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WidevieW System Pages

WidevieW

Since FS5.1 Microsoft have labelled their simulators “As Real As It Gets”, and in relation to home PC based flight simulation, this is not far from the truth. With each version scenery, textures, weather, flight dynamics, aircraft, panels and general capabilities of the product have improved, making the catchy slogan less applicable to the earlier versions!

One thing they all have in common, however, is that you only see a restricted field of view. FS2000 brought us the ability to look in all directions using the hat switch or keyboard, with fixed images of the cockpit structure. FS2002 has improved on this considerably with the advent of virtual cockpits – OK they have appeared before, and are standard in CFS2 – complete with working gauges on the 3D panel, and the ability to smoothly pan around the inside of your aircraft.

Although this is great to use, in practice it is very unnatural to use your thumb to look around. The last thing you want as you round out your aircraft in a gusting crosswind is the distraction of panning; it would be far more natural to glance round to reference your surroundings. Virtual Reality glasses could enable you to do this, but the technology still has a long way to go, and you are stuck in a virtual environment with no reference to your actual surroundings – yoke or joystick, flightplans or coffee!

My quest for a more realistic FS environment came to fruition several years ago when I stumbled across Luciano Napolitano’s excellent WidevieW software. Originally for FS98, it has subsequently been updated for FS2000 and now FS2002. In a nutshell, this allows you to link one or more client PC’s running Flight Simulator to your main PC and display a different view on each screen.

If you have a reasonable spec spare PC you can instantly double your field of view with WidevieW. With five PC’s networked together it is possible to achieve over 200 degrees external field of view, considerably more than you would have from the left hand seat of a jetliner!

The server, or Flying PC (the PC that you actually fly), runs the WidevieW server module which passes aircraft position data, weather, date and time and other parameters to the client PC(s) running FS in a special slew or pause mode. This data is updated many times per second, so the client(s) very accurately follow the server. There is little or no frame rate impact on the server or client PC’s, although for the

best performance your flying PC should have a fast processor, a good GeForce 2 or equivalent card and plenty of memory. Each client PC must be capable of running Flight Simulator, so for FS2002 I would recommend at least a Pentium or Athlon 450 with a 16Mb 3D card – a 1GHz machine with a 64Mb card and 256Mb ram would be better!

Don’t be put off by the word “networked” as it is no longer a black art setting one up with plug and play network cards, and all the hardware required is relatively low cost. If you are happy doing casual upgrades to your PC you will find no problem in setting up your network. WidevieW relies on the IPX network protocol which is supplied with all the flavours of Windows since Windows 95.

With your network up and running, installing WidevieW is a breeze. You place two files into the modules folder of FS, and one into the main folder. The main folder contains the “wideviewlt.ini” information file for WidevieW, and you are supplied with two versions – one for the server and one for the client(s) – which you rename accordingly. The documentation supplied is very good indeed, with clear instructions on exactly where to put each file, plus a very detailed section on setting up your client views. The only other software required is Pete Dowson’s FSUIPC.DLL which is also a freeware utility. If you don’t already have this installed, go get it now, even if you don’t use WidevieW!

The WidevieW module starts automatically with FS2002, but you need to use the Modules menu to configure WidevieW and connect the server to the clients.

The first task after installing WidevieW and firing up FS2002 is to configure your server and client modules. This is easily done using the drop-down menu and selecting “Config”. The dialog box is the same for the server and client, but some options will be “greyed” out depending on the PC’s role.

Here you can set up the PC’s role, server or client (this will be automatically selected if you have renamed wideviewlt.ini correctly); certain network parameters (the default settings work reasonably well for most systems, but you can gain major performance improvements by tweaking these); the data for the server to handle and send to the clients; and the “Follow Me” mode the client(s) will use.

The “Data to handle” section determines what information is sent to the client(s), and generally must be the same on the server and the client PC’s to avoid problems. Normally you will want positional data (lat, lon, alt, hdg, etc.), lights (this allows you to see landing and taxi lights from the client(s)), and weather data (clouds/wind, etc.). If you are flying with the virtual cockpit then control surfaces and mobile parts is a neat touch as you will see flap and aileron movement on wing views.

I find that the fuel - engine parameters severely impact client performance and are best left off unless you actually need that data. The accept date/time updates parameter has been added to allow you to manually update the client(s) clock, as depending on the “follow me” mode used, this may not be automatically updated.

You will need to play around a while with all the available settings until it is just right for your particular system. Probably the most time consuming task is aligning the client views correctly. The documentation supplied goes into considerable detail on this subject and you should read this carefully. For best effect you should have your client(s) monitor(s) placed at the actual viewing angle; i.e. if your front left view is 45° then your monitor should be placed at 45° to your front view screen. You can edit the default view of aircraft in the panel.cfg file so that each client will start up with the correct view angle. Seating position (not virtual) is also quite critical, and small adjustments to your seat height can make dramatic improvements – it really is a case of tweaking everything until it is right for you and your system.

There are some minor issues, particularly relating to the “follow me” mode you choose. In pause mode the clients are very smooth, but date and time, and certain weather parameters are not automatically updated. In slew mode everything is updated with the server, but the motion is not so smooth, and the scenery may turn blurry over a period of time. I tend to fly in pause mode and accept the limitations, and avoid flying into precipitation which causes most problems, for my system anyway.

My setup consists of a 1.4GHz DDR Athlon server with 1GB DDR RAM and two graphics cards, a 64Mb GeForce 3 for the forward view and an old 8Mb Rage Pro PCI card for the panel; four 1GHz Athlon clients each with 512MB RAM and a 64Mb GeForce 2 Ultra card. I use three 19” monitors for the front, front left and front right views, and 17” screens for left and right views, which I hope to upgrade to 19”

monitors when funds allow! The panel is displayed on a 17” TFT screen. The server and two of the clients run Windows XP Professional; the other two clients use Windows ME. I have built my system up gradually so there was no massive outlay all at once, and the PC’s are hand built using the bare minimum of components. The client PC’s don’t need sound cards, floppy disk or CD

drives as everything can be installed over the network (the operating system was installed using one PC and transferring the 20GB hard drives to each “diskless” client). I have written simple scripts that copy any scenery or aircraft added to the server to the clients over the network, ensuring continuity across the entire system.

The effect of all this is “Total Immersion” flying, using natural head movements to look all around, and great peripheral vision when looking ahead. Takeoff, landing, circuits and VFR navigation become much closer to actually flying. Once you have WidevieW configured and running correctly you will not want to ever go back to single monitor flying, but be warned – your bank balance and spare room may suffer!

So, to sum up, I really consider WidevieW to be one of the best add-on utilities for MSFS, literally “expanding” the hobby! Ok, there are a few glitches in the software, but these are minimal in comparison to the overall effect, and Luciano is working to correct these in future releases. It is also quite “technical”, requiring basic networking knowledge and more than a casual familiarity with MSFS.

More photographs and information coming soon...