Display Recommendations for Personal Simulators

After you have selected a suitable PC to use with your Personal Simulator, it's time to consider your display options.

Here Simlog customers are increasingly choosing "big screens" that are large enough to fill up your field of view and make the simulation experience more "compelling", compared to conventional (CRT technology) computer monitors.

So to help you make wiser decisions, we now present some recommendations. When in doubt, just contact Simlog.

LCD, Plasma, and Video-projection

The growing popularity of "big screens" to watch television and movies at home has brought the price of LCD, Plasma, and Video-projection displays within reach of most training budgets. There are advantages and disadvantages to each one so be sure to compare these different technologies with care. In most cases, a "wide screen" (16:9 format) LCD display will be your lightest and brightest choice, especially with 120Hz screen refresh to minimize motion blur.

Display Resolution

Today, most big screens offer "1080p display" resolution. Practically, this is the display resolution of High Definition (HD) television: 1080 horizontal lines that are "p"rogressively displayed.

Screen Size

Choosing a screen size is mostly a matter of viewing distance. And the (American) Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers and THX recommend a viewing angle of 30-40 degrees, i.e. when the display is positioned directly in front of you, the left and right edges of the display are at 15-20 degrees to the left and to the right. Practically, this means multiplying the diagonal display size, as measured in inches, by the number 1.2, and then converting from inches to feet (or to metres).

Here now is some guidance for typical "wide screen" LCD displays:

Sit back 4 feet (120 cm), choose a 40 inch display.
Sit back 5 feet (150 cm), choose a 52 inch display.
Sit back 6 feet (180 cm), choose a 60 inch display.

Connecting the PC and Display

Finally, for best results, connect your PC's digital video output to the Digital Video Interface (DVI) or High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) input of your display. If your PC has just an analogue Video Graphics Array (VGA) output, then you will need to choose a display with a VGA input, but note that the visual quality will be poorer.