So I am thinking about using Air Manager for my panels but I wanted to check this before spending the time setting it all up.
Does it affect FPS that much?
Hi Tearless
For me its bad. I lost about 10-15 FPS.
I pop out 2 instruments and for the first one i lost 10 ish FPS, but for the other one i only lost 1 or 2 more FPS.
I have not investigated so much though as im currently have issues with my saved controller profiles.
There is however a video on Youtube showing how to fix this FPS drop issue IF you have a internal GPU on your motherboard. You connect the screen for Air Manager to the motherboard instead of the GPU, this way you will only lose a couple of FPS.
Myself is using Spacedesk on 2 tablets, and for that the above “fix” does not help.
//Chris
Air manager itself does not affect frame rates. The issue is when you pop out a window in the sim, you take a hit where or not using Air manager. This is an issue within the sim itself.
I know when I pop out a window in the sim it usually affects FPS for me when Ive tried. I was just wondering whether Air Manager made the situation any better as I haven’t used it before. The extra FPS is better for me personally instead of having an external pop out with less FPS. The extra FPS really makes a difference to the immersion and feels a lot more fluid. A lot of people day 30fps is enough but the difference between 30 and 50 for example is definitely noticeable.
It’s a shame there’s isn’t something that works like Navigraph where it connects to the sim but can actually display gauges or even the G1000. That way I could use my iPad as an external monitor without using the main PC GPU. The iPad is more than capable to handle a pop out G1000 surely.
I literally just bought the software this morning. If you’re just using it for gauges instead of buying separate/ dedicated instrument panels, you don’t need to drag anything or use windows second screen at all and it doesn’t seem to affect my fps one bit.
I bought this for 51 quid and am happy just using the predefined Cessna 152 panel setup. If I were to do the same thing with separate logitech instrument panels, it would have cost me at least a grand for 8 modules. 51 quid vs a grand, and you can then see what good value it actually it.
Luckily I already had an old laptop that I run it on. Easy to use, easy to install, and for a basic instrument panel it works great. The laptop has a touch screen and this works too, even with such a basic setup. I can manually set alt and hdg directly on the touch screen.
I did also set up a custom panel already, including a few extra instruments that are not shown on the predefined panel for c152 (such as fuel gauges, suction, etc etc). They all work too and I can also use touch screen to set flaps and parking brake if I want to… although on a 10 inch screen, I’m probably gonna stick with the default layout of just the basic 8 pack. To make it easier to see.
Anyways, yeah, if you just use it, as is, without dragging panels from the sim itself, fps doesn’t seem to be affected at all with this setup.
That’s good to know I didn’t realise you could do that and it not affect performance. Do the gauges work with any aircraft or do you have to use them with the 152?
What monitor do you have displaying this?
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I’ve only treid it with the 152, as i’m still very new to it all, so haven’t ventured into trying larger aircraft yet.
It’s just displayed on my laptop/tablet’s inbuilt 10" touchscreen monitor. I suppose it would also work if i plugged in an external monitor to the laptop if i wanted a bigger screen too.
No hit using AM with steam gauges. After the implementation of VR last year, that’s when popping out windows affected FpS. This needs to be fixed by Asobo.
This is a bit mis-leading because Air Manager does not cause the FPS drop. The FPS drop is caused by popping out instrument windows from MSFS. If you run an Air Manager panel that doesn’t use pop outs you’ll barely notice a difference.
The gauges generally will work with any aircraft but it depends on what sim connect events and variables the aircraft uses. So as an example if 2 aircraft use the default variable for heading and the Air Manager gauge is programmed to use the default heading then it will work on both and probably more. When they don’t work they can usually be modified quite easily to use a different variable or event. This sometimes is required with third party aircraft because the devs may use custom ones in lieu of the sim defaults or just because it’s a feature that the sim doesn’t have a default for.
You are totally right, I should have been more clear about this. Its only if you pop out, lets say Garmin 430/530 or G1000 you get the FPS hit. But in many cases this is what you want to do and then use Air Managers Bessel to control the buttons etc.
For any other simple instruments its fine, i just wish there where a solution for the G1000 etc without the big FPS hit.
Thanks for pointing it out though.
Yep the sim pop out issue is for Asobo to fix. Vote it up if you haven’t already.
Yea… AM is great, i use it all the time. The popouts will kill FPS bad if I have Vsinc on or frame limiter set in nvidia control panel. I get 15fps with that stuff on and 40fps with it off on my system. just saying what worked for me…
I bought it a while ago……most of the instruments and panels available are designed for X-Plane. I am going back to Sim Plug-ins, which are easier to configure for the novice. Air Manager is prettier no doubt, but I find Sim Plugins more user friendly….unless of course you are a lot more software savvy than I.
The graphics with the Sim Plugins Panel Builder are not up to standard as far as I’m concerned. It’s over 10 years old and it shows. Many of the most common instruments on Air Manager have had MSFS support added now that the SDK has improved a bit.
No argument re graphics…just the interface is not as friendly to non software people as myself. The after sales support was prompt with Air Manager, I must admit.
MSFS SDK is a handbrake at the moment, hopefully once it improves, AM will add more instruments for this sim.
They already have and more are added on an ongoing basis. Not sure what your issue is with the user interface. As with most apps it takes a little learning to get to know how to do things but I wouldn’t say it’s at all difficult. Making or modding instruments you do need a bit more knowledge for, but again the basics are easily learnt.
Point taken…I’ll check out You Tube for tutorials again…see what is available…didn’t have a lot of success some months ago.
It’s called Simionic! An app available on the Apple App Store. Be aware though that the developer doesn’t maintain it regularly but it works for G1000 plane without impacting fps