A counter viewpoint.
I still fly 4.08, heavily modded. One mod I did not feel worthwhile to install (if indeed compatible) is the widescreen mod which expands the GUI screens. I do use the full screen for flying, of course!
Now, as we all know, while tlying full screen, my minimap and messages are restricted to the original 4:3 aspect ratio. But that's just fine for me. Why, you ask?
Because I am set up with a big screen which I view from nearby. This results in a screen subtending about 90 degrees in width, so that when at the 90 degree FOV I have a 1:1 image correspondence with the real scene I would observe. It's just like being in the cockpit, with--get this--distortion eliminated. At wide FOVs the gnomonic projection's distortion stretches and expands the scene toward the screen edge. This is eliminated when the screen is viewed from a distance which results in the screen width subtending the same angle at which the scene is rendered. For 90 degrees, your view distance equals 1/2 the screen width. Wearing reading glasses (with larger lenses to take in the IMAX-like view
) makes this comfortable for the eyes.
Back to the main point. Because of the large fieod angle presented to me, even the currently restricted placement of stuff requires not insignificant swivelling of my eyes to see them. Moving them even farther, out to the screen corners, would be more onerous. So I'm content enough with things as they are.
Incidentally, my close view distance is no handicap for my head tracker (Freetrack and webcam). The camera is mounted on my headphone band, aimed at the light source standing behind me (my head blocks its reflection on the screen). I have set up the tracker to get 5DOF (I don't like head roll) from a single light source.
If you can, I encourage to at least experiment with flying with your monitor positioned so that your main flying FOV setting is more or less matched by the angle your screen subtends. As noted, for 90 degrees this is a view distance equalling 1/2 the screen width. For 60 degrees, this increases to just less than the screen width. Of late I've been flying with mostly a FOV of 105 degrees, but this is still good enough with the old view distance.
At those ~90 degree FOVs, the suitable view distance really does almost magically get rid of that marked outer field distortion. Try it out!
Author
Topic: screen messages moved to the bottom right of the screen? (Read 1992 times)
