I’m considering buying air manager but I don’t have a ton of time to do my own customizations to it so I’m hoping it will mostly work out of the box for me. In running the demo version, the immediate thing that stuck out to me was that looking at the demo Beechcraft B58 airspeed indicator while flying some other airplane, the colors/thresholds on the airspeed gauge were wrong. E.g. we have things like Vso, Vfe, Vno, Vne shown visually in white, green, yellow, red lines. So for instance, I see that it comes with a Piper P-28 airspeed gauge, but can you adjust that for different models of P-28? Between the Warrior, Arrow, Turbo Arrow, etc. they do not all have the same V speeds so it would be frustrating to have that not show the correct V speeds. I could handle the fact that maybe the scale is off for a given plane (e.g. Turbo arrow scale goes up to 240kts, whereas Warrior only goes to 170kts) as long is it’s not running out of numbers to display accurately (shouldn’t be a problem unless you get into unsafe speeds).
I’m sure I’ll discover a dozen other little things like this that need to be customized, but airspeed is probably the most important indicator that carries model-specific customization.
I almost exclusively fly GA aircraft. I know that a few common ones are supported (152 and 172 for instance), and anything with a G1000 will be supported since it’s actually the MSFS popout you’re looking at. But I’ve been flying the JustFlight Warrior recently. For that one, I see that there is a P-28 panel, but the airspeed gauge is not for a Warrior so the V speeds are wrong (at least in the screenshots shown on the siminnovations website). I presume it’s for one of the Arrows. E.g. it shows max cruising speed (VNO, the end of the green line) at 145kts, but in a Warrior VNO is 125kts.
I want to start flying constant speed prop planes more so I’ve been thinking of getting the A2A comanche and/or the Blacksquare Bonanza steam gauge overhaul. So IDK if there will be the same issue with those (getting an airspeed gauge with correct V speeds).
After spending 60 euros on the software, I don’t want to have to pay for more stuff right away (maybe I will eventually). I don’t mind building my own panels, but I don’t have time to start learning the lua script or creating my own graphics, etc.
Regarding knobster, I might eventually do that upgrade, but I’ll be happy with a mouse for now and might get a touchscreen at some point. Just having the instruments on a separate screen so I don’t have to squint and pan around the cockpit in MSFS is great (even with the demo 6 pack I love it already).
There is a ESA PA-28 Arrow panel set coming that has the necessary speed tapes drawn for each specific model.
Obviously for a specific aircraft/model that uses an analog airspeed indicator the speed tapes are generally baked into the gauge texture so there is no way of cgsngjng that without doing another texture. However ESA has a generic adjustable airspeed indicator which is use with a small number of the panel sets. This could also be used in those aircraft that don’t have a specific airspeed instrument. With this one the speed tapes, tick marks etc can be setup using instrument user property settings to try and get it to represent the appropriate markings.
I see, thanks for the info. Does AM come with any included generic airspeed indicators that have adjustable speed tapes? I’ve seen the ESA panels and they look amazing but I’m hoping to get started without buying a bunch of additional add-ons until I have a better understanding of how I use the tool.
All my instruments are custom mainly because I wasn’t happy with what the community instruments offered. To your point though they can be used to gain an understanding of how things work for newer users. To that end I don’t keep track of what community stuff there is or isn’t anymore. There used to be a listing on the SI website so if that still exists you could use that to look through what there is.