Russ, just want to thank you for the years of help, A bit older then you and my flying has been on the shelf for MANY years. Cancer is NOT fun. Enjoy everything you have done and it is so obvious that you are doing it for US. Such unselfish sacrifices.
Great work Russ!!! This is going to be a game changer. I've got a 2080 card... In my enclosure sim, I'm going to use this for a second touch screen plus a second station behind and to the right. The goal is to have a right seat crewmember have the G1000 MFD and be able to use the radios. I'm in CAP, and a CRM trainer would be really helpful! My wife wants to make radio calls on PilotEdge for when we fly in real world. Great work, man! Thanks a ton, man!
Sounds great! I was hoping others would see some usefulness in this as I did. Glad your wife is enjoying the hobby too. I tried to convince my wife to get involved and to serve as a flight attendant and bring me coffee at regular intervals while I fly the sim... but to no avail. :)
Thanks for all your videos. Put out more videos as they are very helpful. How about a series on all that you can learn in a simulator before stepping on an actual plane? I’m learning to fly and all the schools in my area (Long Island, NY) are recommending to do it while taking lessons with them. I have the gliem xplane training software and it’s really nice to practice what I learn without the expense. I went for my intro flight and the instructor was impressed with what I learned from just stimming.
Great vídeo captain. Lot of info. Very usefull. I'm trying to built mine too. And ofcourse i allways see your recomendations. I have seen all the simulators in the internet and nobody explains like you. however you have the best sim. Thanks for sharing.
Russ, nice job. You always do a great job in your videos. I, too, have three monitors connected to a triple-head-to-go and running my instruments on an iPad with Air Manager. I have a few Logitech peripherals with everything mounted in a panel. Using one desktop, the best frame rate I can get is 19 FPS. Your video seems like a great solution, but I do have a second desktop with a second copy of XP11 that I would like to try in tandem. Can you do a video on how to connect two desktops and the settings for each to maximize the frame rates?
Hi thank you for replaying to my comment yesterday on your. channel. I will see next year that the future holds and about building a very descend computer system.
Hi Russ, great video, it's a lot of work and greatly appreciated. Quick question... Are you using a scenery add-on for L.A.? It looks a bit more realistic than the default scenery.
Hi Russ, Thank you for all the great videos. Question when you connect both 15.6 screens together does it become one whole screen or are they separate screens.
Idk if you ever considered this but there is apparently also software that allows you to extend your displays with a tablet. Personally I only fiddled with this shortly with a VNC solution. That comes with a certain network lag, of course, but should be fine for some MFD like extensions.
Hi Russ. Thank you for your hard and awesome work. I have a computer with only two HDMI inputs. How do I connect a third monitor that would provide the best quality image? Do you happen to have a picture of your monitors, computer connections? Thank you
Sorry for the delay in answering but I was at Oshkosh for the big fire fly in. I think I have several videos that show my set up. Look for one that says something like Vulcan speed test. Really busy right now but if you can’t find it let me know and I’ll give you a link
If i understand this is like a usb hub but for video. Your problem was you didn t have enough video port from that single card to plug all monitor. That s a problem with mid tier graphic card, a 1080 ti would solve both your framerate and video port problem. But a great video for those having a similar issue.
Hei Russ, I am running 3 58" monitors for the visual, and 2 22" for instruments, on a single computer with a RTX 2080 Super, 4 from the video card and one from the main board, and frame rate is good. Can you use this methode to run monitor nr 6 or 7. Thinking about a overhead panel and a instructor panel.
Hi Russ. Thanks for the video. Interesting. Does CPU core amount count? A CPU with 16 cores versus 10 cores versus 8 cores or does it matter and you are just looking for GPU beefiness? In which case would you want to get a GPU with as much VRAM as possible? Does that make a difference do you think? I'm working toward a flight sim set-up kind of like yours. 3 x 65" (4K) TV monitors for external views running at 1080p and I have a 22" non-touch monitor for an air manager instrument panel behind a panel mask and a RealSim Gear GNS 530. But Santa was good to me and thanks to Black Friday Sale I received 2 x G5's from RealSim Gear. So I'll have 3 monitors for the externals and 4 monitors for the internals. Which was why I was asking about VRAM and more CPU cores, if that would help handle the load for one PC. Also, would two of the Pluggable UD-3900s work with one computer or is it just too much to ask? With two Pluggable UD-3900 in two USB 3.0 ports in the back of the computer, I was thinking the two UD-3900s, maybe can handle the low requirements of the RealSim Gear 530 and two G5's that would be installed. While the beefy GPU with 16 or more GBs of VRAM handle the three 65 inch TV's and the 22" monitor. Or, again, would this be just too much load for a single PC to handle and I'd be better off with two computers to divide the TV's and monitor screens so that the situation is less taxing on the computer. Although, I'm with you regarding have just one computer to deal with would be nice.
First XP and MSFS can’t utilize more than a couple cores so clock speed is more important than number of cores EXCEPT Air Manager and other programs can utilize the unused cores so there is some gain there. But 2D graphics like Air Manager and undocked windows don’t use that much GPU power. You will have a mess of screens. There is a pluggable version that supports up to three HD monitors so that might work for you. I’d give that a try and see what your fps are and how much you’re willing to dumb down the graphics settings to keep it smooth and flyable. I think a RTX 3070 card might be a solution to handle the graphics if your 1080 isn’t up to the job. Two computers are a solution you can always use if necessary but a single cpu is simpler to maintain.Good luck.
Hi Russ! I did this to run a second touch screen (3 4K 55" TVs at 80 degrees and now two touch screens with AirManager, and a home baked Knobster!). I get 25FPS in this setup on an i7 3GHZ and a 2080 card. It works fine! Thanks for the tip.
Russ, I purchase and configured UD-3900 and two WIMAXIT touchscreen monitors. All works with the mouse but not the touchscreen on the monitors. I can select the knobs on the Air Manager panels with the mouse and then control them with the knobster, but I am unable to select the knobs with the touchscreen. Suspect it is the way they are powered, but I have not been able to figure out how to properly connect to UD-3900/PC. Any help is appreciated.
