Horizon Line - You're doing it wrong

The proper horizon setup is subjective to the hardware environment. If you have a PC for work that you occasionally race on then posture for typing and such should be priority. If you mainly use the PC for sim racing then the hardware should be re-arranged to best cope with being a proper simulator.

My hope is rFactor2 has the proper options to set all these type of view setting up and have it stick through all the mods. Editing individual Cam files for FOV below 35 and OrrientationOffset angles can get annoying.

Here's an interesting example of close but no cigar.


The monitors would need to be lowered into the shell of the car a bit so that the two dashboards line up. Not terrible but I would still stand there staring at it saying.. "its wrong, please give me a saw and a few hours.. GET OUT!"
 
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GRRRR.. ANGRY! Not only are these monitors too high. They are a million miles away! its only a 24" screen!

Please excuse me using this thread to vent my rage. It is my free therapy.

Armor_RR-3.jpg
 
GRRR!! Its all too blue. Get some calibration on those projectors!! Yes those setups are usually pretty calming.
 
blakboks said:
I agree that the screens from iRacing are most likely set up for demonstration purposes rather than to offer the most realistic simulation possible. Have the screen high up because that's what attracts peoples' eyes at shows and the like. They probably just use the same rigs for in-headquarters marketing as they do for trade shows. And don't forget that 'for marketing purposes', they're going to want to show off their cockpits--certainly not possible if they try to match horizons and use proper FOV.
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That's all those are. They are test rigs and demo rigs.
 
RSR_Shags said:
Through all of this.... No demonstration picture of your very own setup.... LOL.
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@Home - Big 97lb 24" Sony CRT cant get any closer (EDIT: This may have been taken before I adjusted the Horizon line... )
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Bro Driving First time around Bathurst (This is definitely adjusted Although since the Look Ahead and head movement have been altered)

@Away - Upside down 26" Samsung allowed for this awesome view
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OK, Stepping away from the topic of Horizon lines let me touch on another subject that bothers me.

Screen waste.

Here is a snap from a recent E3 tire model video.

2011-06-23_030854.jpg


I am sure this isn't meant to be a real "simulator" environment and it is just used for promotional purposes. Never the less, I have seen this sort of thing previous and it takes some shooping to really get the meaning of screen waste across.

2011-06-23_030854a.jpg


So what you see here is a man sitting pretty far away from some very narrow viewing holes (granted Nascar never really needs you to see where your going) The wheel in-game is big waste #1. I can clearly see that guy holding a wheel. You don't need two. Dashboard was nice.. all those shiny buttons and switches that you can't touch.. Lose them.

There are other examples but this is pretty much the worst.
 
Didn't your mum tell you that sitting too close to the screen will hurt your eyes :)
 
Hutch-SCO said:
Didn't your mum tell you that sitting too close to the screen will hurt your eyes :)
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Yes, but that was with radiation filled CRT's in the 80's and 90's and they weren't high definition. Now I recommend everyone sit as close as they can before individual pixels are visible or your eyes hurt.

My go to reference although its for TV's
 
That's true, I see the screen waste, but how could he see the car's instruments with the windscreen being shown only?

When I play for more than 2 hours in front of my LED TV I can't read very well for 2 or 3 days. It seems there's nothing to do with focus but the excess of light remaining in my eyes... :S
 
Satangoss said:
That's true, I see the screen waste, but how could he see the car's instruments with the windscreen being shown only?
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If the screen is positioned right and big enough you can see the gauges. If not then the use of the virtual gauges will have to do or external gauges like I use. See above post.

Satangoss said:
When I play for more than 2 hours in front of my LED TV I can't read very well for 2 or 3 days. It seems there's nothing to do with focus but the excess of light remaining in my eyes... :S
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I setup home theaters for a living and know alot about calibration. Setting the brightness just high enough and not any higher helps a great deal with eye strain. I have an obsessive tick that forces me to calibrate just about every monitor and TV I have access to. Most times the screens are much "darker" than before I started but with the contrast and brightness and gamma and color balance and sharpness all set correctly you can eliminate screen fatigue.

My brother just had his 20" Princeton freak out and a brand new Samsung 23" 1080P monitor to replace it. It took 40 minutes of tweaking with all my various patterns to get it color balanced and not overly bright while keeping the contrast intact. Point is. Lower the brightness and contrast according to this pattern I made.

CustomPattern.png


The dark bars in the center you adjust with brightness. The very last darkest block should be nearly invisible against the black background. If you cant see the darkest parts at all no matter the brightness setting you may need to use your video cards on-board/internal adjustments for Gamma, brightness and contrast. Usually gamma needs to be raised to even see the darkest square in the center bits. The small white vertical bars on the outside are adjusted by contrast. Try to make it so that you can see each individual block of varying white color. Too much contrast makes the bars appear one solid white color. That is bad.

