between them very quickly. I’m an IRL pilot and this works great for me in the sim and feels about as natural as you can get without VR or tracker.
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49" Ultra Wide Screen FTW
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I use Track IR as I do not like wearing the VR headset and as noted above the quality of the images needs to improve.
I used only the hat switch for years but using Track IR since MSFS was released has been a huge improvement.
The only thing I have to remember to do when using it is to raise the program priority from ‘normal’ to ‘high’ via the task manager - otherwise there is some render lag. Once the priority is raised though it is as smooth as glass with zero impact on FPS
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I’d toggle the Smart Camera to get the approach on an airport, then toggle it off when it’s in front. That’s or just use the controls to move the camera. It’s called hand-eye coordination.
I use three monitors and TrackIR. It’s much, much more enjoyable and feasible than one monitor and a HAT switch.
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one camera view and then I move around in the cockpit.
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well I usually don’t move around that much, obviously. This was for deomonstration.
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I fly with Smoothtrack and Opentrack. With a bit of tweaking it does the job just fine. I haven’t ever tried the actual brand name TrackIR yet, but I am enjoying this so much I might. It only takes a few minutes to actually feel like I’m in the actual airplane.
I have a Samsung Odyssey G7 monitor, which is reasonably large but not huge, and is curved. When I started MSFS back in the alpha, I used the hat switch to view around. HOWEVER, suddenly MSFS got TrackIR support, so I’ve been using that ever since.
I see you’re not interested in TrackIR but IMHO you’re doing yourself quite a disservice. I much prefer it to VR for a bunch of different reasons. Same effect but without the weight on the head, the blindness to the real world around you, and having tiny monitors blasting directly into your eyes from a couple inches away. Also, it uses the same camera system as the regular keyboard/hat views and thus is trouble-free, unlike VR which had to have its own system grafted onto MSFS after release.
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Coming way back from FS3/FS4 days… i find that one monitor works alot better than none at all.
track-ir 5 here, with the occasional toe dipping in vr with the quest 2… still dont like wearing a helmet to watch surround tv.
Woof ~ Woof
Steiny
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Thanks for the many replies! I have a lot of options to weigh now lol. I’ll stick with VR and just switching views when I’m flat screening it. I can’t justify the price tag of Track IR right now and I would rather save up for the Honeycomb yoke.
I do have one more question though. In VR I use the GPS to follow my route but after around the second update the lines never converge on the waypoint. The magenta line does a lazy bend instead now. Do any of you have that issue? and if so how do you work around that when in VR?
