Home Cockpit

[alejandrocec]

Hello everyone

I am building my own flight simulator cockpit. I share my progress. In the instrument panel I am rendering the screens with Proline21 plus the ESIS and RTU screens. Likewise the FMS. To show the stage I am using 5 49 inch monitors. In total there are 11 monitors.

When I use any Prepar3d v4.5 aircraft the performance is excellent, for the example I used the Maule aircraft that comes with the simulator, for which I get an average of 32 frames per second, which is quite acceptable, in the photos that you see. I share I am using the Maule. So far so good.

BUT when I want to use the KingAir everything fails, I can't even open the FMS screen because I immediately get the error message that I'm showing here. I have tried low resolution installation, with and without true glass, with and without shaders, but I have not achieved anything.

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With all due respect, I am willing to pay in money, so that the developers of this magnificent aircraft can give me a solution to it. What I would need is that the six information screens that the plane shows can be located on each of my screens, which are: PFD (left), MFD, PFD (Right), RTU, ESIS and FMS.

I know that the realization of this beautiful aircraft by the developers has taken a lot of effort and time, which I respect very much. In advance, I want to thank you for any solution you can give me, if this requires a monetary cost, I am willing to pay it.

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Simulator version: PREPAR3D v4.5
Airplane version: MV_KA350i_v1.2.0_20201109.exe

Computer description
Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 2400G
RAM: 16 GB
Windows: 10 64 bit
Video card: 3 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti cards

Thank you very much

[Slayer]

Another user has a home cockpit setup similar to yours and I don't think he has these kinds of issues. It's very hard to say where the problem lies with 3 video cards. Are you using the 2D gauges to drive your home cockpit displays? I have read of some users of home cockpit setups like yours using the 2D displays and positioning them to the monitors and somehow saving the state or the flight to retain their positions every time.

This is way beyond what I think was envisioned for this product. Maybe Chris will chime in and offer you some advice. Here you can see his setup.
http://milviz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=104&t=12066

[ccmh15]

Hello alejandrocec,

Really happy to see yet another KA350 Home Cockpit project!

The good news: a setup like yours is definitely possible using the MilViz King Air
The not so good news: setting everything up really is far from being easy (to put it mildly)....
The very good news: Initially, I had the same error message when undocking instruments - BUT I found a trick to get rid of it (see below)

So my first post after reading your post:
You're using GTX 1050 Ti, which has only 4 GB of video memory - unfortunately, I don't really think you'll be able to run this bird, not even on one single screen.

EDIT: just realized, that you already heard about this here https://milviz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=105&t=12608

The expensive news: You'll need at least one card with 8 GB (better more!) of video memory.
The good news: Only your "master" graphics card has to be such a beast, for the others you should in theory be fine with your 1050s.

My setup (for a 8 screens):
Main graphics card: GTX 1080 Ti (11 GB video memory)
Secondary graphics card: GTX 970 (3.5 GB usable video memory)

So, I think you should be fine by just replacing your first video card with a new one, that offers more video RAM.

Then, here's a magic trick (explained very briefly, just ask if anything is unclear)

• Restart your PC
• Disable all screens that are NOT connected to the FIRST graphics card
• Start P3D
• Once the scenario selection screen (where you can select Aircraft, Location, Weather, Date/Time...) is visible, re-enable all other screens
• When all screens are "online" again, select START FLIGHT
• You should then be able to use all screens, also with undocked 2D panels, without the DX error message.

Short Explanation: whenever a screen is activated AFTER P3D was started, the respective graphics card is NOT really used for rendering - if you closely watch the video memory usage, you'll see that only the FIRST video card is used, and the other video cards are only used to forward the video signal rendered by the "master" video card to the connected screens.

Therefore you only need one graphics card with a lot of memory, while for the others, it doesn't really matter.

And don't worry - of course, there're tools to make life easier on the long run, I did write a small "Simulator Start-Up Script" that automatically takes care of the correct setup, but more on this once you figured out if the trick described above even helps for you.

Best regards,
and never give up!

Chris

[alejandrocec]

Hello ccmh15
Your solution was the most successful. I started from the beginning to connect the outputs one by one, until I managed to connect all 11 monitors. I have about 18 to 21 frames per second and with the graphic settings almost at zero. I started flying and left it like that for about 45 minutes and there were no error messages or system crash.
In the medium future I will change the video cards for the ones you recommend.
Thank you very much for your help.

[Slayer]

Glad to hear you got it working at least.

Thank you for the help Chris.

[ccmh15]

Hello ccmh15
Your solution was the most successful. I started from the beginning to connect the outputs one by one, until I managed to connect all 11 monitors. I have about 18 to 21 frames per second and with the graphic settings almost at zero. I started flying and left it like that for about 45 minutes and there were no error messages or system crash.
In the medium future I will change the video cards for the ones you recommend.
Thank you very much for your help.

Very glad you we're able to get all your screens to run. As mentioned, I guess you only need to change the video card your master screen is connected to (unless money is not an issue )

Just be aware, high-end video cards tend to require a LOT of power, so if you pack your machine with 3 of those modern beasts, make sure your power supply unit can handle it.

Next step will be to create a proper "panel.cfg", so every instrument is always on the right spot! Again, quite a bit of work, but definitely worth it on the long run. Let me know if you need assistance on this!

Cheers,
Chris