I came over from XBox a couple of months back, wanted more
Built a PC with 12900K/RTX3080ti and was using it on a 32" monitor, wanted more…
Bought a HP Reverb G2, impressed with 3D but very disappointed in clarity of PFD/FMC etc plus the tiny sweet spot was very irritating…
Bought a TrackIR and just cannot get on with it despite many hours of tweaking.
Ripped the office apart and shoehorned-in three 50" 4K tv’s, multi-picture is great, peripheral vision is great, but to get the image correct it needs mega-zoom (50-60%) and then I lose the instruments from view.
So, my last effort in obtaining what i desire is to add more stuff. I’m thinking home cockpit build with panels or boxes or…?
What options are best when I like to fly GA from the 152 to the CJ4 and all in between, but want realistic displays - not really one size fits all.
Is there anything here for me or have i just burnt myself out looking for the impossible pot of gold?
Personally Id wait about 6 months, to see what is going to happen in the sim. They know that the home CP builders are complaining about things, and they are working on it slowly but surely…
So before investing any more cash Id wait it out. use the 3 screens and get used to the tracker for the time being since you’d have to look down and around to change things in a real plane.
You are almost there. It seems the best solution is to have the instruments on separate monitors in a setup that’s not unlike a real aircraft where you look up and out the windows and down at the instrument panel. There are many examples of this in the ‘post your cockpit pictures here’ thread of this forum. The most versatile setup which allows many different aircraft to be flown is to use Air Manager, a pair of 20-24” touch screens and a great little gizmo called knobster.
I think 6 months is a bit keen, from what i have read home CP is a tiny fraction of FS2020 user base so will get very little attention, they may be wrong though.
I just seen on SimInnovations/Airmanager website that it can run on a Raspberry Pi ?? I have two of those spare plus a few Raspberry Pico boards - i used to mess with robotics etc
If it can run on a Pi that would solve the connection issue - they can run 2 x 4k HDMI outputs.
Or get a “Pluggable” USB output??
Is there enough panel support for the planes I like - Cessna 152, 172, 208B, CJ4 ???
I could fit a 22" touch-panel in where the cardboard is - seems reasonable??
I wouldn’t recommend using Rpi or a second PC. You can’t use pop outs with a second machine so it needs to be connected to the sim PC. If you have run out of outputs that’s pretty normal for this kind of setup but you have a few options that include using the inbuilt cpu gpu, an additional gpu card or a usb to hdmi adapter.
Yes the HDMI adapters just have a standard USB plug that goes into a USB port on your PC.
The popouts do not persist between flights but there is a great little App called POPM (pop out panel manager) that automates the popping out, sizing and placement that can be set to do it’s thing upon aircraft load. It even adds a pseudo touch feature that enables use of those instruments that have touch screens such as the GTN’s and G3X.
Yes they work with any USB. They don’t take anything from your existing GPU but they will use some CPU. They are effectively another mini low powered GPU. They are ok for simple stuff like instrument panels and additional monitors running other sim apps, web browser etc.
So, it seems I have ordered two 15.6" touch panels, a Pluggable 2xHDMI adapter, AirManager software and a Knobster
Just wondering when using USB-HDMI adapters, how many screens can you run?
I’m thinking of the CJ4 with PFD/MFD on one panel, the FMC and some buttons on the other seems ok but in the C208 it would have the G1000 PFD on one panel and the MFD G1000 on the other - there is barely any room for buttons so maybe need 3 panels for maximum ability???
If you would of asked for advice on screen size for use with Air Manager I would of highly recommended 20-24” touch monitors. The smaller size seems quite popular because of cost but their biggest drawback is the lack of real estate. It depends what you want to display but if you pretty much want the full instrument panel at a realistic size like me, you need this larger size.
Here’s some of mine.
Having used a pair of 15.6" screens for over a year, I can completely back up Sling’s point. You lack real estate. On top of the touch screens, I was also using a pair of tablets with SpaceDesk to add extra real estate for Air Manager. Particularly on the more complex planes like the CJ4.
I’ve since upgraded to 22", and it’s basically a night and day difference. I still use one of my 15.6" screens in my setup as a pedestal / console for planes that require instruments there. But now, pretty much everything fits just fine on my 22" screens.
A few examples of what you can do with Air Manager and a couple of nice size screens:
I agree there is generally no substitute for going large but the 15.6" were very low cost compared to 22" etc so I could if needed get three 15.6" for less than the cost of two 22" ones.
I’ll try these out for now and alter as needed in time, pretty much blew my budget on the three 50" screens
What resolution and connection method are you using BTW ?
I’d argue that you get much better usable screen real estate from 2 x 22" than 3 x 15.6". That size difference is not negligible. The amount of extra stuff you can fit on them, plus have them life-size in many cases, makes a huge difference. You can literally fit double the amount of instruments on the larger screen, and they’re still bigger and more usable than on the small one.
But use what you’re getting. I quite effectively used the pair of 15.6" for over a year and it was a complete game changer for me. I made the upgrade to 22" fairly recently and definitely wouldn’t go back. But that’s not saying the smaller screens are bad in any way. They’re just a bit limiting. But I do conceed they’re quite affordable compared to larger screens.
