Monitor recommendation for flight simulation

[Kouros Farro]

Hi Folks
I am a new student pilot trying to set up a home-based system using Xbox X and Microsoft flight simulation.

Appreciate feedback on what monitor size to buy, for instance, 32 versus 34-inch monitor, flat or curved.

I am not a gamer and want to have a good experience at home training.

Thank you all.

Kouros

 

[GeorgeC]

Spend the money on lessons instead. Welcome to PoA!

 

[Kouros Farro]

Spend the money on lessons instead. Welcome to PoA!

Thank you for your advice Sir

 

[Gilbert Buettner]

I agree. You can spend a lot of time and money on simulation, when the best bang for your buck is in a real airplane.

 

[Kouros Farro]

I agree. You can spend a lot of time and money on simulation, when the best bang for your buck is in a real airplane.

Thanks Gilbert. I am a Badger and went to school and thought at the University of Wisconsin as a faculty for many years. We visit our family cabin up north once a year when we come and visit family in Wisconsin and always drive to Wausau. I worked in Merrill for a few months to help them out in the clinic some years back.

 

[Gilbert Buettner]

Thanks Gilbert. I am a Badger and went to school and thought at the University of Wisconsin as a faculty for many years. We visit our family cabin up north once a year when we come and visit family in Wisconsin and always drive to Wausau. I worked in Merrill for a few months to help them out in the clinic some years back.

Next time you are here, stop at the Wausau Downtown Airport and say hello.

 

[David Loftus]

The best setup for me was a 43" 4K TV. You can get a great HDR model with Roku, etc, for around $250. You don't need a blazing fast gaming monitor for flight sims, and a 43" is really immersive. While I agree flight sims don't give you the feel for a real aircraft, I think they are highly valuable to test fly routes for solos, get the feel for unfamiliar airport layouts and landscapes, and invaluable for getting the feel for instrument procedures when you get to IFR stuff. You should definitely invest in a good yoke, rudder pedals, and throttle quadrant to get additional reps

 

[bluesideup]

I am a new student pilot trying to set up a home-based system using Xbox X and Microsoft flight simulation.

Hi.
You may want to look at a HiDef TV 4K.
The things to consider, depending on the acft you fly in real life, the the size and arrangement of the instrumentation, get as close as you can to the real physical lay out. I am not familiar with Xbox / MSFS combination but something around 40 in. may be what you want.
There are many factors in selecting the size in addition to what I mentioned, how far you are from the screen the resolution you run... but around 2-3 ft away it should work.
You need to make sure that your system Can run the sim at 4K, it can be difficult to keep a smooth update, good FPS and without that you can have an unpleasant experience. The reason for 4K is the ability to get a clear readout from the instruments.
With a TV if you decide at some point that sims are not something you want / need you can use it for something else, they can work very well if you get a decent one.
I am a huge proponent of sims BUT before you get into it ask your Instructor what he thinks about it and see if he can give you some do s and don't s, assuming he / she is familiar with them. It can very very helpful with Instrument lay out familiarization / scanning, Navigation, Terrain familiarization (if you set the proper Field of View, FOV), and some Communication if you use something like Vatsim... external voice guidance. NOT for Landings, procedural only.
They can be useful tool and they can also cause some real issues for the beginners.
One thing to remember, if you Do get into it, Don't use it as a game, sim as you were flying and don't ignore the small things.

 

[Kouros Farro]

The best setup for me was a 43" 4K TV. You can get a great HDR model with Roku, etc, for around $250. You don't need a blazing fast gaming monitor for flight sims, and a 43" is really immersive. While I agree flight sims don't give you the feel for a real aircraft, I think they are highly valuable to test fly routes for solos, get the feel for unfamiliar airport layouts and landscapes, and invaluable for getting the feel for instrument procedures when you get to IFR stuff. You should definitely invest in a good yoke, rudder pedals, and throttle quadrant to get additional reps

Thank you for the feedback.

 

[Sierra_Hotel]

Curved 34 is pretty sweet, but they're pricey. A 4K TV would be great if you have the GPU to support it.

 

[Pinecone]

VR headset

 

[robin ardoin]

VR headset

Can you elaborate on pros/cons of a VR goggle vs traditional monitor set up? I have also been toying with a simulator for practicing IFR approaches and wanted input from both sides of the coin.

 

[Sierra_Hotel]

Need to have a pretty stout computer to run VR adequately. Upside is you can look around the VR plane just like the real one, feels more like you're there. Downside is you're still using mouse/keyboard or a controller of some kind to interact with the cockpit, so that kind of ruins it a little.

