View Groups Tutorial for P3D v3.3

[MHargrove]

Hey Mark!

Are you the sterling pilot and writer, Mark Hargrove on Pilotedge? First of all I want to praise you on your contribution to the flight simming world with your recent article about the 3.35 views.

For better or worse, that's me.

You wrote, "From the little bit of hands-on experience I've had, I don't really see much value in the various automatic layout features, so this tutorial is a fairly deep-dive into creating a view group with fine-grained control of each view. ", so while I congratulate you on a rather lengthy article, would you please help me understand why you spent 22 pages writing about a topic whose worth you perceive to be dubious?

What I found not particularly useful was the "automatic layout" you can get from the ViewGroups (i.e., by specifying your monitor "grid" and allowing P3D itself to calculate the views and view frustrum by looking at your monitor resolutions). I'm definitely not saying that ViewGroups aren't useful! The reason I went into such detail is to show folks how to manually define all the elements that the "auto-layout" will try to do for you.

The insurmountable problem with automatic layout is that it assumes your monitors are all co-planar (i.e., lined up in a straight line). If you do an auto-layout and DO have your monitors physically aligned that way, things like runway/taxiway markings and other straight lines will indeed look straight when they cross monitor boundaries. Most of us with multiple monitors, though, tend to angle the "outboard" monitors inwards on each side of the center monitor. If you do that with automatic layout you will NOT see straight lines when things cross monitor boundaries. To get them to align you need to use a heading offset and that can only be done with a manual ViewFrustum definition.

Make sense?

-M.

[MHargrove]

Hi,

I'm using 4 monitors for an immersive display with 3 on the bottom and one on top.
After Mark's tutorial and Beau's clarification everything is working fine and much better than in previous versions of p3d.
Everything is smooth even if I sometimes have low fps.
But I still have a small problem:
On the side and top monitors some parts of aircraft are not displayed.
This happens mostly on the outside views but also inside,
with the default aircrafts F22 adn F35 as well with pmdg 737, carenado shrike and aerosoft twotter.
Did not try any other.
Does not happen when using nvidia surround on the lower monitors but still happens on the top one
It's a bit spooky to see the pilot and first officer to disappear when changing from center monitor to any of the others...
Doe's anybody have an suggestion to solve this

Armando,

Sorry for the long delay in responding.

Unfortunately, I can't be of much help with this problem. I have seen this behavior in previous versions of P3D when I was using multiple-GPUs -- some elements would render correctly on some displays but not on others. Are you using just a single graphics card with a single GPU or are you running two cards?

-M.

[sqbltz]

Hi Mark

I should have included this info in the first post

-gtx 780 driving 3 lower displays
-gtx 750ti driving the top monitor

Do you think that using just one card would solve this?
I've been thinking of a gtx1080 for this scenario
Maybe the time is now...


Regards
Armando

[sqbltz]

Ok,

Installed a Asus ROG Strix GFX 1080 replacing the other 2 cards.
Similar display setup
Same problem

Regards
Armando

[sqbltz]

Hi

Just an update
Back to using the 1080 for the 3 lower displays and the 750 for the top one because i get a better FR.
Found that if I reapply the viewgroup definition after changing the view everything is correctly rendered.
Just didn't figured out how to do this automatically.
Using EZDOK at the moment
Rgds
AS

[hesynergy]

http://www.avsim.com/topic/493875-new-n ... ?p=3472012

long live the Hargrove!

Chas

[NAX]

I run 5 monitors, and have set up viewgroups 3 times now due to changing GPUs.
I'm having real trouble seeing what is different from setting it up ref. the tutorial and setting it up as I have done for years, with simply adding 4 windows/views, undocking them and adjusting it to fit my eye point.
I used to do it manually, then I learnt how to use the Custom View to achieve the same. Now the View Group feature bear a promise to also be able to change the perspective in each view in a easy manner, but I cannot see any difference between these 3 different approaches.
This said, I DO believe the ViewGroup can add new simpler ways to adjust perspective, but we haven't seen it yet. Not in this tutorial.
The view frustum feature should as I understand it, resemble the function we've all seen in the video from nVidia, but LM have not told us how to actually do it.
I hope there will come a more advanced tutorial or info posted about how to take full advantage of the now built in features

[MHargrove]

There is nothing particularly magical about ViewGroups vs. the "old-fashioned" way of setting up custom camera views. In the end, that's exactly what's happening under the hood anyway: a custom camera is getting created.

