View Groups Tutorial for P3D v3.3

[MHargrove]

Folks,

The DropBox link below leads to a PDF document I wrote with a tutorial for setting up and using View Groups in the new v3.3 release. The tutorial is reasonably deep -- it covers set up all the way down to creating individual ViewFrustrums (you'll know what those are if you read the tutorial) for a 3-monitor setup and provides some hints for tuning.

Any feedback or corrections would be much appreciated!

https://app.box.com/s/fcqa5eqfss8iigc1zajn4lz38ufl2epb

-M.

[ronh991]

Excellent, thanks very much for this.

[ppo]

Thank you much Mark. It is very well explained.
My 3 monitor setup is a little different: left 24'' 1920x1200, center 30'' 3840x2160, right 24'' 1920x1200.
But I'll figure it out

[Sabre57]

The tutorial is very good, especially for us frustum newbies. I used it to configure a group with two logical monitors over 4 physical monitors. Left logical monitor being 3 1920x1080 in surround and the 2nd right monitor being 1920x1080. I needed to play around with the frustum a bit but I now have the best view I've ever had. Thanks for doing this. I was wrapped around the axle 3 times before following this.

[MHargrove]

My 3 monitor setup is a little different: left 24'' 1920x1200, center 30'' 3840x2160, right 24'' 1920x1200.

Pretty interesting situation -- I'm not quite sure how to even approach this kind of setup. The physical display size is different, the resolution of the monitors is different, and the aspect ratio is different. Yikes. I think we could deal with 2 of those 3 differences and still get good view alignment, but I'm not really sure how to deal with all three.

I'll give this a little thought (and if you come up with a solution, please share it).

-M.

[dapilot23]

Awesome! Thanks Mark!

[NAX]

Gave me a "aha"-moment :D
Thanks for a well written totorial. Let's put it to the test

[sqbltz]

Just what I needed at the moment.
Thank you so much

AS

[Beau Hollis]

Mark,

That's an awesome tutorial. Thanks so much for making it and for sharing it with the community here. If you can reproduce the crashes you mentioned in the tutorial, please post the steps required to reproduce and we will make a ticket to address it.

One thing I was a bit curious about, why you chose not to use one of the grid of viewport based methods. I suspect our documentation wasn't clear enough about how they work.

The trick to using all the grid, auto-detect, and viewport methods are that you must set SideAngles for the entire group. The advantage here is that you don't have to do any math or update each individual view if you want to change the overall group field of view. I have a similar 3 monitor setup at my desk, so I built the group from your tutorial, and then rebuilt it using each of the other view group definition methods. All 4 versions look identical on my system.

The main work to convert your group was calculating the overall field of view from your original group and converting it to a set of side angles for the group:

Horizontal: Combine your 3 views (+/-67.5)
3 x 45 = 135
135/2 = 67.5

Vertical: Same as each of your views. (+/-14.06)

Side Angles for group:
Left: -67.5
Right: 67.5
Top: 14.06
Bottom: -14.06

Now your grid or your viewports will define a subset of this overall field of view. Here is the XML showing how you can define the 4 different ways. The final one, which uses frustum values, is the one i built using your tutorial:

