Gearjammer
not too shabby, imagine 3 of those in eyefinity setup 
harrymann
There are lot of racing screens and projectors in the market. However, not all are ideal for racing because of low video and image quality. I suggest using 3D projector screens as images will appear more realistic.
Caterham_Super_7
Ive used both a projector and triple screens. IMHO triple screens give better immersion into the game especially with the outer screens at 30 - 45º. A single projector is like driving a car with the side windows blacked out. Multiple monitors of course is another story ! ;-)
osella
I'll add my experience with projector I bought 6 months ago. Benq W1070, I think I started a thread on this forum asking which one to buy.
I love it. Well I will miss it now because after just 6 months the lamp burnt down Obviously I'm going to have it replaced tomorrow, they must do it for free as I have barely used the projector, no more than 150-200 hours? I only played some last year, didn't use it at all jan-feb this year and only started simming again a month ago or so. The life expectancy is 3500-6000 hours for this lamp.
So I tried playing again on my trusty cheap 27" TN panel. After all I used to play on it for good 3 years before I bought the projector so I expected to be ok. No. Not at all. It doesn't cut it. The image is so tiny, it's almost laughable to me. Even with calculated FOV which is 30 degrees, everything is way too small. I did full one hour race to see if I can get used to it but no.
The LCD clearly has many advantages over projector. The image is sharper, hardly any need for AA. Great response time, easier to save the car. In fact, I was good 0.5sec faster than with projector with less effort. No noise and heat (Im yet to use the projector in the summer; now in spring it already forces me to have windows wide open..). But the fun isn't there. If I don't have fun, there's no point. Who cares about 0.5sec.
You could throw true 120Hz, or true billion Hz, lightboost, the best colors in the world, anything, but as long as it would have to be this small I don't want it.
So what's the real advantage of projector? Only the size? Yes. But that's all that matters to me once I got used to it. Maybe another advantage is that it's easier on the eyes but I never had much problem with that on LCDs (it definitely is easier though, you're looking at a cloth instead of a screen that actually "produces light")
My friends weren't generally very impressed with the projector. One of them didn't even believe it's actual 1080p because 1080p on such giant screen looks like 640x480 on normal sized lcd.
Point is, we are all *very* different. I strongly suggest anyone to try for themselves what they like, you can't guess it from articles. When I bought the projector I was skeptical and thought it will be for movies mostly, almost expected to return it because I wouldn't get used to the pixelation and slightly slower response time. But after 1 week I knew I won't go back to smaller screen.
I tried triple 27"s at friend's, only for 10minutes though and while it's great compared to single 27 I don't think I would prefer it longterm over single big screen. Total area of 3x27" is still 40-50% smaller than what I get with single screen.
The res is biggest downside of fhd projector, 4K units must be insanely good, those are not going to be cheap in next few years. Maybe by 2020 they could be common seeing as 4K TVs are still expensive too.
To sum up current projectors: they're power hungry, noisy, lowres (relative term), worse response timesthan fast lcd, pain in the a*s to setup correctly and UNRELIABLE. But I LOVE them
For me there will be a couple weeks of involuntary break from simming now. Again, grr
I love it. Well I will miss it now because after just 6 months the lamp burnt down
Obviously I'm going to have it replaced tomorrow, they must do it for free as I have barely used the projector, no more than 150-200 hours? I only played some last year, didn't use it at all jan-feb this year and only started simming again a month ago or so. The life expectancy is 3500-6000 hours for this lamp. So I tried playing again on my trusty cheap 27" TN panel. After all I used to play on it for good 3 years before I bought the projector so I expected to be ok. No. Not at all. It doesn't cut it. The image is so tiny, it's almost laughable to me. Even with calculated FOV which is 30 degrees, everything is way too small. I did full one hour race to see if I can get used to it but no.
The LCD clearly has many advantages over projector. The image is sharper, hardly any need for AA. Great response time, easier to save the car. In fact, I was good 0.5sec faster than with projector with less effort. No noise and heat (Im yet to use the projector in the summer; now in spring it already forces me to have windows wide open..). But the fun isn't there. If I don't have fun, there's no point. Who cares about 0.5sec.
You could throw true 120Hz, or true billion Hz, lightboost, the best colors in the world, anything, but as long as it would have to be this small I don't want it.
So what's the real advantage of projector? Only the size? Yes. But that's all that matters to me once I got used to it. Maybe another advantage is that it's easier on the eyes but I never had much problem with that on LCDs (it definitely is easier though, you're looking at a cloth instead of a screen that actually "produces light")
My friends weren't generally very impressed with the projector. One of them didn't even believe it's actual 1080p because 1080p on such giant screen looks like 640x480 on normal sized lcd.
Point is, we are all *very* different. I strongly suggest anyone to try for themselves what they like, you can't guess it from articles. When I bought the projector I was skeptical and thought it will be for movies mostly, almost expected to return it because I wouldn't get used to the pixelation and slightly slower response time. But after 1 week I knew I won't go back to smaller screen.