Viewgroups make more sense in the context of multi-channel operations, where they're required (as far as I know) to make multichannel work -- but that only applies to P3D Professional Plus.

VGs do not help (yet) with perspective correction -- at least, not the way you assume. I also thought they did when I first started playing with the feature, but got corrected by Beau Hollis in a forum post from several months ago.

For now, I've abandoned both the use of ViewGroups (since, as you point out, they don't really buy us anything and multi-channel (because it doesn't have sufficient performance yet).

-M

[Norshuttle]

Good to hear I havent missed out on something reg. VGs :D
As the flight also does not yet have the ability to start up with an active VG, I will reconfigure and go back to 1+4 undocked views.
My last setup, running P3D2.5, was running on 2 PCs to spread the load. To sync the computers, I had no luck with OpusFSI, but I still use it for weather.
I got good performance running WideView via giganet switch, but still there was some micro stutters going on. When I upgraded to v3.3.5 I tried running my 2 GPUs in the same computer, and was so pleased with the initial result that I dropped the second computer.

[zinok2001]

Hi,

As a newbie in multiscreen setup, I'm trying tu setup a view group for 2 x 48" TV's (16:9).
They are 106cm wide and 69cm high, bezels are 1cm.

Trying to figure it out, but my horizon line seems to bend to the bottom in the middle where screens overlap.
Has anyone allready configured this setup and would it be possible to see the config file ?

I'm using one GPU MSI 970GTX

Thx guys.

Marc.

[aifeliciano]

How do we improve left and right views when zoom is less than 1.00? All views look ok from 1.00 to about .90 zoom. Beyond that, the left and right images do not line up with the center.

Ivan

[jonahbird]

Hi Mark

I have just bought two Dell curved monitors, to replace 3 flats. They span the same width.

My question is: Should I measure the actual surface of the monitor to establish its width?

Frank

[hesynergy]

Hi All,

For a geometrically correct views it is not just sufficient to have the frustums correct. It is also needed to have the images warped before showing them on the LCD panels. This will make sure that the images on the panels will geometrically match the real view from the eye point.

Check the Fly Elise-ng LCD Designer PRO:

https://www.fly.elise-ng.net/index.php/ ... laypro10r1
https://www.fly.elise-ng.net/index.php/ ... laypro10r2

And the new version that will support direct export to P3D View Groups.
https://www.facebook.com/flyeliseng.net ... 5704027855

Regards,
N.

N.,
I am now officially totally confused. Your website shows more than several products, and while they have been widely touted by our Robert McDonald, I am perplexed with the proposition of buying multiple products to achieve one process.

So, In reference to The above post to Marc Hargroveand Beau Hollis, exactly how many, and specifically what products do I need to achieve viewing perfection with my three-screen, 135° FOV, physically set at 45° from one another?

Thanks,

Chas

[Beau Hollis]

If you have a simple 3x1 grid of monitors in a standard cylindrical wrap-around layout, you can use any of the three xml group definitions I posted, and they should work fine without requiring and 3rd party software. If you're monitors are the same size and resolution, I suggest you go with the first one I posted which uses your desktop layout to assign devices for you. That one only requires that you define the overall FOV using SideAngles and the bezel correction using EdgeOverlap. You can go into the View Group UI and teak those values until it looks right, and you're done. The auto, grid, and viewport methods we provide for defining view groups allow you to describe your setup in a more general way. We do the math to generate the view frustum for you. For many use cases, configuring the view group directly in Prepar3D is no more complex than configuring a 3rd party app to do it for you.

Some users may still want/need 3rd party software to help. Measuring the angles and doing the math to get complex setups correct, is a great deal of work. There are 3rd party software solutions out there tailored toward using cameras and image processing to determine the size, shape, bezel, and angle of your displays/projector-screens and generate a ViewGroup.xml (or a series of camera defintions for older versions) for you. Some solutions even do post process rendering to do warping and blending for multi-projector setups. If you need that level of calibration, those solutions can be great.

[Ebertr]

If you have a simple 3x1 grid of monitors in a standard cylindrical wrap-around layout, you can use any of the three xml group definitions I posted, and they should work fine without requiring and 3rd party software.

Could you please add a link where I can find the 'three xml group definitions'.

Thanks!

Ruediger