I can't go into color correction really as it is much harder to do by eye. Here is my collection of Calibration images if you want. http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v504/F12Bwth2/Calibration/?start=all
 
Thanks for posting that ZeosPantera, that is really helpful. I finally had to ditch my CRTs this year and although happy with the LCD replacements I am still not convinced I have them setup as I liked the old monitors but have had a rather random method of tweaking (another way of saying not knowing what I am doing!). I will try your suggstions later.
 
I'm happy with my screen colours, the main parameters and FOV now... thank you ZeosPantera.

I should lower a bit my TV but I'm unable. Only a wall-screwed support might do this for me.

But, to get a full experience, I'd like to use a second monitor for gauges and main information. Is there any shorcut or tutorial for it (hardware and software recquired)?

Thanks! :)
 
The system I use is called rfskinhud. And is very outdated. It wont load the editor on vista and above and the client PC needs to also be XP. It works with me because my netbook is XP and will have to stay that way. I think Xsim has some ability to do what you ask but never tried. The easiest thing would be to purchase a symprojects or other external display. They are relatively cheap compared to the nightmare of outputting to a full second PC screen although lacking in alot of important figures.
 
That another thing with those iR test setups, every car has a wrong FOV.
Even their driving school vids show a Skip Barber with a FOV double of what it should be :')
 
and iRacing has the "best" fov calculator in any sim to date. You would think they use it. The issue is with a single screen they can only lower it to 45° horizontal which on their big TV's should be enough but they still don't set it up right.
 

The middle of the video shows a very poor setup, Granted its F1-2011 and that makes it basically an arcade game.. But then near the end they back up and my god if that isn't a whole room of fail. A WHOLE ROOM!
 
What I think is much worse than a too high mounted screen is the input lag shown here...
I could NEVER EVER drive like this!
 
I wonder how much of that can be contributed to actual screen refresh lag. TV's are not known to be quick.
 
If you have LCD then yes, you might suffer from lag. If you have CRT or plazma screen then there's no lag at all.
 
The steering wheel is good. :)

but no use to me if the designers tell me to install the Monitor in the ceiling. I do not see the wheel.

that unrealistic These are what we refer to themselves PROFESSIONAL?
 
The input lag is the game... F1 2010 was the same. Even a very poor quality screen, with tens of milliseconds delay, is nowhere near that bad.

*by input lag I mean the on-screen representation of what you're doing with the wheel*
 
LesiU said:
If you have LCD then yes, you might suffer from lag. If you have CRT or plazma screen then there's no lag at all.
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panasonic dt 30 32" or 37"normal image (no game mode)...faster than my 24" lcd monitor ;)
 
It's "just" another attept to 3D glasses (this time Sony, with OLED) ;-)
 
ZeosPantera said:

The middle of the video shows a very poor setup, Granted its F1-2011 and that makes it basically an arcade game.. But then near the end they back up and my god if that isn't a whole room of fail. A WHOLE ROOM!
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Yeah, not only the FOV is wrong, look at the lag, this is the best way to say: DO NOT BUY MY WHEEL!! LOL wtf Fanatec? you ask 500 bucks for that? you can just keep it all the time!

Anyway interesting thread thanks.
 
THUNDERbreaks said:
Yeah, not only the FOV is wrong, look at the lag, this is the best way to say: DO NOT BUY MY WHEEL!! LOL wtf Fanatec? you ask 500 bucks for that? you can just keep it all the time!
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You know what they say about 'assuming' don't you?

It's not the wheel, we covered that on this very page. You took the time to have a dig at Fanatec and even bold some of your post but didn't bother reading any other posts. Have another go.
 
Lazza said:
The input lag is the game... F1 2010 was the same. Even a very poor quality screen, with tens of milliseconds delay, is nowhere near that bad.

*by input lag I mean the on-screen representation of what you're doing with the wheel*
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Precisely, its the game, it certainly wouldn't be the wheel and highly unlikely to be the TV even with 10ms refresh
 
ZeosPantera said:
........................

The monitors would need to be lowered into the shell of the car a bit so that the two dashboards line up. Not terrible but I would still stand there staring at it saying.. "its wrong, please give me a saw and a few hours.. GET OUT!"
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I hear what you're saying ..... I'm playing with the idea of my cockpit rig actually penetrating my screen just a little but I have yet to work out if this makes sense.

At risk of turning this into a cockpit building thread and this is not what I want to do ... but I think it's relevant and I'd appreciate constructive criticism regarding the visual setup.

