Category: Software

Multichannel vs single-channel – which way to go?

January 13, 2018

(This blog has been updated – see the update at the end of the text.)

If you’re a cockpit builder, you’ll eventually have to make a choice as to whether to try to run everything for your sim on the one computer, or to use multiple computers. Depending on how much hardware you have, you may simply have no choice. Once you start adding things like Active Sky Next, external avionics packages etc, your performance will nose-dive pretty quickly even if your PC is as fast as it gets. Raw, single-thread CPU speed stopped doubling every 18 months back when multi-core processors became the norm, and there are genuine physical barriers that are likely to keep CPU speeds at a realistic maximum of 5Ghz for the foreseeable future.

Thankfully, many external add-ons – those that do not run directly as plugins within the simulator – can be configured to run over a network from a different PC. So you can set up another machine with stuff like ASN on it and keep that precious CPU time for the simulator software. This is pretty normal stuff for sim-builders and has been for years, and most sims have at least two, and often more, PCs Read More

The big 2016 update!

December 31, 2016

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So, when I last left you – bar my recent video – I was happily building consoles and pedestals and integrating my hardware.

I decided some months ago to go down the multi-channel route with Prepar3d; using multiple PCs networked together to render my outside views, primarily for performance reasons. Standalone image-generator PCs will always out-perform a single-PC system rendering multiple outside views. Since I needed a 180 degree view and this can’t be achieved with P3D (or FSX) because of the way that the view rendering works, I would have needed multiple side-by-side sectional windows to get a full outside view.
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Microsoft announces ‘Microsoft Flight’

August 17, 2010

I don’t normally post news or events on this blog but I thought I’d make an exception for this: Microsoft today announced a product from Microsoft Games Studios called Microsoft Flight, which is to be a successor to Microsoft Flight Simulator.

The product name change, together with the heavy trumpeting of its Windows Live integration, and the suggestion that it’s for ‘all audiences’, points at something that’s moved away from a hardcore simulation and become much more of a game. Obviously, for sim fans, this is not great news. That said, we know next to nothing about what the new Flight is going to be. It may be that, while it can be used in a more beginner-friendly mode, all the old Flight Simulator power is still there and it will be able to be used as a full-on, proper simulator; a true successor to FSX. If so, it’s great news for the cockpit building community.

Only time will tell. For now, keep monitoring this site for news:

http://www.microsoft.com/games/flight/

Some thoughts on FSX performance

September 24, 2009

Microsoft Flight Simulator X (hereinafter referred to on this blog as FSX – my fingers are tired already) was released in 2006. That’s an age in software terms. If you follow these things, you’ll be aware that there won’t be another version of FS any time soon, since Microsoft let most of the developers go and closed Aces Studio, the division that housed them. Notwithstanding the general tendency to deprecate all that is more than six months old in the software business, FSX is certainly no longer state-of-the-art. Read More