I found a 6mm MDF board which I cut a big square hole in, to fit a 27″ widescreen display with Air Manager instruments.
For now, I’m just playing around with the MDF. I’ll be making holes here and there, while I learn how to connect everything (Arduino, I’m looking at you…). So this MDF will not be the final one. It’s more of a “MVP” (Minimum Viable Product) or “POC” (Proof of Concept). I just throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks – then I’ll build a nicer one, after that.
Anyway, let’s talk perspective.
Observe the photo at the top of this article (the feature photo). In that photo, the A-pillars are placed equally spaced on their respective side TV. The whiskey compass is placed in the middle of the TV. It’s perfect.
Except. It’s not. Thanks to perspective…
If this is the virtual cockpit view that I wanted, I’d need to sit in the middle of the front display. And not to the left, as where pilots usually sit, and where I plan to sit as well, to make room for a potential co-pilot in the future 🙂
Instead, this is the virtual cockpit view that is needed:
Notice how the virtual plane is shifted to the right. The left A-pilor is now on the front display.
Visually, this kinda sucks. But for flying, it’s almost necessary.
If using the view from the 1st photo, where everything is nicely aligned, you will constantly feel like you’re flying/taxiing with a crosswind. Like you’re “crabbing”. This is because everything in the game “comes towards the center” where it expects you to sit. Except you’re not. And I’m not. I’m sitting to the left of center. Imagine you’re in a car seat, driving a car, but your seat is angle slightly to one side, but the car is still moving ahead on a normal path. It’s kinda like that.
So the only way to fix that, is to move the view somewhat accordingly to the side.
In X-Plane, I believe, you can just disable the virtual cockpit/plane and you wouldn’t have to look at one A-pillar almost in front of you, and the other on the right display. MSFS doesn’t really support that yet. They have a “Home Cockpit”-setting which has been there for about 2 years, but it doesn’t remove the cockpit at all, which it says it should. It’s a known bug, but not fixed. Sadly.
An alternative solution is to move the camera out to the front of the plane. You will lose any windshield effects (like rain and ice) then, since “you” (the camera at least) will be sitting outside in front of the windshield.
For now, I’ll compromise with the solution shown on the photo 2 above. Until Microsoft/Asobo improves their multi monitor support.
One more thing… Field of View!
Another slightly annoying thing with Asobo’s multi monitor support, is that you can’t adjust field of view “per display”. It’s a global setting, called “zoom”. So you kinda need to use the same size display all around, otherwise you will have to seriously compromise on the alignment between the displays. Hopefully this will also be fixed in future updates (and may already be, if you’re reading this months into the future… today is February 2023).
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