I have been planning a home cockpit for the Cessna Longitude using mobiflight, 3d printer, arduino’s, etc. My plan is to have 3 x 65" tv’s running at 1080p (all thats really needed for scenery) running off my 3080Ti. I also want to have the main PFD, MFD, and the pilot/center g3000 running from pop outs from the sim (total of 4 extra screens). Been doing alot of reading on it, and I dont think there are many options:
Use a bunch of android tablets with software like Spacedesk. The problem here is you will find the holy grail before you find a 4:3 aspect ratio android tablet. And sizes larger then 10.4 inch get expensive.
A 2nd graphics card. I do have an older gtx sitting around somewhere, but I have no room on my motherboard for another card.
Move to xplane 12 and use my old computer as a second display through the network… start all over with the programming.
I really like option 3. You can buy cheap custom sized screens with controllers which are perfect for home cockpits, but need to be sure I will have enough HDMI outputs for them. Would like to know what others have done, and welcome any advice.
2 Lower Touch Panels (15.6" WIMAXIT) mounted on brackets that attach to the Honeycomb Yolk and Throttle - GPU (HDMI)
24" Monitor On Right - GPU (HDMI)
iPad on Left and Right - Space Desk
Tablet on yolk - Space Desk
Tablet on far left - Charts via WIFI
I have another 24" touch monitor on the way to mount as a true overhead, I will put this on the GPU has HDMI and move the monitor on the right to a HDMI to USB.
Performance wise (USB to HDMI) is hit and miss, some get quite a bit of FPS loss, others get none, may depend on quality?
The better option, install a secondary cheap GPU to drive non main monitors this is what @Crunchmeister71 is doing now.
USB to HDMI works well. I use a dual HDMI in my setup for my secondary touch screens for Air Manager just like @skypilotYTS ’ setup. In fact, his setup is a copy of what I was using previously before upgrading my touch screens.
You take a very small performance hit from running USB to HDMI or Spacedesk, as this is a software-based solution, but it’s negligible overall. Just don’t try to run the main sim window off these solutions and you’re golden.
You can tell by the location of the fingerprints on your right screen exactly where the CJ4 MCDU was. lol
Like the air manager setup. The only thing i would change is i didnt want all the knobs/buttons in the screens. I can make those myself (for me its just more immersive at the expense of alot of work). Can air manager produce all the individual popout screens?
I also noted while playing with the popouts that my fps took a HUGE hit as soon as i opened one. On a single 1080p screen, i went from 60 to 30fps. That could be a problem lol. Assuming this is a bug. Irregardless, will try out the usb to hdmi just to see how it performs.
The knobs / buttons are not in the screens (assuming you are talking about on the left hand side of each of the 15.6" touch screens?
Those are Knobsters that were purchased seperately, the custom brackets have spots for them but they are not a requirement. But it makes interacting with the knobs in the cockpit allot easier.
If you are talking about the actual switches in the Air Manager panels, that is the whole idea behind Air Manager, to avoid making switches, etc… which allows you to easily switch between planes versus dedicated hardware setups.
Air Manager does NOT reproduce the pop outs, they are simply overlays for the pop outs. There are only a few exceptions in MSFS that actually does this.
XPlane 12 is actually going this way where you won’t need pop outs, but MSFS is mainly pop outs.
As for FPS loss, that is system dependent really but is getting better.
For example, SU10 on DX12 I have minimal FPS loss, DX11, quite a bit.
FWIW, if you have an Intel CPU with an APU (aka iGPU) then you can run a couple of extra screens off the internal graphics, there’s usually an HDMI out and a DisplayPort out on the motherboard. At boot time the APU-connected displays will be cloned, but you can change that once booted in Windows to extend your desktop onto both of them as extra screens. Pop-outs run just fine on APU screens. I’ve had mixed results with USB to HDMI solutions, though if you have Thunderbolt on your motherboard (still quite rare) then you can drive a chain of displays directly from there.
At the moment I have 5 displays attached to one PC with 3 on my 3080 Ti and 2 on the APU, plus an iPad with Spacedesk for some aircraft. It all works pretty well and FPS drop is small in DX12.
Amd cpu, but wasnt aware of the dx12 increase. Will give it a try. Went ahead and ordered the usb converter and a few 7 inch touch displays for the g3000. Will post results once i have everything up amd running.
Just a follow up. Received the starTech USB to 4 HDMI output converter and 7" LCD displays. Running 3 x 1080p displays off the 3080Ti, and the other 4 off the converter. Everything seems to be running well, but noted the following:
The StarTech runs pretty warm… almost hot.
