Optoma GT1080Darbee Projectors

[FredK]

Just to clear things up, Fred, I used  "old mate" as a colloquial term and not referring to your age.

Hahaha....to be politically correct!

Frank

Well...I just turned 70 this past week....so "old mate" actually suits me fine!

Fred K

[FredK]

I just completed my Fly Elise screen recalibration including some color adjustments.  It all came out pretty well.  I am satisfied.

The following are some pictures of the results. Please note that the color shading differences between the projectors are actually a lot better than what you see here....such is an artifact of my photography ability.  So I post these simply as an illustration of the fidelity of the Darbee projectors and as an example of what can be achieved with "butt" projection.  Color uniformity is not perfect, but a lot better than what you see, and it all looks much more brilliant in person.....you will have to trust me on that.

Fred K

[Trevor Hale]

Amazing...  Looks beautiful, Butt Projection in my opinion looks the best.

Trev

[RayS]

Same here with the butt method. Far less complicated .

[navymustang]

I prefer overlap, but I understand why some choose not to do that.

Just had to balance out the vote 

[Nat Crea]

2 votes for Overlap, without a doubt.

Nat

[tennyson]

3 votes for the overlap...even if it kills me,



Frank

[Flying_Fox]

Used butt method for 5 years. Now on overlap.



Nick

[brianwilliamson]

Just spent all day finishing up the setup on my Optoma GT1080's.
Got the colours a lot better as well as the overlap, which is a lot better than before.

Couple of problems to note. When using Dynamic Mode, depending on your Brightness and Contrast settings, there is a very slow Automatic Gain Control in these projectors, which when you raise or lower a wing, there will be some slow changes to the image on the side projectors.

Also had a problem with heat and it stopped the colour wheel spinning. Also noticed another projector flickering occasionally, all due to heat, so the big fix from our local Bunnings Store:
......................Brian W.

[FredK]

Brian -

Make sure that you are running the projectors in "high altitude" mode.  That simply serves to increase the fan speed in the projectors significantly.  The downside is that they are more noisy, but that is the way you need to run them.

Fred K

[ifeliciano]

Fred,


How good is the digital zoom on the darbee? I really wasn't a big fan of digital zoom when it first came out. Always liked optical zoom, manual or motorized.

[RayS]

I had to stop using the "Dynamic Mode". If it was brighter on the left side of the aircraft than the right side (Like flying a N/S heading during sunrise), the projectors would try and compensate, completely throwing overall image uniformity out the window.

[DaveA320]

4 votes for overlap, Optoma Darbee, Natvis screen plus Truview...priceless.
Dave

[727737Nut]

I'll probably get kicked off here for this but my .02, having built several sims and ALL having used projectors until the latest sim I have which is 4K TV's    I can say this, i will never fly in a dark cockpit in the daylight on the sim again.  Pitch black rooms,  heat, spare bulbs, constant adjustments, gone.  Sorry...  I put 2ea  5000k LED bulbs in the sim to simulate daylight and it is awesome.  No need to run backlighting all the time, no need for a dark room,  no maintenance anymore, no more stubbed toes walking through a pitch black room,  and best of all, and can see the VASI lights like im flying in real life. The night time is a real looking environment and not dull black with light bleed from the PJ's.   Seeing your pics of dark cockpit and room and daylight sim time brought back the memories i'd soon forget. Don't understand how we do all this work to get realism then ruin it by flying at night in the daylight.  LOL  looking in the mirror here..... guilty myself.

Rob

[tennyson]

Great points Rob. I can deal with the pain of all the projector drawbacks, for the immersiveness of the projectors.

I guess that's why we love this hobby, cos we all have different opinions and respect each others thoughts.


Frank

[ifeliciano]

I'll probably get kicked off here for this but my .02, having built several sims and ALL having used projectors until the latest sim I have which is 4K TV's    I can say this, i will never fly in a dark cockpit in the daylight on the sim again.  Pitch black rooms,  heat, spare bulbs, constant adjustments, gone.  Sorry...  I put 2ea  5000k LED bulbs in the sim to simulate daylight and it is awesome.  No need to run backlighting all the time, no need for a dark room,  no maintenance anymore, no more stubbed toes walking through a pitch black room,  and best of all, and can see the VASI lights like im flying in real life. The night time is a real looking environment and not dull black with light bleed from the PJ's.   Seeing your pics of dark cockpit and room and daylight sim time brought back the memories i'd soon forget. Don't understand how we do all this work to get realism then ruin it by flying at night in the daylight.  LOL  looking in the mirror here..... guilty myself.

Rob

Get three Barco or Christie projectors with 13,000 lumen and add some Ultra Short Throw lenses.   

[727737Nut]

I'll probably get kicked off here for this but my .02, having built several sims and ALL having used projectors until the latest sim I have which is 4K TV's    I can say this, i will never fly in a dark cockpit in the daylight on the sim again.  Pitch black rooms,  heat, spare bulbs, constant adjustments, gone.  Sorry...  I put 2ea  5000k LED bulbs in the sim to simulate daylight and it is awesome.  No need to run backlighting all the time, no need for a dark room,  no maintenance anymore, no more stubbed toes walking through a pitch black room,  and best of all, and can see the VASI lights like im flying in real life. The night time is a real looking environment and not dull black with light bleed from the PJ's.   Seeing your pics of dark cockpit and room and daylight sim time brought back the memories i'd soon forget. Don't understand how we do all this work to get realism then ruin it by flying at night in the daylight.  LOL  looking in the mirror here..... guilty myself.

Rob

Get three Barco or Christie projectors with 13,000 lumen and add some Ultra Short Throw lenses.   

I had a Barco 808 on one of my sims. 

[ifeliciano]

I had a Barco 808 on one of my sims. 

Rob, that was a monster projector. 

[navymustang]

Rob, you are absolutely right about ambient light in the cockpit. I am working with the FAA on one of their research sims and they are wanting controllable ambient light in the overhead for the cockpit to light it up during the day.

Once I figure out how to make that look ok with regards to mounting the lights in my 737 overhead, I will move in that direction also.

[727737Nut]

Jim.  Here are a couple pics of mine with just 2 bulbs

[727737Nut]

Second pic

[navymustang]

Did you mount them in the overhead speaker ports?

[727737Nut]

Did you mount them in the overhead speaker ports?

They are on the back wall just in front of CB pnls and just below roof trim

[Garys]

Another overlap vote here as well.

As a side note - I recently spent time in a sim that had 3 75" 4k tv setup for visuals. The clarity was superb, stunning actually. But something just wasnt quite right. I finally figured that even at 75",  everything outside of the cockpit was disproportionate to the size of the sim. Terminal buildings where to small, vehicles where to small, even clouds where to small. So I think the preference of projectors over TV has something new to ponder over  and the larger the sim the more it needs to considered.

[navymustang]

Things being too small is a visual system set up issue that could include things such as zoom.
One should be able to set up very nice visuals with LCD displays that are scaled realistically.