With flight sims it is so easy to get carried away with more and more hardware for the setup. But I think the setup you've shown before, the one that includes a single large TV monitor coupled with a 15 inch touch screen mounted on top of a yoke, is the best middle ground for an immersive and realistic experience on a limited budget. Perhaps with MFS2020 comming to XBOX this summer, there will be an even less expensive way to achieve that. Also I enjoy your videos.You have a honest and smart approach to the hobby. I would've liked to see you post or live stream your flights, I'm sure with your vast experience there would be much to learn.
Definitely a wide range of sim users from pure gamers to serious real life pilots. Being an aeronautical engineer by education I am afraid tend to fall into the "carried away" with hardware category... just ask my wife.
Hey Russ I would like to connect 2 WIMAXIT 15.6 inch monitors that are to be placed Atop the honeycomb alpha and bravo panels and connect them using the USB-C ports on the monitors to my single USB C port on my computer.. I have a G force 2060 video card. And a Cyberpower PC with 32 gigs of ram, so I’m sure there is enough to drive the 2 monitors plus my 32” Curved Dell and a Lenovo second computer running in monitor mode... My question is how can I Attach the needed usb c ports on the monitors and connect them to the single usc c output on my computer.. I have a J5 hub with a C input , HDMI input and multiple USB 3.0 outputs incl usb 3.1. Can I use 2 usb c to usb 3.0 cables (one from each monitor) going to the hub connections and have touch screen capabilities via air manager panels on my x-plane Aircraft...both monitors also connect via HDMI and separate power right now I can use touch on 1 monitor by usb c direct connection to computer but the other monitor can only access the screen knobs via mouse.. Knobster works on both.. hope I laid out my dilemma and find the answer.. again keep the videos coming and fly safe.. Marty
Russ love all your videos. This is an item I can use. Do you have a video that uses multiple storage units. I have 8 TB and 14TB, want to use with Ortho4XP. I cant figure out to hook the drives up.
Sorry I haven’t gotten into Ortho4XP yet. As a pilot I am not quite as interested in scenery as I am in frame rate and cockpit functionality. MSFS is causing me to rethink that. To answer your question no experience in multiple storage as you describe.
Very interesting, thanks Russ. Do the touch screens still need to be connected via USB ports (for touch screen functionality) and if so can the ports on the hub be used?
Additionally (a little off topic, sorry) - if I used a NON-touch screen with Air Manager, could I bind the AM knobs to keystokes on (for example) a numeric keypad to select them and then control them with a Knobster? That would save me having to buy an additional touch screen. Thanks.
Yes you do need usb to support touch and yes the UD-3900 ports will work... usb2.0 are plenty good for that And for some reason AM Doesn’t support keyboard binding...I think they’re going for realism and keyboards don’t usually fit that mode
@@rbarlow Thanks Russ. Annoyingly, my touch screen is optical as opposed to resistive/capacitive, so I can't put a physical instrument panel in front of it without it triggering an unwanted touch response :-/
You can. Until Vulkan AMD processors were dogs with XP as NVidia was also the only effective GPUs. That is why I have only that equipment. You probably should do some research on X-Plane.org to see other's experiences. Rumors I hear is that the gap has mostly closed and considering AMP price advantages it may make sense.
Yes currently with MSFS and XP12 you have to pop out the navigation display screens to use in the panels. That will change for XP12 when Air Manager 4.2 is released in a month or two. Then they will be streamed and appear in the bezel instruments themselves with no action required.
So If I buy what Microsoft considers optimal for fs2020, would the addition of this make a set up like yours possible? I recently went to a best buy (I know, eye roll time) and they didn't believe any current production computer could run more than 3 monitors (or tvs) .... I am looking at the wide screen curved monitors for a sim.
Running three screens and running MSFS on three screens is quite different. Until the implement true multi motor support we really are just guessing on performance.
Usb 3.0 but there is a USB-C version of these docking stations too which theoretically has higher bandwidth. I don’t think the extra bandwidth is needed but the many laptops use USB-C connections
Hello Russ! I’ve been using this device and have to say it works great! However I have a question that maybe you can help with. I am currently running 1 Windows 10 Pc with 5 monitors all together. 3 coming out of my 2080ti graphics card labeled by my PC as 1,3,2 from left to right that I use for X-Plane 11, or just #3 for MSFS And the 2 Wimaxit 15.6 monitors plugged into the Plugable, showing in Windows 10 as 4 and 5 left to right that I use for Air Manager and a knobster. Now the issue I have is in Air Manager it assigns any new panels I build to the Wimaxit monitors reversed. 4 is 5 and 5 is 4. No big deal but I’m afraid to use Pop Weasel fearing it may assign my changes to the wrong monitors. (The monitors show as A,B,C,D,E vs. numbers, in Pop Weasel?) I’ve searched all thru the sim innovations forum but I’m not seeing anything that addresses this. Any ideas? Thank you.
Pop weasel takes the actual coordinates assigned by windows to each monitor and displays them in the selection dialog based on that. I would look at that and correlate the letter to the monitor in the correct position. I think it should work. Just be sure the monitors are really as you think they are by moving the mouse from monitor to monitor to be sure they really are as you think they are.
@@rbarlow thanks for the reply Russ. I did previously do as you suggested, confirming with the mouse the correct position and assignments. As I mentioned, Windows shows them correctly, just not Air Manager. I submitted the same question I asked you on the Air Manager forum but haven’t seen any reply there yet. Thanks again.
Oh my! Thanks for this information! I just wish it was about 3 days and $600 sooner! I just purchased a second PC to run those 2 new Wimaxit touch screens I also just purchased. Oh well. Good news is I had not purchased a second instance of X-plane yet. This also answer my question about which computer do you connect you hardware. I am curious, how this works verses say a Matrox dual-head or triple-head to go. Also just a side note on my I9900 PC. I don’t be think I can use my onboard graphics. When I purchased my I9900 processor, I opted for the what I think is a KF vs K which doesn’t include onboard graphics and I figured with a GeForce 2080ti card I wouldn’t need that. Now I’m wishing it would be nice to have that reserved availability. Live a learn and most of my learning on this sim setup stuff is from you Russ, thank you again for you continued sharing and efforts. Last note.. I just bought the masonite to build a panel similar to the one your showing. You and your work is TrueType inspirational!
