Why should they be, my big widescreen monitor costs $170, get 3 of them together and its $510. There is ABSOLUTELY no reason why a single piece ultrawidescreen monitor should cost more than that. It would be a normal flat panel LCD in every way, except the screen would be long. And if there there was one for $700 I would buy it at once. There is NO reason why these things should cost $6,500. A 70 inch plasma screen doesn't cost that much...
Because manufacturing curved screens is a whole lot more expensive than manufacturing flat ones, and it's a lot higher pixel pitch than the 70" screen you point out. The more pixels you're manufacturing on a single panel, the more likely you are to run into manufacturing defects, and the more expensive it gets.
I still have to disagree, if I look left then I see perhaps a wall or the hallway or bookcase. I am certainly not looking at a monitor. So if trackIR shows me something and I'm not looking that way, what's the point. I ain't gonna see it!
Have you actually
used a TrackIR? Judging by your comments, I suspect not.
Are your eyes glued straight forward in your sockets?
The TrackIR will amplify the angle of your head movement quite a bit (and you can configure by how much. For me, I have it set so that turning my head to point at the edge of my monitor--5-10 degrees--causes about a 90 degree change in the view on screen. Only a few more degrees takes the view all the way to 180). Again, I wear glasses, which restricts my usable forward field of view, but I have absolutely no trouble keeping my eyes focused on the center of the screen while I turn my head a few degrees.
Sure, it lets you get a bouncy view with a slightly different perspective. But that's about it.
This comment alone makes be pretty sure that you've never used one. It gives you far more than "a bouncy view with a slightly different perspective." It gives you the ability to look around your cockpit in a very natural way, directly controlling where you look by the direction you turn your head, without needing to fiddle with the hat switch.
It is a concept product, that, when refined, may be useful and fun.. Meantime to all you beta-testers out there! Let's get purchasing the next version and keep it up!!
It already is useful and fun. If you haven't used one, I strongly recommend finding someone who has one and getting them to let you borrow it and try it out. Now that I've used one, I can't live without it when simming--it very quickly becomes second nature. And, like I said--I had the conscious choice between using multiple monitors and using a TrackIR, and I picked the TrackIR, and would repeat that choice any day. The TrackIR allows you to look in
any direction, which is amazing for flying anything that isn't an airliner.
With three monitors, your field of view is still limited to a narrow band in front of and slightly to the sides, with no ability to look "up" during aerobatic maneuvers to see where you're going without resorting to the unnatural and clunky hat switch.
Also, I think TrackIR is an incredible ripoff as well. Such a thing is possible for, at most, $50 USD, using free software (
FreeTrack), a Wii remote, cheap DIY tracking clip, and Bluetooth adapter. I'm actually very surprised that this guy built that whole thing, and yet, just bought a TrackIR.
I think he either didn't know about it, or ran out of Coffee.
I'd guess you haven't used one either? TrackIR has overall higher quality, more options, and is better supported than FreeTrack. When it comes to how much he's saving, saving tens of thousands of dollars on a DIY motion rig in exchange for lots of time building makes perfect sense. Saving a mere $100 isn't worth the added work and reduced quality.
It's also possible that he already owned the TrackIR (wouldn't surprise me to learn that someone who would go to this much trouble for a simpit already owned one), so it didn't cost him anything for this project. This is also suggested by the fact that he's using the older passive hat-tracking device and not the newer active one which is more accurate (and doesn't cost much at all).
