How-To: Virtual Mirror on External Display

These days, external dashboards come in the form of displays of all shapes and sizes, including an increasing number of ultra-wide screens, whether as a VoCore screen or a standard HDMI display. With a few simple tricks, you can create a virtual mirror that significantly enhances the rig’s look and is also practical.

Hardware – HDMI or VoCore

Generally speaking, when it comes to displays, you have the choice between VoCore screens, which are controlled via SimHub, and generic HDMI screens, which are recognized as regular monitors in Windows. SimHub is required to operate the VoCore screens, unless you want to use them as generic monitors in a rather complicated workaround. The biggest advantage of HDMI screens is their typically much higher refresh rate. VoCore displays only truly offer 60 Hz under ideal conditions (when only small sections are being updated), which is not the case when used as a virtual mirror. With HDMI screens, there are models that require both a USB power supply and an HDMI cable, thus needing a free port on the graphics card, as well as models that are powered and receive the signal via a single USB-C cable.

With VoCore screens, you have the choice of housing them yourself in a 3D-printed case as a DIY project or opting for ready-made solutions, most of which include additional LEDs, starting at around €250. HDMI screens are typically shipped in a case, so only a mount is needed.

Hier findet ihr einen exemplarischen Vergleich zwischen einem 12.3HDMI-Display und einem 7.8 Zoll VoCore-Display:

Software – Various options

To mirror the virtual rearview mirror onto the screen (pun intended), there’s a little trick you can use: You take the virtual rearview mirror already available in the simulation and then project the image onto the real screen, either at a 1:1 ratio or stretched. This comes with some limitations, such as the maximum refresh rate and the often low resolution of the virtual mirror. Nevertheless, this gives you a very exciting and practical gadget with relatively little effort. The respective simulation must be run in windowed mode.

SPC Rearview Mirror

Our proprietary software, SPC Rearview Mirror, was developed specifically for sim racing and for use with HDMI and VoCore displays. Screen areas can be freely selected and mirrored in a window, in full-screen mode, or directly on a USB screen. Categories and profiles save the respective viewing areas and window positions.

The software is provided as a portable single-file EXE and does not require a separate .NET installation.

• Precisely select and mirror any area of the screen
• Live preview of the selected capture area
• Windowed, fullscreen, and direct VoCore USB display output
• Flexible categories and profiles for games, vehicles, or other use cases
• Keep-aspect-ratio and stretch-to-fill scaling options
• Image adjustments for contrast, brightness, gamma, sharpening, and smoothing
• Adjustable capture rate from 10 to 240 FPS
• Global hotkeys, automatic startup, and system tray controls
• Portable single-file executable with no separate .NET installation required

SimHub

In SimHub, you can use Dash Studio to define an area to be used for mirroring the virtual in-game mirror. If you then create a suitable dashboard using the screen capture function, you can access that function here and use the mirrored image. The biggest advantage here is clearly the ability to display additional information directly on the mirror. One drawback is the fairly high CPU load caused by SimHub, which is due to the program’s now very extensive scope. Depending on your CPU, you can expect an additional 3 to 5 percent CPU usage. This isn’t a major issue, but it can still be a deciding factor in certain cases.

OBS

When using an HDMI screen, you can use OBS in addition to SimHub to display the video feed on the secondary monitor using the Open Scene Projector feature. Plug-ins also allow you to enable upscaling. However, one drawback here is that the program runs continuously in the background, which can be quite resource-intensive.