There is only one viable option and it’s Air Manager. Not sure where you are looking but there are 1000’s of default community instruments across multiple aircraft. Think of the add-ons just like an aircraft add-on for the Sim. It takes plenty of time, effort and skill to produce them hence why there are higher quality payware options.
There is a lot going on the discords. These are the URLs for the Discords. I don’t know whether you can acces them without an invitaion. Someone else can chime in about the invitations.
Sad but true, AirManager is the only game in town.
I find it overpriced for what it is with an outdated UI and a limited number of instruments (many of wich dont work) you are indeed mostly reliant on buying additional ones, hoping for free ones or makng them yourself.
How exactly are you coming to this conclusion. Not from the forum I hope. There is an active community and new instruments and panels coming all the time. As with most community things there is always an element that want everyone one else to do the work for free while they just take.
“…..There is only one viable option and it’s Air Manager. Not sure where you are looking but there are 1000’s of default community instruments across multiple aircraft…..”
Where are the “1000’s” ?
My opinion that there are an abnormally large number of influencers here desperately trying to sell their partly extremely overpriced stuff is increasingly being confirmed.
If you had the application which it sounds like you don’t you would see the 1000’s of instruments available for use. Please don’t make comment on things of which you know not a lot and then diss anyone else trying to tell you the actual facts. If you actually understood what was involved in making instruments and how big the niche market is I’d like to think you’d have a completely different opinion. I’m afraid your finding’s are sadly lacking and you seem not to want to listen to information being presented. I wonder the point of asking the original question.
For @CubeStore, it’s worth noting that all of the current Simstrumentation instruments are hosted on the SimInnovations library within Air Manager. The GitHub is not the place to get them. The Simstrumentation project itself is somewhat on hold as a lot of the contributors are taking time out from it, so I wouldn’t expect to see much new there for a while, but the Discord is useful.
If you’re in Air Manager, you can add any of these instruments or panels by searching in the community library, which you can also see the contents of here: Community instruments – Sim Innovations.
But as @Sling380 says, there are many instruments available, and on the Simstrumentation Discord people will often provide details of their projects and work in progress. And Sling’s paid-for panels are the best out there, well worth the investment if you fly an aircraft they cover (which is a lot of them).
All that said, I do wish there was another way to do this, given the sheer number of aircraft out there. You could do things with FSX/P3D that you simply can’t do now. Pop-out 2D panels (not just glass displays), panel-only view windows + touch support native to the sim, etc. All stuff we’ve lost in MSFS. It’s a real shame.
Edit: Air Manager is not the prettiest application out there, certainly, it has that ‘UI made by developers’ feel about it (my own UIs look pretty terrible for the same reason) but I can’t agree that it’s overpriced. For what it does, it’s good value, and the SI developers are passionate about what they do. It’s smaller developers like them that actually keep this ecosystem going, otherwise you’d have no option for panels at all.
For Airbus the WinCtrl hardware is a clone of the real plane and Mobiflight supports all of it. There are almost no accurate airliner PFD, ND, EICAS etc available in AirManager.
As a retired developer I know a huge amount of work is needed to write the code for an airliner PFD, ND in the AM script language and decided against it.
For individual guages like the Cessna or General Aviation AM is wonderful.
Sorry but that’s simply incorrect. There are airliner instruments/panels for A32x, A380, B737, B777, B747 and B787. They might not all be AM community instruments but they are all available today.
Why are you expecting that. It’s not a native display it requires the display from the sim just like other avionics. It’s not possible to re do all that externally from the sim without all the necessary data to drive it which is not made available. It’s the same deal for any hardware too. No such thing from WinCtrl or anyone else for the same reasons.