Good news is that the K can be overclocked if you need more cpu to keep up with your GPU. I think it does what a Matrox triple or dual head display adapter does. You are still reliant on the GPU in your computer. I just really liked the firm factor and cost
I have been running my 3 displays (each 1920x1080) on Matrox Triple Digital Edition - single monitor to windows - since early days on FSX and when I switched over the x-plane 11 when it released. I have i7 6700 OC 4.3 with Geforce 1080TI 11GB, and get between 30 to 60 FPS depending on location/weather/plane I am flying. I do have GeForce 970 running 2 monitors with pop outs, as well main monitor, on board vga port for main monitor - right now I am CPU bound and occasionally I dip into the high teens for FPS The one thing I have read is with X-Plane it takes less load on graphics to draw 1 large screen than 3 smaller screens of the over all same resolution. I could have mis-read that information, but seems to make sense - as the more windows/pop outs I did the lower FPS I was getting. Yea you can sink $$$ doing experimenting, but channels like this one give new ideas on various configurations :)
I use a Plugable 4K DisplayPort and HDMI Dual Monitor Adapter (model USBC-6950U). It will power up to 2x 4K monitors, but without all the extra USB ports, Ethernet, etc. I use it with MSFS. My main monitors are run from the ports on my GPU, and my 2 Wimaxit monitors are run from the Plugable unit. It works great.
I got a Wimaxit monitor for just this purpose but it won’t work with a USB-C 3.0 port. It has to have a USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 port which my otherwise capable computer doesn’t have. How did you get past that problem?
is something similar possible in FS 2020? i'm a newb, and i chose FS 2020 because of the beautiful scenery. i have a very powerful GPU and processor. i have no problem running with good framerate on a single 4k monitor. 3 monitors @ 1080p, plus 2 on the DisplayLink should perform well.
Yes Air Manager is compatible with FS2020but only the beta version 4.0 which is nit released yet. It is a public beta that you can download free ans try. I have featured it on a couple recent videos, the main hold up is the fact the MSFS SDK is not fully completed yet. You can go to the Sim Innovations website and go tho the wiki. There are download links for Air Manager 4. Beta and the simulator plugin installer. The free beta will work until the official release.
I'm also using a 4K 43" TV for X-Plane 11.5 on a very robust i9 9900K (over-clocked at 4.9 GHZ) 64 GB of DDR4 RAM, a 1 TB NVME 2.0 SSD, on an Asus ROG motherboard, and a GeForce 1080 ti 11 GB VRAM. I average about 50 FPS around Los Angeles with most XP 11.5 graphics settings (with Vulcan) at maximum, and at a resolution of 1920 x 1080. The FPS average increases to about 70-75 FPS with areas out in the wilderness.The reason for the low resolution setting I have is the refresh rate on the TV, which like most TVs is only 60 HZ, so if I set the resolution to a higher ratio the refresh rate drops to about 32-35 HZ. That's the drawback of most TVs, but for XP 11.5 the resolution setting I have is sufficient.
@@rbarlow There are newer 40-inch and larger TVs with higher refresh rates upwards of 120 HZ and I'll be looking at getting one of them in the very near future.
Yes but often some custom datarefs are used for payware aircraft to make systems more accurate. In these cases some modification of the instruments may be needed. Usually not that hard to do. Many users on the Forums at Sim Innovations will help.
Sure. For X-Plane all the graphics are still processed by one card though and the second card just acts as a port to the monitors it is hooked up to. Other programs like Air Manager can take advantage of the second card. If you have a GPU sitting around unused it is a cost effective solution
@@rbarlow Thank you for replying. I have a 55" curved and it is nice, but seriously contemplating moving up to 65" Also, I believe you created an overhead for Zibo. Did you design that Air Manager for a 42 inch touch or 43? Hoping to have a full Air Manager touch sim together by this time next year. Thanks again!
I’ve tried a lot of different configurations. As long as I’ve got 5 monitors connected to one computer, my performance drops way down. I’ve got a fast chip (9900); I’ve got a 2080 super video card; and, when I check, neither the chip or the video card are being tasked beyond 50%. Could it be the ram; or, could it be the limit of Xplane?
Don t you lose fps by poping the G1000 out or any other xplane instruments to another screen? Doing so I lose half of my fps vs when I don t pop out any instrument.
In this sim the visuals are on a separate computer networked with the master computer that runs the copy of XP that is connected to the controls and provides the popped out windows and also runs Air Manager. Since the cockpit view is hidden it can be run at min graphics settings so the FPS is huge even with popped out windows.
I think, base on my experience with FSX the performance will, practically, be base on the lowest denominator which mean the onboard GPU.. the other option is to go with TripleHead2Go
Doesn’t triple head do pretty much the same thing...just offer more ports...or does it create a system like Nvidia surround where the three screens are one extra wide virtual screen?
I'll certainly investigate this product further. My primary concern after the information you provided would be durability. My long experience with computer gadgets is that often they are poorly made and flake out far too soon. I'll give it some time and keep monitoring reviews. I appreciate your time in bringing this to our attention.
I think you mean the three visual monitors? Those are LCD TVs they are 49 inch diagonal and a pretty old now. Today I would buy 3 - 55 inch TVs. Check out rings.com for tv ratings for gaming use. Big killers to watch out for are input lag, poor side viewing , and motion blur. Most TVs work pretty well for dims these days.
....Keeping complicated things simple is what life is all aboout., .... Well, that is untill you start to think about it.... If I was a bird watching your (most appreciated) videos, I‘d wonder about you people....
Dang Russ! That 5 screen setup is BEAST! It's shame FS2020 likely won't use Vulcan(any time soon) because of NIH attitude at Microsoft. Much as I like XPlane, I have DCS and FS2020 so it's getting a bit ludicrous spending even more money! I expect that Pluggable will do a USB-C version sometime in the future - and USB-C has video capability and the throughput to do it! I Don't have the screens to check it but I wonder if someone else has a USB-C hub with video out who could do that? It would certainly be a lot cheaper to buy a USB-C PCi adaptor for your PC and a USB-C hub with at least one video ports out. Now I'm kicking myself for not having that - even though I have USB-C on the PC to drive the Oculus.
Should have mentioned they have usb-c and thunderbolt already too. They do no suggest gaming on these units but I think it is because people are disappointed when they lose FPS. Obviously if you add that many pixels to a GPU intensive game it is going to reduce the frames. For Air Manager and other non GPU demanding setups it is fine.
