Sorin

Yes, Oculus Rift is the future. The moment they provide a 1920x1080 display I will buy one, even if it will cost $1000 instead of the planed $300 for the current OR (1280x800). A Head Mounted Display like OR with proper head tracking and resolution is the best solution because it provides total immersion. Just looking around naturally and seeing the virtual world proportional with the head movement beats TrackIR and any current display solution in the same price range.

metalnwood, based on what you are saying the current high resolution monitors and the upcoming 4K TVs should not exist... but they do, for a reason. It is quite easy to make a big display but not easy at all to make a high resolution one that is also big. All the evolution of display technology so far points to the same direction: increase the resolution. I stick to my belief, based on my humble experience "for flight simulators resolution is more important than display size". Enough written, sorry, I will stop here. Thank you for helping, it was a good discussion. :beer:

The distance to screen, the physical displayed image width, the horizontal resolution and the zoom define the image we see for our purposes (DCS sim). Just talking horizontal, but of course vertical matters as well. There are many other factors like display color capability, contrast, brightness, image flicker, latency, etc but we let's leave them out for now. Talking about horizontal FOV... there is physical FOV (given by viewing distance and screen image width) and simulator FOV (given by image horizontal resolution and zoom). At the same zoom the simulator FOV is smaller for a lower resolution screen and bigger for a higher resolution. Easy to test by running DCS on a laptop at 1280x800 (extreme example). In our discussion above the higher resolution 1440 pixels compared with 1080 will permit a higher FOV in the sim because of the zoom: just zoom out, see more and still see the details because the monitor can do it. On a low resolution display when we zoom out we loose details. That is because the details are becoming too small for the display to show them. For example no display can display something smaller than one of its pixels. IMHO for about the same money a 27" 2560x1440 monitor is better than a 42" TV 1920x1080 because one can see more details. Image quality is more important than image size. I do not have a 27" monitor but I have just compared my 30" Samsung 305T monitor (2560x1600) with my TV (1920x1080). There is no competition whatsoever, DCS looks much better on the monitor. I am pretty sure that all these can be proven mathematically but I have no time to delve into it, sorry. Fellow forum members that I know are more experienced than me please help.

metalnwood I would still do 4 projectors for gaming and end up with a zero bezels, 3840x2160 quality image on a 106" screen. The problem is that I have no room to ceiling mount them properly. The only compelling argument for projectors is zero bezels. Anyway, I am happy so far with my 5 monitors and thick bezels. Real cockpits have a lot of obstruction, unless you are in a F22 Raptor :) 3 TVs are good for gaming, but only quality TVs. And when you do that the TVs gets more more expensive than 3 higher resolution computer monitors. They do provide a bigger image but the resolution is much less. Which TVs would you pick for 3 screens gaming? I did not say anything about FOV in this thread. For our purposes here there are 2 geometry items that greatly influence our visual perception: image size and image resolution. Ideally they should be both as big as we can afford. Also they must be balanced, for example a smartphone screen of 4" and 1280x720 is just way too small despite having an amazing resolution for its size. Everyone should buy whatever they like but my money will always go for high resolution displays, not bigger displays. 1080p is just not cutting it anymore. The industry is gearing up for higher resolutions. 4K displays are coming and they are coming for a reason: Lots of pixels are good... I think we can agree on that. :beer:

metalnwood I was mentioning projectors in the context of "no bezels". Also you should see a good projector with a proper screen and light controlled room. My home theater projector certainly looks better than most TVs I have seen so far, especially considering the 106" image. The biggest problem with projectors are that they require a lot of room and must be used in the dark in order to get the best image. Also at about $2500 for a decent one they are not cheap at all.

Yes, that is a nice factory built 3 monitors setup. But it is way too expensive in my opinion. 3 monitors of the same size and resolution would cost only 353 GBP (117 each) instead of 1550 GBP. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-S23B300-23-inch-Widescreen/dp/B0077L2JZ4/ref=sr_1_6?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1366992622&sr=1-6

Cannot "daisy chain" with DVI. But it should work with Display Port: http://www.displayport.org/faq/ "DisplayPort v1.2, supports monitor daisy chaining." On the other hand you pay a lot for the factory built 3 monitors solution. Just compare the total price with similar 23" 1920x1080 monitors with Display Port.

jay43 mentioned in the first post that his budget is 1500 GBP... which is not even close to $5000. Also such monitor would provide 3840x2160 at $5000 which is quite short of 4320x2560 that can be done with 3 x 2560x1440 at about $2000. The 4K hardware will get to more reasonable prices in time and then they will be quite interesting.

