A method is disclosed for monitoring the vibration of a rotating shaft including, measuring a current shaft position and determining a centroid of the shaft. The current shaft sector is then determined. The current distance between the centroid and the current shaft position may then be determined. The current distance is compared with a previously stored maximum distance for that sector, and if greater, the current shaft position and current distance is stored as the new maximum for that sector. After a predetermined period of time, the maximum displacement between the stored maximum positions is calculated, which represents the maximum shaft displacement peak to peak. This value may then be visually displayed or automatically monitored by shaft control computers.