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/BPY_2fx2TngmsKALa6St_payCbcTT2N3F7N14D6itcA?feat=directlink gives an sketch idea of what I'm thinking ..... Projection may need to rear projection but Sol7 or similar should be able capable to adjusting front projection too.

The point where the screen and the physical cockpit meet would mean there is some projection onto the top surface of the physical cockpit and I'm hoping I can take advantage of this to meld the virtual and physical interface and provide a more seemless transition.

Grand ideas are to make the physical rig a motion cockpit too though this is only a grand idea at the moment [well, frankly, all this is just talk at the moment and that's cheap of course] but in my minds eye, the screen would be part of the motion and mounted onto the physical cockpit.
 
Just have to say I agree with ZeosPantera on this issue.

And using the correct FOV with my wheel properly aligned and my eyes aligned correctly has made me faster without doubt.

Nothing bothers me more than games or sims without the ability to change the FOV.
 
Lazza said:
You know what they say about 'assuming' don't you?

It's not the wheel, we covered that on this very page. You took the time to have a dig at Fanatec and even bold some of your post but didn't bother reading any other posts. Have another go.
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Calm down mr. moderator I know it's about FOV lol
but the lag on that video was simply embarassing, the worst I've ever seen... upload those videos is not good marketing move by Fanatech really. /end OT.
 
theother5 said:
Projection may need to rear projection but Sol7 or similar should be able capable to adjusting front projection too.
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Front projection is getting cheap. The cheapest of the 1080P stuff is well under $1,000 US and would probably replace a triplehead setup if you made the screen large enough. Cutting into the cockpit is definitely the way to go for an F1 sim with a TV or monitor but if you go projection you could skip the cutting completely and just project in front of your pedals onto a wall or screen. I would recommend a custom blinder that prevented any of the projected image being shown on the body of the physical F1 nose.
 
Please Note All this posting is about correct FOV, Horizon and driver driver viewpoint in a diy, home f1 cockpit simulator and therefore in keeping with this threads main theme. Just to be clear.

ZeosPantera said:
Front projection is getting cheap. The cheapest of the 1080P stuff is well under $1,000 US and would probably replace a triplehead setup if you made the screen large enough.
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I cannot get past the bezels with triplehead setups [love 'em as I do].... so it's a projector [or three] for me .... gotta pick a side of the line to come down on! That's it.

Cutting into the cockpit is definitely the way to go for an F1 sim with a TV or monitor but if you go projection you could skip the cutting completely and just project in front of your pedals onto a wall or screen.
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Ok, what have I mis understood here.
Interesting to say project from in front of the pedals .... but surely that puts the screen far away creates the gap between the physical cockpit. Not an issue for the projector ... it needs a gap but for my eye, will this cause an alignment problem with the end of my physical cockpit [it cuts off just before the suspension structs] and the virtual cockpit nose and wheels?

Well, I will have a wide and high [likely to be] curved screen, so will playing with the FOV [H and V] compensate enough is my question?

In my initial thinking, I was going to place my projection screen very close to my physical steering wheel [so the vast majority of my physical cockpit would 'penetrate' the projector screen. My pedals would be on the dark side of the projector screen.

In my linked sketch [post #74] I placed the screen more on the nose of the physical cockpit.

I guess I need to do some experiments and learn as I go.

I would recommend a custom blinder that prevented any of the projected image being shown on the body of the physical F1 nose.
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I've being toying around with this idea too have have yet to experiment. A little pip in front of the lenses to blind the front of my physical cockpit ....

Then I go to thinking that if the cockpit physically penetrated the screen, I could try and take advantage of the projection falling onto the top of the physical cockpit.

Thanks for the feedback and thoughts.
 
Here are two good examples. This first one although using triple TV's has them entirely in-front of the cockpit and renders only the suspension arms and tires and NO virtual cockpit.


Then there is this one on the Force Dynamics setup that projects around the wheel like your describing. I think its a great system but still needs triple to get full awareness.

401cr2.jpg


They use a projector and a mirror above the drivers head.
 
Top is then way I'm planning on going and I see that with just wheels and suspension, it can work nicely.

Ok, so no nose at all and no issue with alignment and ensure the screen is LOW .... effect a better horizon line and overall sense of position on the track. Hmmm getting it!

To begin, I'll try using front projection [over head by preference] so I need to work on that blind spot in the projection as you mentioned. hmmm, thanks, got me something to think about here.

Cheers, getting the horizon and FOV right is now critical as the effort and cost of this home DIY will be wasted on an view that is not the best it can be. The larger screen is paramount to achieving this sense of realism.

Great thread ... now you're in NYC right :cool: City that never sleeps .........
 
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