Before I started flying MSFS helis, I had my multiple screens set up in the standard fashion: three at head height showing forward and side views, and another in the centre, lower down, displaying an Air Manager panel appropriate to the aircraft being flown. All fine for planes which IRL have fairly restricted views of the outside. But helicopters are a different matter. You need to see downwards as well. I recently purchased the Got Friends Mini 500. Great fun! But how to see downwards without cycling through different cameras or other rather artificial ways of changing my view?
The answer I have come up with, which I have not yet seen in any of the FS cockpit images I have looked at, is, first, to expand the image of the forward view so that it covers both the top and bottom central screens. With a suitable fixed zoom, that provides a good view out of the windshield, and at the same time a legible view of the MSFS instruments, as opposed to using Air Manager to cope with my spectacle-assisted vision. (Don’t have a touch screen, so the only loss here is being unable to use my Knobster.) Secondly, and this is where the arrangement differs from normal, I have physically rotated the two monitors either side of the centre ones so their long sides are vertical, and adjusted their display in Windows to portrait mode. This allows the lateral view to be expanded vertically, providing a downward view through the Mini 500’s transparent door.
Still have to put up with the mismatch caused by the limited window adjustment that MSFS provides for multi screens, but I’m pretty happy with the set up, at least for flying the Mini 500. Haven’t a clue how it will look with my fixed wing aircraft - a great view of the interior panels, I guess. But for the moment I’m focusing on helis, so not a problem.
For anyone who would counsel me that I could achieve all I need by flying in VR, I recognise that is another way, but I have two difficulties with I: my early Oculus Rift leaves a lot to be desired, with resolution and screen door problems making it difficult to read instruments, and the lack of correlation between eye and body perceptions has me pretty rapidly feeling nauseous! Oh, and I like to look at LittleNavMap during the flight, which I run on a separate computer…
Here’s a pic of the arrangement. They are 27 inch screens. I need to lift the lower central one to reduce the width of the bar between it and the one above.
As you say VR is kind of the obvious answer and quite frankly is really well suited to helicopters as the depth perception you gain is invaluable. The downside of VR is needing a decent quality headset and a PC with sufficient performance to run it well.
If VR does not work for you though I would look seriously at head tracking options like TrackIR so you can look around and down in a fairly intuitive way. Your head movement won’t be a one-to-one so it can take a little time to get it set to your personal preferences, but it is still way better than fixed camera positions or using a hat switch to move your view.
Love your approach, my advice try setting it up in the hangar lot of reference points over there there and overdo there the, lateral offset and then match up with horizontal and vertical. Until you find satisfaction in your setup,
I understand your enthusiasm for VR. But for the reasons I cited it is not the way for me.
Not tried the head track approach, but isn’t it effectively a sophisticated way of using a screen to show a series of views? Admittedly, it is an infinite number of them and smoothly changing, I know this is what happens as we look about ourselves in real life, but in addition we have peripheral vision and a very wide FOV, and that would seem to be missing so long as one is using a single screen to ‘look through’. With my four screen set up, I do get some sense of that peripheral vision. And I have not had to buy any more kit!
But, as I say, I have never tried head tracking, so what do I know?! Thanks for taking the trouble to offer comment.
I was think more of you combining your multi screen setup with a head tracking device e.g. to enhance what you are currently using but over come the limitations.
Since you seem to be someone who doesn‘t fear a bit of effort you might even have a look at 180-270 degrees dome with projectors. It would require some space and it‘s not possible for everyone, I can‘t do it , but it‘s a great possibility for spacial immersion. Of course it works best with a real cockpit but with the cockpit being projected on the dome it would probably come out nicely as well.
For real spacial perception it‘s VR of course but as you said, it might not be for you. And it‘s quite unsure if VR even has a real future at the moment, with MS drawing back etc.
Head-tracking used to work well with 3 screens in FSX. I had it set up so the view would not begin shifting until I was looking at the outer edge of either side monitor. I moved to VR just as MSFS was leaving alpha, so I don’t know if it works the same way in MSFS.
, but it‘s a great possibility for spacial immersion. Of course it works best with a real cockpit but with the cockpit being projected on the dome it would probably come out nicely as well.