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<SimBase.Document Type="ConfigurationFile" version="3,4">
    <Descr>AceXML Document</Descr>
    <ViewGroups.ViewGroupSet>
        <ViewGroup>
            <Name>VG1 Auto-Fill Grid</Name>
            <SideAngles>-67.500000,67.500000,14.060000,-14.060000</SideAngles>
            <GridSetup>
                <AutoDetect>True</AutoDetect>
                <EdgeOverlap>-3.9500000,-3.9500000,0.000000,0.000000</EdgeOverlap>
            </GridSetup>
        </ViewGroup>
        <ViewGroup>
            <Name>VG1 Grid</Name>
            <SideAngles>-67.500000,67.500000,14.060000,-14.060000</SideAngles>
            <GridSetup>
                <GridSize>3,1</GridSize>
                <EdgeOverlap>-3.950000,-3.950000,0.000000,0.000000</EdgeOverlap>
            </GridSetup>
        </ViewGroup>
        <ViewGroup>
            <Name>VG1 Using Viewport</Name>
            <SideAngles>-67.500000,67.500000,14.060000,-14.060000</SideAngles>
            <View>
                <Name>left</Name>
                <EdgeOverlap>-3.950000,-3.950000,0.000000,0.000000</EdgeOverlap>
                <Viewport>0.000000,0.333330,1.000000,0.000000</Viewport>
            </View>
            <View>
                <Name>center</Name>
                <EdgeOverlap>-3.950000,-3.950000,0.000000,0.000000</EdgeOverlap>
                <DisplayID>2</DisplayID>
                <Viewport>0.333000,0.666000,1.000000,0.000000</Viewport>
            </View>
            <View>
                <Name>right</Name>
                <EdgeOverlap>-3.950000,-3.950000,0.000000,0.000000</EdgeOverlap>
                <DisplayID>3</DisplayID>
                <Viewport>0.666000,1.000000,1.000000,0.000000</Viewport>
            </View>
        </ViewGroup>
        <ViewGroup>
            <Name>VG1 ViewFrustum</Name>
            <View>
                <Name>left</Name>
                <EdgeOverlap>-3.950000,-3.950000,0.000000,0.000000</EdgeOverlap>
                <ViewFrustum>
                    <SideAngles>-22.500000,22.500000,14.060000,-14.060000</SideAngles>
                    <OffsetPBH>0.000000,0.000000,-45.000000</OffsetPBH>
                </ViewFrustum>
            </View>
            <View>
                <Name>center</Name>
                <EdgeOverlap>-3.950000,-3.950000,0.000000,0.000000</EdgeOverlap>
                <DisplayID>2</DisplayID>
                <ViewFrustum>
                    <SideAngles>-22.500000,22.500000,14.060000,-14.060000</SideAngles>
                </ViewFrustum>
            </View>
            <View>
                <Name>right</Name>
                <EdgeOverlap>-3.950000,-3.950000,0.000000,0.000000</EdgeOverlap>
                <DisplayID>3</DisplayID>
                <ViewFrustum>
                    <SideAngles>-22.500000,22.500000,14.060000,-14.060000</SideAngles>
                    <OffsetPBH>0.000000,0.000000,45.000000</OffsetPBH>
                </ViewFrustum>
            </View>
        </ViewGroup>
    </ViewGroups.ViewGroupSet>
</SimBase.Document>

Thanks again for the the work you put into this tutorial.

[ngidalov]

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.

[Mascot]

Mark,

thanks a million for this awesome tutorial. I am giving this a try for sure.

Just to clarify the initial setup: You have three monitors as individual monitors confugured in NV? Not as a single display?

Will these three cameraviews impact your FPS same as three undocked views compared to a single view?

Regards Simon

[hesynergy]

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.

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?


Thanks,
Chas

[supersonic_80]

Hi, I'm using the Fly Elise-ng LCD Designer PRO with it's export function for P3D ViewGroups. It's very easy to get a nice setup. But I have now a question. With Zomm 1.0 inside P3D all is fine. If I change the Zoom to 0.7 or 0.6 the side views don't macht any longer. What does I have to set inside LCD Designer Pro, so that the Zoom of 0.7 or 0.6 matches? This zoom level is my prefered setting.
Thank you!

[sqbltz]

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

Thank you

Armando

[MHargrove]

Mark,

thanks a million for this awesome tutorial. I am giving this a try for sure.

Just to clarify the initial setup: You have three monitors as individual monitors confugured in NV? Not as a single display?

Will these three cameraviews impact your FPS same as three undocked views compared to a single view?

Regards Simon

Sorry for the long delay in responding to this -- I thought I had this topic set to notify me when somebody responded, but I think perhaps when they moved it to a different forum thread that got nuked.

Yes, these are three separate monitors. There is no way I know of with built-in tools to correct the edge distortion that comes from using a single, wide "virtual" monitor (like you get from Nvidia Surround).

Undocking a view does indeed produce a frame-rate hit. Often (and perhaps non-intuitively), the frame-rate reduction is caused by a CPU bottleneck -- the CPU has to work harder when multiple views are open. With my particular combination of hardware and scenery add-ons with my sim I've found I can get excellent frame-rates with two undocked windows spread over two monitors (> 60FPS) and acceptable frame-rates (25-40 FPS) with three undocked windows spread over three monitors.

-M.