Neat stuff, thanks.

The "smoke bug" is acknowledged and ED will probably fix it in 1.2.4. Try some searches in the forum for more information.

Read about custom snap views: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=68815

Those are 2560x1080, very wide. 3 of those in portrait will provide 3240x2560. The problem with these is that the 1080 pixels width (in portrait) is too narrow, it is like you look at the world through a narrow window. You can easily try/test with a normal 1920x1080 monitor in portrait mode because it has the same 1080 pixels width. The difference between 1440 and 1080 is significant for this purpose in my opinion. Of course you can do 3 x 1920x1080 in landscape if you want, which is much more cost effective than the higher resolution monitors. As in everything we should always think about value for our money and what the objective is.

What is your total screen(s) resolution?

Have the same problem, but it was happening on 1.2.2 as well: http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1678083&postcount=9 In my case I can see the joystick sudden deflection just by itself... very annoying.

That is a lower resolution monitor (1920x1080). I was thinking of something like this for 2560x1440: http://www.pc-canada.com/item/XW476A8%23ABA.html

Yes, of course it is a screenshot. I wish I could do it with projectors and have no bezels but I do not have the room for that. Screenshot was done with Fraps and after that I have added the Helios screenshot done separately. Instruments are all at zero because only Helios was running. Yes, I would stay away from TVs because of low resolution, higher latency and lower image quality. If anybody here can come up with a better display solution at about same money than 3 x 2560x1440 monitors please reply. Of course there is 3 x 2560x1600 monitors but the price jumps up significantly. I ended up with 1 x 2560x1600 and 4 x 1920x1200 because it was not a clean design, I have got the 30" monitor first and then added the others in time. If I would do a clean design now 3 x 2560x1600 portrait is my solution.

The best would be the Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog, it is made for A-10C. http://www.thrustmaster.com/en_US/products/hotas-warthog But it is pricey... I am happy with my Saitek X52 Pro.

Portrait gives you more height, which is important in flight simulators. With portrait you get 4320x2560 total resolution while with landscape you get 7680x1440. 7680 is very wide and not useful for DCS. Once you have the monitors you can try both landscape and portrait and then make your decision. Point of caution: you will need powerful hardware to drive such resolution. I use 5 monitors. Download/SaveAs this image to see how much detail DCS displays with lots of pixels: http://forums.eagle.ru/attachment.php?attachmentid=79228&d=1365014115

i7 3770K and one GTX680 2G will be plenty for one monitor at 1920x1080. It could be even considered overkill... but lots of hardware now will help you in the future. I don't think that loading all DCS in a RAM drive will help FPS. It will help only the initial start.

Resolution is more important than size. If you have more pixels you can display more image information with better quality. So forget about TVs, they are all 1920x1080 or less. I would consider three 27" monitors with 2560x1440 resolution and use them in portrait mode. Not sure if it would fit in your budget because it depends what monitor brand and from where you buy them.

i7 3770K will not work with his current motherboard because it requires FCLGA1155 socket.

i7 2700K is good as well but requires a new motherboard. i7 870 has a LGA1156 socket while the 2700K has LGA1155. I have a very old Intel Q9450 overclocked at 3.9 GHz and it works for me. Your 870 is faster than mine if you overclock it. Probably I will upgrade at the end of the year when Intel will release the next generation i7. What I am saying is "upgrade seldom, but go big".

Not being mad, why would I? Asking questions is one of the purposes of public forums. All GTX680 cards are PCIE 3.0 as per Nvidia: http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-680/specifications But they will work with PCIE 2.0 motherboards as well.

Your hardware is good enough and the smoke problem will be fixed probably in 1.2.4. Have you overclocked the CPU? But if you have the $$$ go for an i7 3770K and a GTX680.

Fabio just buy the cheapest GTX680 you can find. No need to worry about PCIE 2.3/3.0 or anything else. As per my experience GTX680 is the best video card for DCS. I have one with 2G VRAM and I drive no less than 5 monitors with it at 30 FPS constant.