@@rbarlow Sure looks that way Russ. USB C has many times the bandwidth of even USB 3 (which is pretty nippy). I think it would be an interesting experiment to compare the two - I don't have the hardware (someone "borrowed" my spare monitor and then did a moonlit with it!) But anyhoo... Someone more knowledgeable than I am these days could look at the paper figures and see where it takes us - or even do the experiment. In fact, I wonder how much of the 2D rendering is done on the video card since it's quite easy to do on the CPU. I've done 2D rotations on an Arduino just to show how fast these tiny machines really are! The keyboard processor in a modern PC is not unlike those little machines... which means that an i3 (never mind an others) wouldn't even notice doing it. All that remains is to shift that data onto the bus and let the video card display it. The limitation here is the amount of VRAM. The card will need sufficient to double-buffer the total number of pixels it's displaying at any one time PLUS all the textures it's loaded too. If you want to do the math (I don't cause reasons) it's 24 or 32bits per pixel (and for internal logic reasons 32 is typically faster) so that's four bytes per pixel. Best I my poor little brain can figure that's about 8M per frame for full HD plus 8M for the back buffer. Seems that shouldn't be too hard for a modern card but most of the multi-gb of RAM on those beasts is gobbled up by textures which can be absolutely huge - and sometimes in several different resolutions for effects at distance (there's fancy names for all of this but it's years since I did any 3D programming). But this is more about how fast the USB3/C can shift the data - and that's where the loss of frame rates will come in. 8M should be fairly easy (8M x the number of frames per second of course). This is where my brain starts to squeeze out of my ears and run for somewhere safe... USB speeds are measure in bits-per-second not bytes so whatever the max speed (10Gbps for USBc) you have to divide that by 8 to get bytes so that's 1.25 giga-bytes per second. Not too shabby if it's able to maintain that (which it probably doesn't except in special cases). But you can see if I have my maths right, why the FPS suffers when we're trying to send multi-Mb data streams over a port designed primarily for more general data. I read that DVI has an equivalent speed of just under 5Gbps which is why... I'm totally confused. I think I'll go have a little lie down and contemplate the meaning of life and Earl Grey. Stay safe my friend!
Newbies - be careful! Many gaming computers don’t have on-board graphics, and many that do won’t allow simultaneous use with a graphics card. I made a very expensive mistake trying to build this configuration. Unless I’m missing something…
Hey Russ, I know you find using the controllers in vr to be hit or miss, have you tried using the elgato stream deck for programming all the buttons and switches in vr, there is a plug in for the deck for msfs 2020 letting you program pretty well everything, plus someone even 3d printed a holder for the deck, strapping it to their leg for access. Here is an example of someone using the plugin;th-cam.com/video/gIHjQW6dqnU/w-d-xo.html
@@rbarlow Cool invention with the knobster and button box in VR, if you used the stream deck to select the radio comm, would you be able to use the knobster to adjust the numbers along with other such commands for autopilot as the buttons for the stream deck are programmed using the keyboard shortcuts in msfs 2020. The touch portal app for ipad or android does the same thing as the stream deck and there is a free version, by the way. It would be cool , in VR to select say engine start in touch portal and use the knobster to turn the key, etc.
I get a full 180 degree Field of view with three 50” monitors. Can’t do that with a single curved monitor. Can look out the wing line and look down at the runway on downwind leg.
That is a bit on the rude side don't you think? VR is fine and all and I think he has a VR setup. But nothing wrong with DIY cockpits with touch screens. He can enjoy his sim however he wants.
@@rbarlow You make a good point. I only fly Combat flight-sims E:G; IL2 and DCS, so VR is the way to go for me. And thanks for knowing the difference when someone is giving a ribbing Vs. being insulting, unlike Ramon and DX Gamer......boy, I bet they're a blast at parties! P.S. I watch your videos from time to time and somethings I've learned from you has carried over well into the Combat Flight-Sim genre.
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Russ, I know you posted this some time ago, but this is exactly the info I was looking for! Thank you!
Russ, just want to thank you for the years of help, A bit older then you and my flying has been on the shelf for MANY years. Cancer is NOT fun. Enjoy everything you have done and it is so obvious that you are doing it for US. Such unselfish sacrifices.
Your channel is so amazing! Thanks for sharing.
Interesting.. this would definitely simplify the setup I am building. Thanks for shining a light on this
New to me too but had to get it out there.
Great work Russ!!! This is going to be a game changer.
I've got a 2080 card... In my enclosure sim, I'm going to use this for a second touch screen plus a second station behind and to the right. The goal is to have a right seat crewmember have the G1000 MFD and be able to use the radios. I'm in CAP, and a CRM trainer would be really helpful! My wife wants to make radio calls on PilotEdge for when we fly in real world.
Great work, man!
Thanks a ton, man!
Sounds great! I was hoping others would see some usefulness in this as I did. Glad your wife is enjoying the hobby too. I tried to convince my wife to get involved and to serve as a flight attendant and bring me coffee at regular intervals while I fly the sim... but to no avail. :)
Thanks for all your videos. Put out more videos as they are very helpful.
How about a series on all that you can learn in a simulator before stepping on an actual plane?
I’m learning to fly and all the schools in my area (Long Island, NY) are recommending to do it while taking lessons with them.
I have the gliem xplane training software and it’s really nice to practice what I learn without the expense.
I went for my intro flight and the instructor was impressed with what I learned from just stimming.
Great vídeo captain. Lot of info. Very usefull. I'm trying to built mine too. And ofcourse i allways see your recomendations. I have seen all the simulators in the internet and nobody explains like you. however you have the best sim. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for your kind words.
I didn't know about this kind of device. Thanks for the detailed overview!
It was brought to my attention by a comment from a user. I was pleasantly surprised that it worked so well
Russ, nice job. You always do a great job in your videos. I, too, have three monitors connected to a triple-head-to-go and running my instruments on an iPad with Air Manager. I have a few Logitech peripherals with everything mounted in a panel. Using one desktop, the best frame rate I can get is 19 FPS. Your video seems like a great solution, but I do have a second desktop with a second copy of XP11 that I would like to try in tandem. Can you do a video on how to connect two desktops and the settings for each to maximize the frame rates?
Hi thank you for replaying to my comment yesterday on your. channel. I will see next year that the future holds and about building a very descend computer system.
Keep me updated.
