Air Manager/Air Player

[Gleneagle]

Just wondering, does it make a difference which PC you use Air Manager and which you use Air Player on?

I bought Air Manager recently, as I was going to only use it on my small 10.1" tablet/laptop for instrument panels.

I have now bought a larger 15.6" touchscreen monitor, so that I can fit a bit more and maybe have a GPS overlay or something…but now realise that you need to “pop out” the actual GPS panel in order for it to be displayed inside the overlay. Therefore, I need to connect this as a second monitor to my MAIN PC, not my mini laptop.

So I bought Air Player to run on my main PC so that I still have the option of running things on both these touch screens.

Does it matter which machine has manager and which has player though?

A the moment manager is on my small laptop/tablet, as thats where it was initially installed, and air player on my main pc where msfs is running.

Is this ok? or should i swap them round (i see that you can only transfer thigns 3 or 4 times, so I want to be sure before I do it). Can BOTH programs be reactivated on the PC’s? I see the warning on air manager about limited number of device switches, but didnt see it on air player? does that mean you can transfer air player as often as you want, or not at all?

Just a bit confused.

If it makes a difference, my main PC is running msfs on a 4k srceen, but also has a smaller 1440p screen that I sue for other gaming…so when the 15.6" touchscreen arrives I’ll have:-

MAIN PC
-4K 55" main screen for MSFS
-15.6" touchscreen for gps/other instruments
-1440p 27" screen on the other side of the room for regular gaming

10.1" LAPTOP/TABLET
-1280x800 10.1" touchsrceen for instrument panels.
-optional old 7" 1024x600 touchscreen from a previous mini pc project.

With these monitors, how would you all set things up and which machine should i install each software on?

[syldon13]

You can use space desk to connect the 10 inch tablet wirelessly. I use a 10 inch ipad with this layout.

Which comes out like this.

The second screen is wireless using spacedesk.
The map add on is fs2020bmap (version 1.3).
The panel is from air manager running in windows with these instruments added:

I think I had to pay for the Garmin G5 in air manager.

[Gleneagle]

@syldon13

add on is fs2020bmap (version 1.3).

yeah. I did try out spacedesk, but couldn’t get things to display very well. Getting things resized and oriented correctly seemed a nightmare on my hardware for some reason.

I do like the look of that map though! Now tempted to jsut run my main “6 pack” intruments on the 10.1", maybe some other bits and bobs on half the 15.6" and that map on the other half.

I do have a physical panel to control autopilot (once i work out how best to get it working, might need to buy spad.next), so that garmin thing I was trying to get working was mostly for the map and maybe the odd button that isn’t working on my multi panel.

if I used this map, does it follow your in game position? or is it just like a handy google maps type page?

[Sling380]

You can run AM and AP on either. AM is required to administer AP so it’s best to put it on the machine you use as your main machine. Monitor plugged into a spare GPU output will obviously be better than a wireless monitor but these can be useful if you have run out of outputs or you want to use a tablet.

The issue with using 2 computers is you will need 2 knobsters. If you haven’t got one already you are going to want those unless you exclusively don’t use instruments with dials or rotary switches.

[Gleneagle]

Thanks. So I’ll probably transfer the manager program to my main pc then. My 15.6" will have a touch screen, so I’m thinking I can probably use that for now… but I have heard all good reviews about the knobsters

[syldon13]

Running everything from the one PC simplifies the process a lot.

Space desk display settings are accessed on my ipad

From the second screen you can set any resolution you wish to. Obviously this is dependent of the device capabilities.

I have to admit, I have always found the ipad (12.9 inch btw not 10) a bit blurry but workable. From your comment, I have looked into it and improved it a lot. The blurriness is caused by trying to divides pixels unevenly. Ipad has a native resolution of 2732 X 2048. This make the default resolution 1280 X 800 a bad ratio, as it is applying some pixels unevenly.

Creating a resolution that divides pixels evenly has made my screen a huge amount clearer at 1366 X 1024. This is half the resolution of the default, which means there is always an even amount of pixels applied to the scaling display.

I also found another resolution that works even better again. I checked the resolution from those ipad screen shots. Ipad takes a screen shot at 2048 X 1534. Which means that it has a native conversion routine already in use which save power while giving a good display. Turned up my scaling to 150% and it is workable as a normal desktop screen now.

so cheers made my experience a little better.

[CaptNetflix]

So when you connect the iPad can you use them as Windows touch-screens with Air Manager? Or just screens without the touch feature?

[Gleneagle]

I don’t have an iPad, but my tablet pc has touch screen and air manager/ air play works fine with its touch screen so far as I can see …e.g. turn dials I can click and turn, buttons on the g1000 overlay can be clicked by touching them etc… I also tested with a small 7 inch touch screen monitor and that worked the same… it’s why I just ordered a 15.6" touch screen, because it worked great.

The only thing I would say about using an iPad or tablet, is that if you want something like a map or actual g1000 panel from in the sim to be displayed, you have to use the sims pop out feature, so that wouldn’t work… it needs to be a monitor/ screen that’s attached to your main pc… or you’d have to use space desk, but I couldn’t get that to look good/ work well, personally.

