Can FS2029 and P3Dv 5.3 run simultaneously on the same pc?
I love the scenery views in FS but I can’t get my DIY simpit controls to connect reliably to FS.
On the other hand P3D is working well, but doesn’t have very good scenery.
I am wondering if I can run P3D and use WidevieW to stream the position data to FS so it can display the appropriate scenery view?
I have done this before with networked PCs but I wonder if anyone has had success with just one PC.
Entirely different programs, it‘s like running MSFS and Read Dead Redemption on the same PC.
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Yes, they are completely different. That’s understood.
It might also be the very reason why they can run simultaneously on the same machine.
Has anyone here tried it?
I have done this with the programs on different machines but am curious about running them on the same machine.
So you wanna run the sim in P3D where your controllers work reliably, but you wanna see it in MSFS so that you can have better scenery at the same time?
Or is it like you wanna run P3D some times and MSFS at different time?
The second case should be absolutely possible and I believe many do it.
The first case, not sure… you will need some sort of bridging program where you will fly your plane in P3D, and that program will collect the sim data from P3D and then inject the equivalent data in MSFS and fly a plane there, so that you can have the nice scenery of MSFS at the same time. But this is a loosing battle. Not even sure if any cpu will be able to run this two Sims simultaneously, it can be in a seperate networked pc. But then there will be a latency penalty and most importantly, in MSFS controlling planes parameters from an outside program is not always straight forward. So you may have wierd behaviour. So it may not be a very good experience, certainly not one would expect from an expensive dedicated home cockpit.
All this is just a wild idea by the way. I am not even sure if such a bridging program exists.
I think it‘s much more feasible to find a way to connect your hardware to MSFS. There are great programs available, I personally have been using AxisAndOhs for almost 2 years with quite a lot success. It‘s a lot to learn and the manual is written by the developer who understands what he means himself but with some homework AAO can do a lot. I don‘t know at what state FSUIPC is atm but it has alsays been a ver powerful programm as well. I haven‘t tried any of the other solutions.
#AbhishekDey1594 “So you wanna run the sim in P3D where your controllers work reliably, but you wanna see it in MSFS so that you can have better scenery at the same time?” - exactly!
Yes there is a “bridging program”. One such app is called WidevieW and I have a valid registration for it.
As I said above, I did at one stage successfully run them simultaneously. I had 3 licences for FS and one for P3D and ran 4 PC’s linked via WidevieW and P3D was the “puppeteer”.
Just as you say, there was sometimes a distracting amount of lag in the network. However, it sometimes worked really well and I enjoyed the best of both sims.
Now, after FS update 10, I have been wondering if the lag would be minuscule if both sims ran on the single machine.
Has anyone already tried this?
#Ephidrin87 “. . . it‘s much more feasible to find a way to connect your hardware to MSFS.” You would think so. And many many people have done so. As have I. Sometimes. However, in my case, what works for Microsoft today might not work tomorrow. Indeed, I have had myself disconnected from FS2020 mid flight and watched helplessly as my Baron spiral dived in to the ground. Not a nice experience for anyone that I might be trying to introduce to the joys of aviation. (My sim is dual control and I want to share the experience with others.)
I also have problems with the Asobo rendition of the Beech Baron and cannot seem to blend my analog cockpit with the Asobo glass cockpit. The list goes on. In the end it gets to seem more feasible to use the P3D flight modelling and FS2020 for scenery.
If it worked for you on two different computers you can also setup a virtual machine to run P3D on your Windows installation - this will allow the same operations as with some additional computer but on the same device.
Performance however will in any way worse running such stuff simultaneously, at least if you don’t have access to the MSFS cloud version (which on the other hand doesn’t feature Simconnect, FSUIPC or any community content).
If you run the two Sims on the same OS instance, windows scheduler may not be smart enough to schedule them on seperate dedicated cores, and then MSFS needs to be the primary foreground application and the P3D needs to run and process your inputs as a background process. i don’t know how good this will run.
