SimRacing.org.uk

So, next question in my quest for the perfect sim racing rig :)

I'm thinking of getting a 24" widescreen monitor, the prices are really good now (£150 for a decent one), my question: is there any way getting GPL to reduce the black bars top and bottom?

Otherwise, to keep things the right shape I'll still end up with the same size view, but with more space either side of the car, which is useful but not what I'm after. I'm a big believer that an accurate FOV is important, otherwise the movement within the view isn't the way it would be in the real world.

I know I could just set the FOV correctly anyway, but if GPL still does it's letterbox thing I'll get a very strange squashed view of the world!

TIA, Adam.

Hi Adam,

Not sure if this really answers your question, but I recently got a 22in monitor and have not had any issues with the black stripes. If you're using the new rasterisers, GEM should allow you to select whatever resolution Windows is set to, to be your in game res. Then you just tweak the FOV a bit (I think min is 87 or something similar). If you use Prib you might also need to tweak the font and positioning of some of the items. With a bit of persistence you should get the desired result.

It's the tweaking the FOV bit I don't want to do. If FOV is 87 on a 22" widescreen monitor, to get a realistic view and have the view move correctly for the way the car is turning, you need to be less than 30cm from the screen, which is very close. I want to run FOV at about 70 to 78 degrees on a 24" monitor so I can have my eyes a bit further from the screen.

If you set FOV to say 70 degrees with a widescreen monitor, does it squash the picture, or does it chop the top and bottom off (which might be OK, it's only sky and legs)?

Of course, you can get used to the FOV being "wrong", but I want to try and use GPL to help my driving in the real world, and I find it much easier to drive GPL like a real car if the view is realistic, ie if I get my eyes the right distance from the screen to match the FOV, because suddenly I feel like the car is actual turning round the corners.

As an aside, I was very careful when choosing a camera for in-car video to get one that would give a realistic FOV when I was watching it back - something else I learnt from GPL :)

I don't think you should use realistic FoV, because there is no peripheral vision on a PC - you just see what's in front of you.

I really like and am used to the default 78 degrees FoV, it gives a realistic sense of speed and includes a bit of what would otherwise be in your peripheral vision in reality.

Adam,

The best thing to do is use the "new" rasterizer (OpenGLV2 is what I use) in order to set GPL to match the native resolution of your monitor.  This will use the full width of your screen without stretching of the picture.  (In essence altering the black bars as you were desiring.)   Then just choose what ever FOV you want to get the view you like.

Rick