Getting Fatshark non-HDMI goggles working

[drake.craig]

Hi all,

I wanted to start a thread to see what others have figured out to get Fatshark non-HDMI goggles working. I have seen some creative solutions and tried a converter myself this weekend. Thus far the quality has not been satisfactory for me. I know that the menus are not scaling and that others have made the request to make then scale better. I am fine navigating from memory, I am just after the best image I can get or rather the closest to what I will see when connected to a real quads feed. Let me say right off the bat, I have no illusions that this is or will be HD or will be crystal clear. I am just after getting as close to possible to a real world quality image when using Fatshark Attitude v3 google with good camera and VTx (I will not be using a GoPro as primary) on a quad. In other words I want to simulate the image as best I can.

This weekend I tried a Monoprice VGA converter which worked but was not good image quality. To bright/saturated/contrasted etc. I could get an OK image with some fiddling but the game was barely playable. I was outputting 640x480 @60Hz to the converter and using the Fatshark provided composite cable to connect to the goggles. I am thinking that the low quality converter is really the bottleneck here. Would using a cheap PCI video card with built in composite or Svideo out help me out?

What have you tried that works well? Any suggestions for a cheap PCI video card with composite out? Will the quality bump I am after come from a video card or are converters the best option? There are lots of threads out there about doing this for other sims but not really any real world feedback on what has worked the best.

So what works best for everybody out there that does not own Dominator HDs with the HDMI input?

Thanks,
Craig

[ShidmaPahnz]

I'm using probably the same video converter - like $15 on Ebay. I agree it's over saturated, but you could maybe mess with that in your video card's settings (NVIDIA Control Panel). I just adjusted it on the goggles and it looked passable. Turning off the camera effects help, they're not very realistic anyway. I think I was outputting 720x480

The parking garage map looks awesome though... probably all the muted grays, but it looks almost realistic. I've never been able to fly that map, but in the goggles I can pull of some crazy stuff!

[Mittens]

Is it just me, or is the parking garage like... miniature?
I feel like it doesn't matter where I fly, I'm breaking props all day

[removebeforeflight]

Hi Craig,
I'm using the same setup. Using a DVI out port on the radeon card I connected to a DVI-HDMI connector which then is hooked up to a ViewHD Mini HD2AV converter box. This specific box gets good reviews and converts at reasonble quality (ebay/amazon). This is then connected to the Fatshark via the AV cable. Resolution is a bit odd, I output desktop 2 (goggle) at 720p (catalyst). I then drag Liftoff over to desktop 2 to fly.
Alex

[drake.craig]

Thanks removebeforeflight. I have a feeling my cheap converter is the issue ($15). I am looking into buying an older PCI video card with composite out (hard to come by and shakey driver support) or a better quality converter. I will post what I find. Hopefully my trials and tribulations will help someone else.

Craig

[LuGus Studios]

Originally posted by ★ Mittens:

Is it just me, or is the parking garage like... miniature?
I feel like it doesn't matter where I fly, I'm breaking props all day

Minus Two is an existing parking lot, its an almost exact replica. It's the hardest environment to fly in right now, but they do it in real life too!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncKCsdsElNo

[MaxPowers]

Am I the only one that hooks up my quad, points it at the screen just right, and flys like that? Is that just really ghetto?

[drake.craig]

Update. I bought a Nvidia GeForce 6200 PCI video card which has an svideo out (a little svideo to RCA adapter is needed) to see how much of a difference a graphics card would make. Since I use Windows 10 options are pretty limited for these legacy cards. I have it running right now but I had to fight Windows to get in installed. Anyone on Windows 8 or lower would not have to deal with the driver issue. The quality is exactly what I wanted. My Attitude v3 goggles have a native resolution of 640x480 but I found the best quality was pushing them 800x600. All the menus are still hard to read or not readable at all, that was expected. Logos are clear and I can easily see the percent loaded numbers very clearly. The straw bale level is blown out from the light but flyable. All the other levels look great! For anyone with no HDMI input on their goggles this may be the best solution. I am glad I kept looking because the quality increase over the VGA to TV Out/RCA converter is huge.

Craig

[TheHook]

hey guys I just bought one of these converters to use my fatshark attitudes v4. I accidently bought these instead of hd3 that have an hdmi I figured it shouldn't be too much hassle. Well all I get is the roygbiv color lines nothing else. I have a decent video card as my laptop is only for sim xplane and liftoff. any help or ideas appreciated.

[brain_spam]

Originally posted by MaxPowers:

Am I the only one that hooks up my quad, points it at the screen just right, and flys like that? Is that just really ghetto?

Lol I love this idea