Wow, interesting. Thank you for sharing the information.
interesting hardware Russ. I would never have thought that it could improve the framerate at all. Insping
Hi Russ, great video, it's a lot of work and greatly appreciated. Quick question... Are you using a scenery add-on for L.A.? It looks a bit more realistic than the default scenery.
No that is the default at the settings shown in the video.
Hi Russ,
Thank you for all the great videos. Question when you connect both 15.6 screens together does it become one whole screen or are they separate screens.
Separate screens that show up as such in the display servings n windows
Just received today, works great.
Still happy with mine too
Idk if you ever considered this but there is apparently also software that allows you to extend your displays with a tablet. Personally I only fiddled with this shortly with a VNC solution. That comes with a certain network lag, of course, but should be fine for some MFD like extensions.
Hi Russ. Thank you for your hard and awesome work.
I have a computer with only two HDMI inputs. How do I connect a third monitor that would provide the best quality image?
Do you happen to have a picture of your monitors, computer connections?
Thank you
Sorry for the delay in answering but I was at Oshkosh for the big fire fly in. I think I have several videos that show my set up. Look for one that says something like Vulcan speed test. Really busy right now but if you can’t find it let me know and I’ll give you a link
very cool to know thanks for posting this its very useful
Glad it was helpful!
If i understand this is like a usb hub but for video. Your problem was you didn t have enough video port from that single card to plug all monitor. That s a problem with mid tier graphic card, a 1080 ti would solve both your framerate and video port problem. But a great video for those having a similar issue.
Hei Russ, I am running 3 58" monitors for the visual, and 2 22" for instruments, on a single computer with a RTX 2080 Super, 4 from the video card and one from the main board, and frame rate is good. Can you use this methode to run monitor nr 6 or 7. Thinking about a overhead panel and a instructor panel.
Hi Russ. Thanks for the video. Interesting. Does CPU core amount count? A CPU with 16 cores versus 10 cores versus 8 cores or does it matter and you are just looking for GPU beefiness? In which case would you want to get a GPU with as much VRAM as possible? Does that make a difference do you think? I'm working toward a flight sim set-up kind of like yours. 3 x 65" (4K) TV monitors for external views running at 1080p and I have a 22" non-touch monitor for an air manager instrument panel behind a panel mask and a RealSim Gear GNS 530. But Santa was good to me and thanks to Black Friday Sale I received 2 x G5's from RealSim Gear. So I'll have 3 monitors for the externals and 4 monitors for the internals. Which was why I was asking about VRAM and more CPU cores, if that would help handle the load for one PC. Also, would two of the Pluggable UD-3900s work with one computer or is it just too much to ask? With two Pluggable UD-3900 in two USB 3.0 ports in the back of the computer, I was thinking the two UD-3900s, maybe can handle the low requirements of the RealSim Gear 530 and two G5's that would be installed. While the beefy GPU with 16 or more GBs of VRAM handle the three 65 inch TV's and the 22" monitor. Or, again, would this be just too much load for a single PC to handle and I'd be better off with two computers to divide the TV's and monitor screens so that the situation is less taxing on the computer. Although, I'm with you regarding have just one computer to deal with would be nice.
First XP and MSFS can’t utilize more than a couple cores so clock speed is more important than number of cores EXCEPT Air Manager and other programs can utilize the unused cores so there is some gain there. But 2D graphics like Air Manager and undocked windows don’t use that much GPU power. You will have a mess of screens. There is a pluggable version that supports up to three HD monitors so that might work for you. I’d give that a try and see what your fps are and how much you’re willing to dumb down the graphics settings to keep it smooth and flyable. I think a RTX 3070 card might be a solution to handle the graphics if your 1080 isn’t up to the job. Two computers are a solution you can always use if necessary but a single cpu is simpler to maintain.Good luck.
Hi Russ! I did this to run a second touch screen (3 4K 55" TVs at 80 degrees and now two touch screens with AirManager, and a home baked Knobster!). I get 25FPS in this setup on an i7 3GHZ and a 2080 card. It works fine! Thanks for the tip.
Is that XP Vulkan?
@@rbarlow Yup!
Russ, I purchase and configured UD-3900 and two WIMAXIT touchscreen monitors. All works with the mouse but not the touchscreen on the monitors. I can select the knobs on the Air Manager panels with the mouse and then control them with the knobster, but I am unable to select the knobs with the touchscreen. Suspect it is the way they are powered, but I have not been able to figure out how to properly connect to UD-3900/PC. Any help is appreciated.
With flight sims it is so easy to get carried away with more and more hardware for the setup. But I think the setup you've shown before, the one that includes a single large TV monitor coupled with a 15 inch touch screen mounted on top of a yoke, is the best middle ground for an immersive and realistic experience on a limited budget. Perhaps with MFS2020 comming to XBOX this summer, there will be an even less expensive way to achieve that.
Also I enjoy your videos.You have a honest and smart approach to the hobby. I would've liked to see you post or live stream your flights, I'm sure with your vast experience there would be much to learn.
Definitely a wide range of sim users from pure gamers to serious real life pilots. Being an aeronautical engineer by education I am afraid tend to fall into the "carried away" with hardware category... just ask my wife.
Hey Russ I would like to connect 2 WIMAXIT 15.6 inch monitors that are to be placed Atop the honeycomb alpha and bravo panels and connect them using the USB-C ports on the monitors to my single USB C port on my computer.. I have a G force 2060 video card. And a Cyberpower PC with 32 gigs of ram, so I’m sure there is enough to drive the 2 monitors plus my 32” Curved Dell and a Lenovo second computer running in monitor mode...
My question is how can I Attach the needed usb c ports on the monitors and connect them to the single usc c output on my computer.. I have a J5 hub with a C input , HDMI input and multiple USB 3.0 outputs incl usb 3.1. Can I use 2 usb c to usb 3.0 cables (one from each monitor) going to the hub connections and have touch screen capabilities via air manager panels on my x-plane Aircraft...both monitors also connect via HDMI and separate power right now I can use touch on 1 monitor by usb c direct connection to computer but the other monitor can only access the screen knobs via mouse.. Knobster works on both.. hope I laid out my dilemma and find the answer.. again keep the videos coming and fly safe..
Marty
@@rbarlow Does your wife still remember what you look like Russ? The time you spend in your pit there I'm amazed you have time to eat! :)
@@marcdraco2189 My wife just slides the tray under the simulator room door when it’s time to eat. What’s this I hear about a pandemic and lockdowns?
