Implementing a Flight Simulator with networked PC's

Enhancing your Flightsim experience using multiple monitors and networked PC's

1. Multiple monitors on one PC

To run FS with a more complex aircraft and/or detailed scenery you need a rather powerful PC with a decent graphical card. Often these graphical cards have already the possibility to connect a second monitor. This extra monitor gives all kind of possibilities to have more windows/panels open at the same time.
If you don't have a graphical card with two monitor connections or you want to use more then two monitors, you can add a second graphical card in your PC. The type of graphical card you can use, depends on the motherboard you have in your PC. Most of the time you will need a PCI graphical card. Only in SLI motherboards you can add a second PCI Express card and use it in non-SLI mode to get the possibility to connect for example four monitors. It is noted that PCI based graphical cards are normally not suited to produce outside views. These cards have only enough 'power' to show panels.
Recently another possibility to add one extra monitor to a PC or Notebook has come available, using an external USB2 to VGA adapter. Examples are the Sitecom CN-105, Tritton SEE2 and Sweex KB100050. Given the bandwidth limitation of USB2 you can of course only use it for 2D panels.
Some more generic remarks on using multiple monitors can be found in the 'My PC Network' part of my webpages

2. Multiple monitors and networked PC's

Most flightsimmers know from their own experience that MS FS, certainly when using multiple monitors, is a processor power- and graphical power-hungry application. Therefore it can be helpful to divide the load over more PC's. Several software utilities and packages exist that makes this possible. For most of them you need a Wireless LAN or ethernet network between the PC's. Which software you need, depends on what you want to reach. Here only some indications are given :
- To take the load and/or the extra monitor space for a flightplanning/flightfollowing program or weather program off your flightsim PC, look at WideFS
- To expand the number of outside view monitors, Wideview is the first solution to look at
- To create extra monitor space for panels several solutions are possible. If you want to use the panels available in default or add-on aircraft, Maxivista could be a solution. If you go for a more professional solution with Project Magenta software for your instruments then you need WideFS. Also a cheaper alternative for the latter, with simpler and more generic instruments, is possible using the FsXPand software from Flyware.
It is of course also possible to combine several solutions.
The possibilities of the different software utilities are further elaborated in the next paragraph

3. Overview of some helpful software to expand your flightsim setup

FSUIPC
FSUIPC.dll is a software utility that makes it possible for external programs on the same PC as where MS FS is running (for example aircraft add-ons or weather add-ons) to communicate with and partly control MS FS. This piece of software is developed by Pete Dowson and for more information and download go to his webpage at http://www.schiratti.com/dowson.html

WideFS
For short, WideFS is software that makes it possible to run MS FS add-on applications on a PC where FS is not even running. On the PC where MS FS is running you have to install the server part called wideserver.dll (and also FSUIPC.dll) and on the second PC (without MS FS) the client part, called wideclient.exe should be used. These PC's have to be connected through a Wireless LAN or Ethernet network. Some examples of flightsim add-on application that can run on a separate PC using WideFS are FScommander, Radar Contact, Weatherrmaker pro, FSmeteo, Activesky, FSMetar, Project Magenta gauges and many others. This piece of software is also developed by Pete Dowson and for more information and download go to his webpage at http://www.schiratti.com/dowson.html

Wideview
With the Wideview software it is possible to expand the number of outside view monitors without loosing performance, by deviding the load over more then one PC. Wideview is a set of gauges where you have one server and as many clients as you want. The aircraft panels have to be on the server PC. The clients are only used for outside views. MS FS needs to be installed on all PC's and these PC's should be connected by a wireless LAN or ethernet network
Wideview grabs from FS running on the server PC data like position and attitude (pitch, bank, roll) of the aircraft and broadcast this to all clients. FS on the clients, working in 'slew' mode, uses this to produce the outside views. Wideview can als forward weatherdata from the server the the client PC's
This software is developed by Luciano Napolitana and for more information or downloading a trial version you can go to his webpages at http://www.wideview.it/

Maxivista
This software turns any spare PC into an extra monitor for your primary PC. No extra hardware required. You can seamlessly extend program windows across multiple screens like it would be a single big monitor. Instead of using a video cable, MaxiVista utilizes any standard Wireless LAN or Ethernet network connection to transmit the screen contents to the second PC. MaxiVista installs a virtual video driver onto your primary PC which fools Windows into thinking that an additional monitor is installed. The content of this virtual video card is compressed and transmitted to the secondary PC via any standard network connection and displayed by a small separate MaxiVista Viewer program.
For more information or downloading a trial version or buying the software go to http://www.maxivista.com/ or more specific about use with FS http://www.maxivista.com/fs2004.htm
As hardware graphics acceleration such as DirectX or OpenGL is not supported for the Secondary Display it is probably best used to show additional panels and alike.

Project Magenta
This software emulates the "Glass Cockpit" of modern aircraft using the full area of your monitor. It can be run on different computers through a network and allows you to create a complete virtual flight deck splitting its parts to different monitors.
This software is developed by Enrico Schiratti and for more info and download of demo versions goto http://www.projectmagenta.com/

FsXpand
With this software it is possible to realize your own software instrument panels, based on a set of custom gauges. FsXPand/FsClient shows its panels on networked computers, that needn't run FS at all. Even FsXPand (server) can run on a second PC via WideFS
This software is developed by Gert Heijnis and for more information goto http://cockpitsolutions.com/flyware/

GPSout
This small pieces of software grabs from FS the aircraft position data and alike and provides GPS style output on a COM port, for connection to FliteMap, AutoRoute, or other atlases and moving map programs which accept standard NMEA 0183 format input. I use it with Garmin's Mapsource on a separate Notebook. You can also use it on the same PC where FS is running but then you need 2 COM ports. Wether you use it on the same PC or on two different PC's you need to connect the 'out' COM port to the 'in' COM port using a so-called serial CROSS cable.
This utility is also developed by Pete Dowson and can be downloaded (free of charge) from his website at http://www.schiratti.com/dowson.html

4. Implementation examples

The hardware and software overview drawings in the picture gallery give examples of the development of my flightsim setup over time with indications on which PC's what FS-related software is installed. To view these overviews for the different setups have a look in the <1st setup>, <2nd setup>, <3rd setup> or <4th setup>.

Additional experiments
With the 4th setup as a starting point some further investigations to combine hardware and software possibilities were done by adding a touch screen LCD monitor (LG L1510SF) to my notebook usung a USB2 to VGA adapter (Sitecom CN-105). With the Maxivista software this new display was added as a virtual 6th monitor to FSpanels-PC. On this display some undocked 2D panels including the FMC of FS9 running on FSpanels-PC were put. The touch screen data coming out of this monitor was directly sent to FSpanels-PC by connecting the concerning cable to an USB port on this PC. The drawing below give some more details. To get the total picture you have to combine this drawing with the drawing of the 4th setup. It was really nice to see how it all worked together, especially with the possibility to program the FMC by just touching the relevant buttons on the screen instead of mouse clicks. It might not be the smartest solution to add touch screen facilities to FSpanels PC, but it certainly shows how far you can go to combine hardware and software to get more complete solutions. (FYI: in the mean time the touch screen monitor is integrated in the 4th setup by adding an extra PCI graphic card in FSpanels-PC)

If you want more detailed info just drop me an E-mail.