How to setup a 180° field of view on 3 displays or beamers with Prepar3D

[SimWare 730]

How to setup a 180° field of view on 3 displays or beamers with Prepar3D

 

Ever wanted to upgrade you immersion feeling of one (BIG) notch ?

 

Yes ? Then go for a wide angle display system.
Get 3 big displays or even better 3 beamers (second hand, these cost around 400 eur each)
and build yourself a visual system that will allow you to look left and right like n a real aircraft.

No need for expensive curved display and wrapping software.
If you have a small room with 3 with walls available you can easly build a super immersive 180° (or more) setup.

Hereunder, a super simple setup.

NOTE : When sitting in the cockpit, the image appears continuous.
             The distortion is due to the parallax from the photographer standpoint.

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So, once your 3 displays or beamers are hooked to the computer and configured in Windows,
you need to setup the views in the simulator.

We will use P3D and its Camera management system.

Basically, we need to compute only two values :

- The field of view of each display or beamer

- The horizontal rotation of each beamer with regard of the total field of view.

 

Example :
We use 3 displays for a 180° field of view.

- Field of view of each display : 180° / 3 = 60°

- Horizontal rotation of left display : it covers the left 60 degrees, so it is -60°
- Horizontal rotation of middle display : it covers the 60 degrees in the middle, so it is 0°
- Horizontal rotation of right display : it covers the right 60 degrees, so it is -60°

 

Here are the steps to set this up in Prepar3D :

 

STEP 1 :
Launch a flight. Set the aircraft ready to take off.

Go to Views->Manage Cameras

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STEP 2 :
This is the camera management dialog box.

Only a few fields are interesting for us.

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STEP 3 :
Setup our first camera : The one that looks to the 60° on the left.
1 – Name the camera in such a way that you know what it is
      “180FOV-3DIS-LEFT” is pretty straightforward.
2 – Set the horizontal rotation to -60°
3 – Check “Override default FOV” (for obvious reasons…)
4 – Set the field of view of this camera to 60° (180° / 3 cameras)
5 – Select “Global”

6 – Click Save

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STEP 4 :

Repeat the operation for the two other displays with the horizontal rotation and the fields of view we computed above.
In other words, create two new cameras named “180FOV-3DIS-MID” and 180FOV-3DIS-RIGHT

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STEP 5 :

Close the Camera Management box .
Now, we are going to display the cameras we just created.
These are also referenced as “Views” in the simulator.
Goto menu Views-> New View-> Cockpit.
The 3 views appear at the bottom of the list.
Click on the “180FOV-3DIS-LEFT”

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STEP 6 :

The left view (or camera) appears on the screen.

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STEP 7 :

Repeat the operation with the two other views
(“180FOV-3DIS-MID” and “180FOV-3DIS-RIGHT”
All 3 views appear on the screen :

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STEP 8 :
Reorganize (stretch – move) them so that they fit the screen and come next to each other.
NOTE : Once the views will be displayed on separate displays or  beamers
             positioned at a 90 (or 60°) angle of each other and sitting in the middle,
             the apparent distortion will disappear. The horizon line will be straight.

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STEP 9 :
Save the scenario.
Next time you want this flight with this display setup, you just need to load it.

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STEP 10 :

Of course each view will be dragged onto a separate display or beamer.
I only use one display in this example as I don’t have three similar ones.

 

I wrote a very quick spreadsheet allowing to compute the Horizontal rotation
and the field of view for each camera.
Hereunder is a screenshot of the values for this 180° FOV – 3 Displays example :

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If you want to use 5 displays for 220° FOV, it looks like this :

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The spreadsheet is attached.
There is a VB macro behind the calculation.
Be sure to authorize the macros execution.

DISCLAMER :
This sheet is given as is, for informational purposes ONLY.
This is in no way an Aerosoft product, payware or freeware.
Its purpose is only to illustrate the tutorial above.
No support nor warranty related to this sheet will be given.

Let’s fly wide !

 

P3DMultipleViews.xls