@@rbarlow Womp!
Helpful! Now I need to learn about Vulkan
Vulcan is just the graphics routines that replaced openGL in X-Plane rendering . Way faster. Really nothing to learn...just enjoy the FPS increase!.
Is Vulcan XPlane a new release of XPlaxe 11 or just a plug in? Sorry, I’m new. Thank you for your service Russ.
GG setup
Russ love all your videos. This is an item I can use. Do you have a video that uses multiple storage units. I have 8 TB and 14TB, want to use with Ortho4XP. I cant figure out to hook the drives up.
Sorry I haven’t gotten into Ortho4XP yet. As a pilot I am not quite as interested in scenery as I am in frame rate and cockpit functionality. MSFS is causing me to rethink that. To answer your question no experience in multiple storage as you describe.
Very interesting, thanks Russ. Do the touch screens still need to be connected via USB ports (for touch screen functionality) and if so can the ports on the hub be used?
Additionally (a little off topic, sorry) - if I used a NON-touch screen with Air Manager, could I bind the AM knobs to keystokes on (for example) a numeric keypad to select them and then control them with a Knobster? That would save me having to buy an additional touch screen. Thanks.
Yes you do need usb to support touch and yes the UD-3900 ports will work... usb2.0 are plenty good for that
And for some reason AM Doesn’t support keyboard binding...I think they’re going for realism and keyboards don’t usually fit that mode
@@rbarlow Thanks Russ. Annoyingly, my touch screen is optical as opposed to resistive/capacitive, so I can't put a physical instrument panel in front of it without it triggering an unwanted touch response :-/
Very nice video again Russ. I wonder if you could run X-plane on a single AMD system like A ThreadRipper with multi monitors ?
You can. Until Vulkan AMD processors were dogs with XP as NVidia was also the only effective GPUs. That is why I have only that equipment. You probably should do some research on X-Plane.org to see other's experiences. Rumors I hear is that the gap has mostly closed and considering AMP price advantages it may make sense.
Thank you Russ, I have a question about start up and setup of simulator everything just start and work or it is necessary to move undock windows etc??
Yes currently with MSFS and XP12 you have to pop out the navigation display screens to use in the panels. That will change for XP12 when Air Manager 4.2 is released in a month or two. Then they will be streamed and appear in the bezel instruments themselves with no action required.
Very nice sir.
Thanks for the encouragement.
So If I buy what Microsoft considers optimal for fs2020, would the addition of this make a set up like yours possible? I recently went to a best buy (I know, eye roll time) and they didn't believe any current production computer could run more than 3 monitors (or tvs) .... I am looking at the wide screen curved monitors for a sim.
Running three screens and running MSFS on three screens is quite different. Until the implement true multi motor support we really are just guessing on performance.
Hi Russ,
Is the cable that you are running back to your computer, is it a usb-c cable or a standard usb cable.
Usb 3.0 but there is a USB-C version of these docking stations too which theoretically has higher bandwidth. I don’t think the extra bandwidth is needed but the many laptops use USB-C connections
Hello Russ! I’ve been using this device and have to say it works great! However I have a question that maybe you can help with. I am currently running 1 Windows 10 Pc with 5 monitors all together. 3 coming out of my 2080ti graphics card labeled by my PC as 1,3,2 from left to right that I use for X-Plane 11, or just #3 for MSFS And the 2 Wimaxit 15.6 monitors plugged into the Plugable, showing in Windows 10 as 4 and 5 left to right that I use for Air Manager and a knobster. Now the issue I have is in Air Manager it assigns any new panels I build to the Wimaxit monitors reversed. 4 is 5 and 5 is 4. No big deal but I’m afraid to use Pop Weasel fearing it may assign my changes to the wrong monitors. (The monitors show as A,B,C,D,E vs. numbers, in Pop Weasel?) I’ve searched all thru the sim innovations forum but I’m not seeing anything that addresses this. Any ideas? Thank you.
Pop weasel takes the actual coordinates assigned by windows to each monitor and displays them in the selection dialog based on that. I would look at that and correlate the letter to the monitor in the correct position. I think it should work. Just be sure the monitors are really as you think they are by moving the mouse from monitor to monitor to be sure they really are as you think they are.
@@rbarlow thanks for the reply Russ. I did previously do as you suggested, confirming with the mouse the correct position and assignments. As I mentioned, Windows shows them correctly, just not Air Manager. I submitted the same question I asked you on the Air Manager forum but haven’t seen any reply there yet. Thanks again.
I bought the updated version and it's pretty nice, although I wish the included USB cable was a lot longer.
I got a longer cable too so it could be closer to the monitors do they could have shorter cables
Oh my! Thanks for this information! I just wish it was about 3 days and $600 sooner! I just purchased a second PC to run those 2 new Wimaxit touch screens I also just purchased. Oh well. Good news is I had not purchased a second instance of X-plane yet. This also answer my question about which computer do you connect you hardware. I am curious, how this works verses say a Matrox dual-head or triple-head to go. Also just a side note on my I9900 PC. I don’t be think I can use my onboard graphics. When I purchased my I9900 processor, I opted for the what I think is a KF vs K which doesn’t include onboard graphics and I figured with a GeForce 2080ti card I wouldn’t need that. Now I’m wishing it would be nice to have that reserved availability. Live a learn and most of my learning on this sim setup stuff is from you Russ, thank you again for you continued sharing and efforts. Last note.. I just bought the masonite to build a panel similar to the one your showing. You and your work is TrueType inspirational!
Good news is that the K can be overclocked if you need more cpu to keep up with your GPU. I think it does what a Matrox triple or dual head display adapter does. You are still reliant on the GPU in your computer. I just really liked the firm factor and cost
@@rbarlow I just order the UD-3900!
I have been running my 3 displays (each 1920x1080) on Matrox Triple Digital Edition - single monitor to windows - since early days on FSX and when I switched over the x-plane 11 when it released. I have i7 6700 OC 4.3 with Geforce 1080TI 11GB, and get between 30 to 60 FPS depending on location/weather/plane I am flying. I do have GeForce 970 running 2 monitors with pop outs, as well main monitor, on board vga port for main monitor - right now I am CPU bound and occasionally I dip into the high teens for FPS
The one thing I have read is with X-Plane it takes less load on graphics to draw 1 large screen than 3 smaller screens of the over all same resolution. I could have mis-read that information, but seems to make sense - as the more windows/pop outs I did the lower FPS I was getting.