For IFR, there's little reason to need to look anywhere besides the panel, so it's fairly useless for that. You'd be much better off spending the money on an iPad and a Real Sim Gear GPS for whatever you will actually fly with and roll with a regular monitor.

 

[Baked Potato]

Can you elaborate on pros/cons of a VR goggle vs traditional monitor set up? I have also been toying with a simulator for practicing IFR approaches and wanted input from both sides of the coin.

You'll likely see the most benefit in VR for VFR procedures, and less for IFR I think. I love simming in VR - it's like being in the plane instead of looking at the cockpit through a window - it's life sized instead of small, and you get depth of field. Less practically, it's just more awesome to physically look over your shoulder to see the flaps position in a Cub than using a hat switch or a mouse to look around on a monitor.

Edit - though for IFR stuff it may help with the intangible qualities. For example, for someone like me with only little real world experience it can be legitimately terrifying while in VR to get a good ILS fix in zero visibility and following it down to a runway that you can't see. It's just a much more immersive and awesome experience in VR than on a monitor with your normal living room around you.

 

[Silvaire]

I just picked up a 43" Toshiba at Best Buy for $209. The Xbox will be the limiting factor but I'd say that this would be fine providing you have the space for a 43 inch TV. I didn't look at the 32's they must be even cheaper. I know there are all kinds of realism levels that the DCS guys go to but why go to that extreme for a Cessna 172 when you can actually go fly a real one. The simulator is great for learning what buttons to push and knobs to turn on a G1000 so you're not scratching your head in the air while paying an instructor plus rental fees. It's also good for learning how to tune in VOR's and NDB's to figure out where you are like we used to do before GPS. You can even fly a DME arc and shoot a manual approach in the dark of night during a thunderstorm without having to die in the process. You have to learn how to control and land the simulated airplane but these skills are not transferable to the actual aircraft because the muscle movements and sight pictures are going to be completely different. Understand it's just a game but it's a pretty good one.

 

[schmookeeg]

I bought curved 55s for my home workstation. The curve is not very perceptible, and was not worth the extra hundo. I would stick with traditional/flat screen.

I think you are at risk of learning bad habits using home simulation for VFR/PPL training, particularly concerning rudder use. I think it's wonderful for IFR procedures practice. Get your CFI involved early if you want to make the simulations useful, otherwise you're just playing a video game.

 

[bflynn]

XBox is just a video game. It won't teach much substantial about flying and you will pick up some bad habits.

Go fly first, do your solo and start working on cross country flights before you consider a flight simulator. 1) the money is better spent on lessons, 2) you'll learn the right habits from your instructor, and 3) you'll know much better what you want in an airplane and in a simulator.

When you buy things for the sim, go for quality and that's where the money comes in, but it takes money to build better and you can waste a lot if you don't know what's really needed.

 

[Ethan2002]

Hard to say ... there were many ...

 

[murphey]

Do you want to learn to fly or play video games? I vote with the early posters that tell you to spend the money on flight lessons, not games.

But if you insist, forget MSFS and go with XPlane.

 

[bluesideup]

Hi.

But if you insist, forget MSFS and go with XPlane.

At this point, given the phase that the OP is in, VFR, I do not think that XPlane is the best choice, the Scenery is very coarse, but if you do get XP get Ver 11, you can find it for around $30.00, and add Ortho, XP12 is useless to most unless you have a monster system.
The only thing that is new, not better, in XP12, are light / auto brightness that is poorly implemented, 3D water, 3D trees, 3D clouds, reflections... that suck 80-90 of the resources, everything else is worse, unless you want to pretend that you are some Heavy wananbes.
Reemphasize, use it with a lot of care, creating bad habits at the beginning can be difficult to unlearn.

 

[ArrowFlyer86]

Assuming you really want to become a pilot I'd say the money is best spent on lessons. If you insist on a sim then it doesn't matter which monitor you pick. For the sim i'd pick Xplane 11.

You'll likely learn how to "hack it" if you teach yourself (not good), so you should at least take a few flight lessons before you attempt to use the sim for actual learning, otherwise you're liable to pick up bad habits. For instance, a very good chance you'll either completely ignore rudder or learn it wrong, and you'll notice nor care if you overspeed your flaps, or you'll have a dive-bomb like approach into the runway, or you'll fly a faster/fancier plane b/c it's more exciting. At a minimum you should have all realism settings maxed out.

The reason I don't suggest MSFS:
- It's graphically beautiful, but...
- Performance is completely unrealistic. I can snap-roll a Cessna, and climb at a sustained 1700fpm in a 172.
- Nearly every single engine airplane that comes with the game that isn't an antique (e.g., DC3) has a glass panel with all the goodies (auto pilot, synthetic vision, etc). Unrealistic for a trainer and easy to rely on features that you won't have in real life.