The touch screen for the 7" displays doesn’t work well (very laggy, and not usable at the moment). So close to a mouse free experience! I have read of others reporting the same issue. I tried the pop out manager mod from flightsim.to, but was unable to make it work. Will keep playing with it when I have time.
DX12 seems to clear up the huge FPS hit when using pop outs. FPS is still fairly smooth provided I don’t try and run 4k off the main screens. (with a AMD 5600X, and GPU bound).
The mouse seems to be all over the place or “offset” when trying to click on anything from the main screen or popout panels. So annoying. I have read the turning off lens correction fixes this. Mine is already off, and it won’t give me the option to turn it on, so not sure what to do there.
Am in the process of making CAD files for the 3d printer enclosures. Wondering if anyone has suggestions for the knobs/encoders. I could always 3d print those as well, but much easier to buy.
Curious about this, I tried the same thing connecting a display to my motherboard via HDMI. However, when I would then pop out an instrument panel to it, my frames would drop by nearly half. When I plug that same monitor into my GPU (3090) HDMI and pop out…no frame loss. Running DX12 in both instances. Curious if you have any tips on how you made it work using the motherboard HDMI?
My specs are 12900K CPU and RTX 3090 GPU…so i’m thinking I should have enough horsepower to get to a (nearly) mouseless setup…
I just tried space desk popping out a GTC in the Longitude to an ipad… Before the popout, while sitting idle on the ramp, I was getting about 70fps…after the popout it drops to around 42. I can pop them out to just a normal monitor connected to my GPU and get zero frame drop, but popping to the ipad via space desk it takes a considerable hit. You don’t experience that?
The frame rate loss on popout is a known issue that’s been there since launch. There’s an extensive thread about it in the bug forum from back in 2020.
If you’re using DX12, you shouldn’t lose any significant frame rate no matter what. That’s something they fixed in SU11.
With DX11, you can pop out instruments together in that single popout window and you don’t lose frame rate. You shoudl be able to move that anywhere. But the second you separate those windows, you’ll be losing about 30 fps. That frame rate loss is even worse if you’re using vsync.
That’s so weird. Yeah, i’m on DX12, but I also have vysnc enabled, i’ll have to try turning that off and see if it helps. Yeah I popped out a GTC using pop out panel manager (so the touch controls would work correctly) and once it popped out to its window I slid it over to the ipad, and yeah…30 or so FPS drop. It’s weird.
I’m going to try and get away from the ipad as a connected screen altogether if possible. Gonna pop out the PFD/MFD’s onto a couple 14" LCD monitor screens, and then probably just get a single 7" touch screen display and use that for a GTC. I love sleuthing these message boards before trying stuff, though, helps save me from making $$$ mistakes haha.
Does anyone know where the “wraparound projection screen” display technique stands since they released multi monitor support? I assume the guys who did it before, using 3 projectors or whatever, were just stretching the initial image? Are they now able to use render windows to help make it look/work better? I’ve seen FlyWithRookie’s setup on YouTube, curious if something similar could be run off one computer (12900K and 3090). Even if it just help 30FPS consistently i’d be happy hahaha.
The popout thing’s been a pain the collective ■■■■■ of many of us cockpit builders for a long time now. We’re all hoping they get it sorted. They did briefly fix it in the first SU10 beta then promptly broke it again with the subsequent build.
Does anyone have the cockpit dimensions, g5000 screens etc. for the longitude? Also thinking of building it completely by myself. I already use mobiflight and Spacedesk with two 7" fire tabs from amazon, but also with heavy frame drops - but “as real as it gets”
Just an update to this…I completely uninstalled and reinstalled my Nvidia card driver (went ahead and updated to the latest game ready version while I was at it). Did a clean install so it would reset all other settings as well. Promptly went into MSFS, opened up a flight, and then started popping out panels…3fps max frame drop. There was some setting somewhere with my GPU that was causing the issue. So right now I’m able to pull the PFD and MFD out on to 2 14" LCD monitor screens, as well as the GTC’s onto my ipad via spacedesk (although I hope to change this soon) and I went from 60fps sitting on the ramp (I have vsync enabled so it was capping me at 60) and once I pop out panels, 57fps steady.
Edit: forgot to add, my two 14" LCDs I have connected my motherboard GPU. I had tried this before, thinking it would help save resources from my 3090 GPU for the game, but got the massive rate drops. Now that I know that wasn’t the issue, I plugged them back into the motherboard ports and they work great. Allows me to reserve the 3090 GPU ports for a 3 monitor/3 projector view…someday
Keep messing with the pop out manager mod…in my experience (popping out the GTCs onto an ipad) you MUST have that mod running, otherwise the touch function doesn’t work at all. Once I got the mod installed, the GTCs popped out to the ipad, and everything set up correctly it works like a dream. Perfect touch functions, no lag.