Yea you can sink $$$ doing experimenting, but channels like this one give new ideas on various configurations :)
I use a Plugable 4K DisplayPort and HDMI Dual Monitor Adapter (model USBC-6950U). It will power up to 2x 4K monitors, but without all the extra USB ports, Ethernet, etc. I use it with MSFS. My main monitors are run from the ports on my GPU, and my 2 Wimaxit monitors are run from the Plugable unit. It works great.
Thanks for the feedback… I agree
I got a Wimaxit monitor for just this purpose but it won’t work with a USB-C 3.0 port. It has to have a USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 port which my otherwise capable computer doesn’t have. How did you get past that problem?
@@bleonardyou use HDMI+USB.
Russ, are those the 15.6" touchscreens you're running here or something else?
Hi and good morning on this Friday from South Africa. I will keep you update. But for now it 's only a dream. Have a nice day and weekend. :) :)
Dreams always come before success!
Just out of curiosity what are the resolution settings on the TVs you're using, and what is the refresh rate on them?
they are 4K but set to 1080P. Refresh is 30 I think. Not great. I get some motion blur with fast laterial heading changes.
is something similar possible in FS 2020? i'm a newb, and i chose FS 2020 because of the beautiful scenery.
i have a very powerful GPU and processor. i have no problem running with good framerate on a single 4k monitor. 3 monitors @ 1080p, plus 2 on the DisplayLink should perform well.
Yes Air Manager is compatible with FS2020but only the beta version 4.0 which is nit released yet. It is a public beta that you can download free ans try. I have featured it on a couple recent videos, the main hold up is the fact the MSFS SDK is not fully completed yet. You can go to the Sim Innovations website and go tho the wiki. There are download links for Air Manager 4. Beta and the simulator plugin installer. The free beta will work until the official release.
Perfect thx Russ
Thanks Sir.
I'm also using a 4K 43" TV for X-Plane 11.5 on a very robust i9 9900K (over-clocked at 4.9 GHZ) 64 GB of DDR4 RAM, a 1 TB NVME 2.0 SSD, on an Asus ROG motherboard, and a GeForce 1080 ti 11 GB VRAM. I average about 50 FPS around Los Angeles with most XP 11.5 graphics settings (with Vulcan) at maximum, and at a resolution of 1920 x 1080. The FPS average increases to about 70-75 FPS with areas out in the wilderness.The reason for the low resolution setting I have is the refresh rate on the TV, which like most TVs is only 60 HZ, so if I set the resolution to a higher ratio the refresh rate drops to about 32-35 HZ. That's the drawback of most TVs, but for XP 11.5 the resolution setting I have is sufficient.
That makes sense.
@@rbarlow There are newer 40-inch and larger TVs with higher refresh rates upwards of 120 HZ and I'll be looking at getting one of them in the very near future.
Looking for the knobster... can u help?
will air manager work on payware aircraft like the Carenado Cessna 210 or other similar planes ?
Yes but often some custom datarefs are used for payware aircraft to make systems more accurate. In these cases some modification of the instruments may be needed. Usually not that hard to do. Many users on the Forums at Sim Innovations will help.
what screen do you use
Is it possible to run a second graphics card in the one PC to handle the extra monitors?
Sure. For X-Plane all the graphics are still processed by one card though and the second card just acts as a port to the monitors it is hooked up to. Other programs like Air Manager can take advantage of the second card. If you have a GPU sitting around unused it is a cost effective solution
Russ, can you tell me what size your scenery monitors are? Are they 65 inch? Thank you!
49” but I would go 55” min
@@rbarlow Thank you for replying. I have a 55" curved and it is nice, but seriously contemplating moving up to 65" Also, I believe you created an overhead for Zibo. Did you design that Air Manager for a 42 inch touch or 43? Hoping to have a full Air Manager touch sim together by this time next year. Thanks again!
I’ve tried a lot of different configurations. As long as I’ve got 5 monitors connected to one computer, my performance drops way down. I’ve got a fast chip (9900); I’ve got a 2080 super video card; and, when I check, neither the chip or the video card are being tasked beyond 50%. Could it be the ram; or, could it be the limit of Xplane?
Ich denke aus Performance Nabelschnur
@@rbarlow ha ha ha ha. In English please. 😂😁
@@peterbachinsky1924 An itsy bitsy teeny-weeny yellow polka dot bikini...
Don t you lose fps by poping the G1000 out or any other xplane instruments to another screen? Doing so I lose half of my fps vs when I don t pop out any instrument.
In this sim the visuals are on a separate computer networked with the master computer that runs the copy of XP that is connected to the controls and provides the popped out windows and also runs Air Manager. Since the cockpit view is hidden it can be run at min graphics settings so the FPS is huge even with popped out windows.
I think, base on my experience with FSX the performance will, practically, be base on the lowest denominator which mean the onboard GPU.. the other option is to go with TripleHead2Go
Doesn’t triple head do pretty much the same thing...just offer more ports...or does it create a system like Nvidia surround where the three screens are one extra wide virtual screen?
@@rbarlow ..either way, it can turn 3 screen into one or just act like a hub for 3 screens you can chose the mode
I'll certainly investigate this product further. My primary concern after the information you provided would be durability. My long experience with computer gadgets is that often they are poorly made and flake out far too soon. I'll give it some time and keep monitoring reviews. I appreciate your time in bringing this to our attention.
Time will tell.
Russ, what modle monitor are you using? Im thinking of getting 3 monitors. Which do you recommend?
I think you mean the three visual monitors? Those are LCD TVs they are 49 inch diagonal and a pretty old now. Today I would buy 3 - 55 inch TVs. Check out rings.com for tv ratings for gaming use. Big killers to watch out for are input lag, poor side viewing , and motion blur. Most TVs work pretty well for dims these days.
@@rbarlow thanks tried the link, didnt work. 55 inch.. 4k led? love the videos.
Intersting Thought
However I would just use a USB monitor then, these come a a great price as well
True but has the HDMI monitors so....
....Keeping complicated things simple is what life is all aboout., .... Well, that is untill you start to think about it....
If I was a bird watching your (most appreciated) videos, I‘d wonder about you people....