I tried triple 27"s at friend's, only for 10minutes though and while it's great compared to single 27 I don't think I would prefer it longterm over single big screen. Total area of 3x27" is still 40-50% smaller than what I get with single screen.
The res is biggest downside of fhd projector, 4K units must be insanely good, those are not going to be cheap in next few years. Maybe by 2020 they could be common seeing as 4K TVs are still expensive too.
To sum up current projectors: they're power hungry, noisy, lowres (relative term), worse response timesthan fast lcd, pain in the a*s to setup correctly and UNRELIABLE. But I LOVE them
For me there will be a couple weeks of involuntary break from simming now. Again, grr
Spinelli
If you are using the correctly calculated FOV with both setups then things should appear the exact same size, you'd just be seeing less total stuff on the smaller monitor, but the size of the things of what you do see should be exactly the same size between the two monitor setups.
I'd choose the faster monitor setup for this point alone.
osella
That's what I thought too but no it's never the same. The 3D world displayed on 2D screen is never truly realistic and from certain screen size everything looks a bit bigger. Calculated FOV with projector was 48, 30 for monitor, still everything looked much bigger with prj at 48. Actually the cockpit looks unrealistically big with prj, my g25 looked a bit small in the cockpit, however distant object appeared more realistic. I had to use crazy FOV like 60-70deg with prj for the cockpit to look realistically big but then all elevation and corners appeared flattened, obviously too high value.
Spinelli
Then I'm pretty sure something was miscalculated because the "perfect" FOV is supposed to give you the same 1:1 lifesize image regrdless of your screen size.
osella
I was using this triangle calculator which I believe is commonly used. http://ostermiller.org/calc/triangle.html
It's supposed to give you the most realistic cut off of what you should see out of your car but I don't think that necessarily means the calculated FOV makes everything look 1:1 all the time. Not after I got used to playing on 70" projector screen. Out of curiosity I also tried playing on 48" hdtv today. Everything looked yet again different from 27" lcd or that 70" projected screen. Calculated FOV was 42 and everything seemed a bit bigger than FOV=30 on 27" lcd and a bit smaller than FOV=48 on 70"(of course I did measure both eye distances which were a bit different every time).
I'll give you 2 extreme cases to think about. 10" screen vs 99":
View attachment 12262
View attachment 12263
Sitting 30cm away from that tiny 10" laptop screen gives ideal FOV of 23. Sitting 100cm away from this 99" screen gives ideal FOV of 76. I think it's easy to imagine that the larger screen will make everything look much, much bigger despite more than 3 times higher FOV and 3 times higher distance.
But maybe in fact the objects are in fact the same size and it's just about the immersion. That 10" screen can never give any 3D immersion whatsover because it doesn't wrap around you. Move your eyes a bit and see outside of screen. I don't know but that's how I feel.
It's supposed to give you the most realistic cut off of what you should see out of your car but I don't think that necessarily means the calculated FOV makes everything look 1:1 all the time. Not after I got used to playing on 70" projector screen. Out of curiosity I also tried playing on 48" hdtv today. Everything looked yet again different from 27" lcd or that 70" projected screen. Calculated FOV was 42 and everything seemed a bit bigger than FOV=30 on 27" lcd and a bit smaller than FOV=48 on 70"(of course I did measure both eye distances which were a bit different every time).
I'll give you 2 extreme cases to think about. 10" screen vs 99":
View attachment 12262
View attachment 12263
Sitting 30cm away from that tiny 10" laptop screen gives ideal FOV of 23. Sitting 100cm away from this 99" screen gives ideal FOV of 76. I think it's easy to imagine that the larger screen will make everything look much, much bigger despite more than 3 times higher FOV and 3 times higher distance.
But maybe in fact the objects are in fact the same size and it's just about the immersion. That 10" screen can never give any 3D immersion whatsover because it doesn't wrap around you. Move your eyes a bit and see outside of screen. I don't know but that's how I feel.
Gearjammer
If you guys are looking for true realism, you would need to get a monitor roughly the same height as a windshield in a car and set it at roughly the same distance away from the eyes. I am talking about visual height by the way, not measuring the windshield, as the two would result in different measurements. Easiest way to figure it would be to hang a string with a weight on it from the top edge of the windshield and then mark the bottom of the string where you stop seeing the outside world as you are sitting in the drivers seat. Theoretically this should produce the most realistic view.
Spinelli
I believe there is no set/ideal distance from your eyes to the monitor as the monitor and video game you are playing is not acting as a windshield, it is acting as the eye of the in-game driver. The game essentially outputs an image to your screen, and that image is spawning from the eyes of the in-game driver (or at least it should, some people butcher the in-game camera/point because they think their real-life seating position should somehow allow their in-game camera view to change, and therefore they see an image on the screen from an incorrect perspective). Therefore I would think that the closer you can get to your monitor (without feeling uncomfortable / hurting yourself of course
) the better. Really though, if you use the "proper" FOV according to the FOV calculators out there then that will compensate accordingly for the horizontal distance specified.osella
Indeed sitting as close as possible without feeling uncomfortable is the goal.