The suggestion provided by @Delta2k5 is the most feasible solution which should be doable. But there is a CAVEAT. You will have better latency than a seperate PC solution as the data will travel over host only network. You can get good performace too, you need to have virtualization enabled in bios, but ideally you need a beefy CPU, 12-16 cores, a lot of technical know-how on how to set up VMs with dedicated CPU pinning and most importantly you will need hardware PCIe pass through for the GPU to be available in the VM as well, ideally you would want a low powered 2nd GPU which can reasonably run P3D in your system so that you can pass it to the VM. In the vm you should put a dedicated SSD as storage to reduce streaming latency.
You can try this and let us know how it went. It’s an interesting problem for sure. Just not sure if the fight is worth it. But good luck to you.
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#AbhishekDey1594 I think you are right to doubt whether the “fight” will be worth it. At present I my CPU is a humble Intel Core i9-11900K 8 Core @ 3.5GHz Skylake. So I would have to spend a lot of money to double the cores. That might be a difficulty for me.
Thanks for your helpful comments.
I have uploaded a picture of my present simulator for you to see what I am trying to work with.
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If your home cockpit is a DirectX one the controls are 100% compatible as this is native Windows compliant. If not use any virtual joystick emulator software that can turn your home cockpit into one or multiple DirectX controllers (it will just remap the axis/buttons to native DirectX ones).
Cheers
That’s one sick looking setup… don’t know about your budget, but if you don’t plan on updating anytime soon, a 5950x and am4 mobi combo will be pretty cheap. But it’s a dead end platform with no viable upgrade path. But still tough to recommend to shell out the cash for that as we aren’t even sure how good will it run.
If you are willing to risk a bit of instability for a while, i think try and run both sims natively at the same time and see what happens, you may be pleasently surprised. If it works, great, if not, you have to clean that system if any instability arises because of it.
I guess there’s only one way to find out for sure - as you say, try it
Have you checked wether SPAD.Next could offer a solution here?
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It seems strange to me that with your advance setup you are not focussing on either upgrading your controls or much more likely focus on connecting your controls to MSFS directly. I understand that is what in a way you are trying to achieve, but it seems to me to be a bit of a ‘patch’ job.
I think you should focus on MSFS. In the long run it will be more productive both in time and reliability.
You should aim at having the most unified setup with the least number of elements I think. Somehow it seems to me to be complete overkill and drain on resources to duplicate so much of what simulators have to run to work, just to connect controllers. A lot of extra load baggage you dont need.
#DimDB, First of all, welcome to the forum. I have Spad.Next running but not sure what the “solution” that you mention is related to. Please elaborate.
#CynicalLake3917 what would “upgrading my controls” look like? Bear in mind that I have built a replica of the Baron that I flew (many years ago), using the controls removed from that aircraft and the drawings in its Maintenance Manual as the plans for my simulator. Recreating the experiences I had was the original motivation for this project. Sharing that with my grandchildren and friends is also top level priority.
I have no interest in aircraft that I have never actually had a license, or rating, to fly.
The Asobo Baron G58 is the only Baron available to use in FS2020 isn’t it?
My aircraft is a Beechcraft D55. This is an analog instrument panel with the Garmin GNS530.
In P3D all I need to do is replace the default Baron’s GPS with the GNS530 by a simple edit of the aircraft.cfg file and I have a near perfect replica of the Baron I flew… We can’t do this in FS2020 can we? The files are encrypted and inaccessible aren’t they?
To achieve what I want, because of the limitations in FS2020, I am forced to do a “patch up job” as you say and I agree whole heartedly with all of your comments.
Sounds like
might be of interest here.
#Steeler2340 that software looks like a nice simple alternative to other options that facilitate multiplayer scenarios. It will be worth looking at for my situation though. Wideview is more directly aimed at synchronising networked PCs for scenery displays Multiple monitors for Flight Simulator | WidevieW and Widetraffic…
I like MSFS the best
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#Soap9689 would you please explain how your comment relates to the question that was asked in the very first line of this post?