Big Grin!
Dang Russ! That 5 screen setup is BEAST! It's shame FS2020 likely won't use Vulcan(any time soon) because of NIH attitude at Microsoft. Much as I like XPlane, I have DCS and FS2020 so it's getting a bit ludicrous spending even more money!
I expect that Pluggable will do a USB-C version sometime in the future - and USB-C has video capability and the throughput to do it! I Don't have the screens to check it but I wonder if someone else has a USB-C hub with video out who could do that? It would certainly be a lot cheaper to buy a USB-C PCi adaptor for your PC and a USB-C hub with at least one video ports out. Now I'm kicking myself for not having that - even though I have USB-C on the PC to drive the Oculus.
Should have mentioned they have usb-c and thunderbolt already too. They do no suggest gaming on these units but I think it is because people are disappointed when they lose FPS. Obviously if you add that many pixels to a GPU intensive game it is going to reduce the frames. For Air Manager and other non GPU demanding setups it is fine.
@@rbarlow Sure looks that way Russ. USB C has many times the bandwidth of even USB 3 (which is pretty nippy). I think it would be an interesting experiment to compare the two - I don't have the hardware (someone "borrowed" my spare monitor and then did a moonlit with it!)
But anyhoo... Someone more knowledgeable than I am these days could look at the paper figures and see where it takes us - or even do the experiment.
In fact, I wonder how much of the 2D rendering is done on the video card since it's quite easy to do on the CPU. I've done 2D rotations on an Arduino just to show how fast these tiny machines really are!
The keyboard processor in a modern PC is not unlike those little machines... which means that an i3 (never mind an others) wouldn't even notice doing it.
All that remains is to shift that data onto the bus and let the video card display it.
The limitation here is the amount of VRAM. The card will need sufficient to double-buffer the total number of pixels it's displaying at any one time PLUS all the textures it's loaded too.
If you want to do the math (I don't cause reasons) it's 24 or 32bits per pixel (and for internal logic reasons 32 is typically faster) so that's four bytes per pixel.
Best I my poor little brain can figure that's about 8M per frame for full HD plus 8M for the back buffer.
Seems that shouldn't be too hard for a modern card but most of the multi-gb of RAM on those beasts is gobbled up by textures which can be absolutely huge - and sometimes in several different resolutions for effects at distance (there's fancy names for all of this but it's years since I did any 3D programming).
But this is more about how fast the USB3/C can shift the data - and that's where the loss of frame rates will come in.
8M should be fairly easy (8M x the number of frames per second of course).
This is where my brain starts to squeeze out of my ears and run for somewhere safe...
USB speeds are measure in bits-per-second not bytes so whatever the max speed (10Gbps for USBc) you have to divide that by 8 to get bytes so that's 1.25 giga-bytes per second.
Not too shabby if it's able to maintain that (which it probably doesn't except in special cases).
But you can see if I have my maths right, why the FPS suffers when we're trying to send multi-Mb data streams over a port designed primarily for more general data.
I read that DVI has an equivalent speed of just under 5Gbps which is why... I'm totally confused. I think I'll go have a little lie down and contemplate the meaning of life and Earl Grey.
Stay safe my friend!
Russ, this is Russ. I'd like to contact you directly with my setup and some questions.
You could email me at barlow320 at a domain with the gmail label and which is a com. Hate for spambots to find me if you understand.
Newbies - be careful! Many gaming computers don’t have on-board graphics, and many that do won’t allow simultaneous use with a graphics card. I made a very expensive mistake trying to build this configuration. Unless I’m missing something…
Hey Russ,
I know you find using the controllers in vr to be hit or miss, have you tried using the elgato stream deck for programming all the buttons and switches in vr, there is a plug in for the deck for msfs 2020 letting you program pretty well everything, plus someone even 3d printed a holder for the deck, strapping it to their leg for access. Here is an example of someone using the plugin;th-cam.com/video/gIHjQW6dqnU/w-d-xo.html
Very cool solution. Did you see my button box with knob I built using Air Manager using an Arduino cpu? th-cam.com/video/mWfKkJdA8ZY/w-d-xo.html
@@rbarlow Cool invention with the knobster and button box in VR, if you used the stream deck to select the radio comm, would you be able to use the knobster to adjust the numbers along with other such commands for autopilot as the buttons for the stream deck are programmed using the keyboard shortcuts in msfs 2020. The touch portal app for ipad or android does the same thing as the stream deck and there is a free version, by the way. It would be cool , in VR to select say engine start in touch portal and use the knobster to turn the key, etc.
buy yourself a curved ultra widescreen monitor instead of using 3 smaller screens in a row
I get a full 180 degree Field of view with three 50” monitors. Can’t do that with a single curved monitor. Can look out the wing line and look down at the runway on downwind leg.
@@rbarlow How about putting both air manager panels on one wide screen monitor? Go from 5 monitors to 4?
You’d probably save a lot of money if you bought a real plane.
One annual maintenance inspection would cost more than all the computers and monitors. And that is without finding anything that needed repair! :-)
@@kenkingston1424 Not for the plane I have in mind. :))
You must have never owned a plane. They say the second happiest day of your life is the day you buy your plane. The happiest... the day you sell it.
@@rbarlow Right, never owned a plane.
Monitors? Who the hell uses monitors theses days? Go VR! Old timer.
Everybody does, you do not have to get insulting if you like a different setup, o better yet keep your mouth shut.
@@ramarrie My goodness, someone needs a big tube of butt-hurt cream!
That is a bit on the rude side don't you think? VR is fine and all and I think he has a VR setup. But nothing wrong with DIY cockpits with touch screens. He can enjoy his sim however he wants.
Love VR but for pilot training it is not there yet. Need grat Rez and better FOV and mostly hand tracking to ditch the controllers.
@@rbarlow You make a good point. I only fly Combat flight-sims E:G; IL2 and DCS, so VR is the way to go for me. And thanks for knowing the difference when someone is giving a ribbing Vs. being insulting, unlike Ramon and DX Gamer......boy, I bet they're a blast at parties!
P.S. I watch your videos from time to time and somethings I've learned from you has carried over well into the Combat Flight-Sim genre.
buy one asrock taichi rx 5700xt it have 6 ports )))) you can add one more monitor ))) + rx 5700xt is more powerfull gpu than 1070-ti