 

[murphey]

Hi.



At this point, given the phase that the OP is in, VFR, I do not think that XPlane is the best choice, the Scenery is very coarse, but if you do get XP get Ver 11, you can find it for around $30.00, and add Ortho, XP12 is useless to most unless you have a monster system.
The only thing that is new, not better, in XP12, are light / auto brightness that is poorly implemented, 3D water, 3D trees, 3D clouds, reflections... that suck 80-90 of the resources, everything else is worse, unless you want to pretend that you are some Heavy wananbes.
Reemphasize, use it with a lot of care, creating bad habits at the beginning can be difficult to unlearn.

Scenery is not on my list of importance. Closely matching the real performance of an airplane is more important to me. But again, both are still games unless you get the certified version of XPlane which costs $$$$$$ and needs the monster hardware environment.

Yes, I have both and don’t remember the last time I started up either of them. When I teach the Young Eagle ground, I use the iPad version to show how the instruments and view out the window change when the yoke changes.

 

[RussR]

- Nearly every single engine airplane that comes with the game that isn't an antique (e.g., DC3) has a glass panel with all the goodies (auto pilot, synthetic vision, etc). Unrealistic for a trainer and easy to rely on features that you won't have in real life.

Not arguing with you, but there's a pretty large percentage of the training fleet that is exactly that - all glass, synthetic vision and autopilot, etc. Most of the big schools are operating 172s and Pa-28s that have all that.

 

[ArrowFlyer86]

Not arguing with you, but there's a pretty large percentage of the training fleet that is exactly that - all glass, synthetic vision and autopilot, etc. Most of the big schools are operating 172s and Pa-28s that have all that.

Interesting... I would not have guessed that. My trainer didn't have that and the places I've rented haven't unless you want to pay a surcharge to get into a G1000 cockpit... Welp, disregard that piece of anecdotal advice from me then!

 

[Sierra_Hotel]

Almost all of the big pilot mill schools have gone full glass these days. It's pretty much only your local Part 61 and smaller Part 141 schools that still have 6-pack panels.

 

[Rgbeard]

There was no choice for “Zero” on your survey.

 

[Crashnburn]

You'll likely see the most benefit in VR for VFR procedures, and less for IFR I think. I love simming in VR - it's like being in the plane instead of looking at the cockpit through a window - it's life sized instead of small, and you get depth of field. Less practically, it's just more awesome to physically look over your shoulder to see the flaps position in a Cub than using a hat switch or a mouse to look around on a monitor.

Edit - though for IFR stuff it may help with the intangible qualities. For example, for someone like me with only little real world experience it can be legitimately terrifying while in VR to get a good ILS fix in zero visibility and following it down to a runway that you can't see. It's just a much more immersive and awesome experience in VR than on a monitor with your normal living room around you.

It's not VR, but you can look around the cockpit just by moving your head with TrackIR. I have mine set up so I can look directly behind me and see the entire empennage. Pretty cool. And with some of the planes in Prepar3D V5, the instruments are too small to read. I use Remote Flight connected to an iPad to view them.

 

[Learnin’ to fly…]

I use the LG UltraWide 34 in. I prefer it for work (vs dual monitors) but found it creates a pretty realistic field of view relative to an actual cockpit.

More thoughts if you are interested:

I agree with most of what you are hearing here. Sims can be useful, but the best time and money spent is in the aircraft (with lessons as close together as you can afford). Augment it with chair flying (no sim). If you are doing airplane time, and using chair flying to drill the concepts and procedures in deep - then a simulator can be fun - and I agree with Mr Loftus - I practice unfamiliar routes in the sim before I fly them - I find it aids my cc planning.
As for the simulator - would suggest optimizing for flight characteristics over pretty scenery. IMO - X-Plane 11 wins that fight. I would not use X-Plane 12 (yet). Keep it simple on the accessories. Yolk or stick, throttle quadrant, rudder pedals - but would not go crazy on the spend. I would also suggest using an application called “Air Manager” on an IPad (if you have one). It will give you a low coat simulated tactile experience for radios, switches, etc so you flipping switches and turning knobs, not punching a keyboard or using a mouse.

 

[Rgbeard]

Maybe there’s a monitor out there that’ll show you your “blooming runway” phenomenon. (Place it in Nessie mode)

 

[WDD]

I'll add my voice to others who commented "None".

For PPL, go fly with your instructor and skip simulators altogether for now. Save that money for your tablet (I pad, etc.) and Fore Flight, etc.

In the future when you start instrument training then something robust like X Plane with the various add ins for your particular navigator (GTN 650 for example) could be helpful. Even at that point honestly whatever size monitor you have now would work just fine - you're staring at instruments after all.