I don’t have an iPad though, so I can’t really say for sure on that one.

[syldon13]

Ipads work like touch screens.

[CaptNetflix]

Ok, thanks!

[Crunchmeister71]

Tablets will work as touch monitors with SpaceDesk. Note you may have to run the Windows touch calibration utility for them to work perfectly.

This is my setup (currently with my Kodiak layout). The 2 main screens with the G1000 are hard-wired Wimaxit 15.6" touch monitors, the tablet to the left is an older 5th gen iPad, and the tablet on the right is an ancient Android tablet.

[Gleneagle]

Nice setup. That looks great.

As I’m still using small planes, I’ve now settled for just a single 15.6" wired touchscreen (electriq brand, but looks pretty similar to your wimaxit ones). I did end up putting air manager on my main pc though, so I can set everything up from my main 27" pc monitor on the other side of the room, play on my 55" OLED and have this 15.6" for g1000 and/or instruments.

As I bought airplayer too,I can always add my laptop back into the mix at a later date.

I must say though, that these 15.6" touch screens are fantastic! Just the perfect size. Not so big that they take up your whole view, but not so small that you can’t read the instruments. The only downside, and I don’t know if it’s just the electriq brand ones, but the “stand” is pretty naff. Took me a while to work out how it fits, and even then, it’s not very well designed I think. The screen itself is great addition though… and even though the stand isn’t the best, I do like that it can be folded flat… this keeps it out if view when I want to watch tv.

My next upgrade will eventually probably be another of these screens for the second g1000 screen… but that will probably wait until Microsoft fix the pop out killing frame rates bug. At the moment, I’m using the Garmin overlay, but just putting bmap in there, as that doesn’t affect frame rate at all.

[Crunchmeister71]

I use these stands for my 15.5" monitors. The built in folding system would work great for general purpose use, but for sim use, not so much.

Touch Bracket — Stay Level Avionix

These are expensive, but quality and made of powder coated steel, so no flex at all. There are other cheaper plastic solutions available as well though.

15.6" is a sweet spot, I think. But it’s small if you want an entire cockpit layout vs just G1000s or just your gauges. To me, I think a pair of 19-21" would be ideal for a whole cockpit solution where extra side screens wouldn’t be required (nice to have, but not necessary). If I try to fit a whole panel (for example, using the payware C172 panel) on a single monitor, it’s too small, too hard to read, and too hard to press buttons accurately for the avionics. That’s why I make my own layouts vs using pre-made panel layouts.

[Gleneagle]

Agree, custom layouts are the way to go.

I actually just decided to pick up a second of these 15.6" screens though. So I’m gonna have 8 instruments on one, making each instrument 480 by 480… very easy to see and use any dials etc.

This will go in the middle on the table in front, just above/ behind my yoke with radio panel on top.

The second screen will go to the left just above/ behind my switch and multi panels.

It will use the Garmin overlay, with either a pop out Garmin display (hopefully Microsoft will fix the fps drop at some point), or bmap which I’m using now.

I’ll fill the vertical resolution with the overlay which makes it about 1600 odd pixels wide, so easy to see and press all the buttons etc… then I’ll probably fill the remaining side space with the lesser dials, like fuel levels, suction and the like. (Sorry, I know that’s all important stuff in real life, but for a new simmer like me, they are less must have and more pretty to look at haha).

Just got my replacement yoke after the first one died, so I’ll be all set when the second screen arrives.

[CaptNetflix]

That looks nice. I’m planning a similiar setup. Unfortunaly the 16 inch screen I’ve ordered was a faulty one and now I’m in the process of returning that one and getting a new. One question: do you use DX11 or DX12? I’ve tried with DX12 and the framerate are better than DX11 when popping out the PFD and MFD and moving them to another screen.

[Crunchmeister71]

I use DX11. I lose frame rate globally if I enable DX12, even without popouts. It’s an instant 15 fps loss and it introduces horrible stuttering across the board. The stutters on their own make it a horrible experience. If I pop out anything with DX12, I drop to about 15 fps with even worse stutters.

[Gleneagle]

Dx11 here too.

I found that the normal frame rate with dx12 was about even as dx11, but I’d get regular drops with dx12 where the whole sim would basically freeze for a second or two then recover. Prefer dx11 for a more consistent frame rate.

Interesting to see that dx12 might help with popout though

[CaptNetflix]

Ok, thanks for your reply.

[CaptNetflix]

How do I use 2 monitors

Here is the link to the post about DX12.

[Gleneagle]

Interesting… one of my touch screens IS connected to the iGPU…as my 3080ti has 3dp ports, but only 2hdmi… for flight sim I’m not worried about fps above 60, so I use hdmi to my 4k OLED telly, hdmi to one of the touchscreen monitors and then the other touchscreen hdmi from the igpu… so sound like I might even be able to pop out the Garmin display to that monitor without much loss in fps, even with dx11.

As a side note, anyone else having issues popping out the normal sim moving map since the latest update? I bring up the map, press the little symbol in the corner to pop out and it just vanishes. I checked all my monitors and its nowhere to be seen. I can pop out what’s basically the same map from the second Garmin screen, but the normal map from the toolbar up top just vanishes.