I dug up an ancient surface laptop… It’s small and has a nice touch screen. Anyone know of any software that could turn this into a touch screen garmin display or other flight controls? It would need to interface with MSFS2020 over my home network.
if you have a second monitor on your sim pc you can export windows to it, then use something like TightVNC or other remote desktop software to remote the screen through a second touch screen device. There’s some youtube videos about it. If you dn’t have a second monitor but have a spare hdmi port you can buy a $5 hdmi to vga converter that fools windows into thinking you have another monitor attached.
None of these are perfect. Exporting screens to another monitor gives a performance hit in the sim. Touch is not very well handled. But you can mess around with it.
There’s also virtual desktop software like xdisplay, but i don’t know if they have an app for a surface or not.
here’s one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ1DB25NkQI&list=WL&index=1
There’s a quite sophisticated software called Air Manager/Air Player which allows for creating custom panels including dials etc. The Air Player then can display the panel on another PC via network.
For me it’s too expensive at this moment even though it looks quite promising.
The upcoming version v4.0 which is in development will support MSFS 2020.
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Can’t reccomened this enough, if you have long term plans to build yourself a digital cockpit just get it now.
I am waiting for msfs to allow gps commands so we can have the overlayed Garmin systems in air manager but for now it’s nice having switches and the like.
Air manager 4.0 is in beta so you can try for free!
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Thanks for the links to Air Manager that’s perfect! Very cool. Going on the wishlist…
Because of this thread I took another look at Ari Manager again.
Looks like there is a public Beta of 4.0.
https://siminnovations.com/wiki/index.php?title=Air_Manager_desktop_BETA
AM 4.0 works OK and is free for testing.