Switching views between Capt., middle and FO

With screens or projection - despite you have an extremely expensive colimated projection - there is always the problem, that the view of the runway during approach is never aligned to the eypoint of the pilot if it is set to the middle axis of the cockpit. The impression is, that the airplane crabs, although it doesn´t.

This happens because of the short distance from the pilot´s eye to the screen. In reality the lines of sight to a distant object are almost parallel. In the Sim they are not.

In normal sim operation this can be accepted. For landing training, and even more in crosswind conditions, this is not perfect. A workaround is, to shift the sim´s eyepoint left or right to one of the pilot´s. For the pilot flying it is quite good then, for the pilot monitoring ofcourse it is worth. Although on ground also the PF get´s a bit strange impression because the cockpit structure does not align runway and taxiways. However, it is a compromise and good enough for flying.

In my Sim this was not so easy to achieve.  P3D is setup with viewgroups while warping and blending is done by fly elise immersion display pro software. To shift the eyepoint, in P3D a different viewgroup has to be selected and after that, in IDP (Immersive display Pro) a different configuration.

Before, new viewgroup and IDP (.procalib) files have to be generated with immersive calibration pro. This is straight forward, as the eyepoint can easily be  shifted in the frustrums menu as needed (at the IDP server).
After that calculate first single, then multi frustrums and export the files including the new viewgroup file for P3D. From the newly generated viewgroup.xml´s copy the viewgroup section and paste these into the existing viewgroups.xml in P3D program data folder. So finally your P3D viewgroup.xml has 3 different viewgroups or as many as you like. In the xml you can edit the name of each viewgroup.

Immersive calibration server window

Although they can not be used one to one at your setup, you can download a viewgroup.xml and 3 procalib files as examples to give you an idea here.

Next I made 3 LUAs, one for each view . These make it possible by mouse move and other functions to switch the view by the press of a key. In IDP you can enable a keyshortcut for each configuration. This shortcut is finally "pressed" by the LUA. The LUA can also be downloaded here.

To make things easier I use the ipad app "air keypoard" which allows to configure an individual keyboard for the functions you need inside the sim and also has standart keyboards available. So no mouse or other keyboard is needed anymore inside the sim. A very useful app for me.

ipad app "Air Keyboard", my individual Sim keyboard

Finally, here you can see how it works:

If anyone has ideas, how to achieve switching views easier, please email me via the form at the bottom of the page.

Screen without warping and blending

This shows, which hard work fly elise immersion display pro has to do, to get the projected picture warped and blended. The flat projection angle of the side projectors makes it possible to avoid any shadows from the shell with the screen radius of 1,90 m. The disadvantage is, that the picture is less sharp. The pixels are stretched, and many pixels are cut away, so the actual resolution is much less then HD. So it is a compromise. The good side of this radius is, that I see absolute no screen edges  from the cockpit, even when moving the head a bit out of the standart position.

Setting up the visual

Because of limited space (radius 1,90 m for the screen) adjusting the projectors in a way to avoid shadows from the shell on the screen was not an easy task.

The experienced crew from evs-flighttraining made possible what I thought would be impossible. Together with flyelise calibration and immersive display pro they avoided the shadows and achieved a good blending and warping. 

Two of the projectors sitting in an extreme position almost in front of the screen.