Відео

Hi Ronald. I haven't used X-Plane for many years, and back when I did it was just on the desktop, so I'm afraid I don't know how the display system works there. You could try asking Fly-Elise NG support; they have wide experience with multiple platforms and they're usually very helpful.

Well, they claim to be compatible with Knobster and a DIY one has exactly the same firmware as the SI-made one, so I imagine it would, but please don't make buying decisions on the basis of my advice. If in doubt, ask SimBox.

Not this version. I built it and while it functions perfectly in Air Manager, it isn't detected in Simbox (Or KnobFS). The simbox Knobster uses an ESP32 and two separate encoders but I would imagine you can interface it with the dual encoder in the video. The way things have been engineered, if you want the full Knobster experience, you have to buy the genuine thing, which I just have.

For what?

Hi. What sim are you using? And when you say 'the entire screen moves down', what do you mean?

I think it's expensive for what it is, but a good quality rotary encoder is more expensive than a potentiometer, and there's also an Arduino Nano in that case. The case might be 3D printed or it might be injection moulded, it's not clear from the photos. If the latter, that's quite expensive for a small production run. Basically, I think you're paying for the fact that it's not a mass-produced product, and for the convenience of not having to make it yourself, which some people will value. Interestingly, since making this video, the price on the SI site has dropped to EUR 95. But if you're handy with a soldering iron then DIY is a no-brainer.

Heh. No. It’s too curved to make that a realistic option.

Great, happy it was of use. I don't think you can ever truly, completely solve this issue without pro-grade equipment which is designed for it, but the strips work pretty well. The thing to watch out for is that you get colour fringing at the edge. That's just an inevitable consequence of the lens optics in the projector. But it certainly improved things for me once I got the strips positions well. That said, I've now ditched the projector set up and am going to build a new simpit with multiple big TVs. Projectors are superior in many ways but inferior in many others. It's all about trade-offs, and I decided that not roasting to death in the waste heat from multiple projectors in the middle of summer was worth the sacrifice! Hope your setup does what you want from it.

I can't actually get it any closer than that for space reasons, short of mounting it on the seat or something (which wouldn't be good for stability), but it's a wide angle lens so I could just zoom the footage in a bit to exclude the window. Good call. Once it starts brightening up for summer, I usually cover that window with a shade so that it's less obtrusive and doesn't reflect on the screens so much. But the real solution is to finally build the replacement simpit in the back bedroom that I was supposed to do in 2022, which will be properly set up for filming. Stay tuned later in 2024 for some movement on that front, hopefully 🙂

You can adjust it so that you don’t see it against a bright background, but there will always be extra brightness against a dark background where the two images overlap. That’s because black in a projected image is actually dark grey. But there are some ways to deal with that, I have a video on that very subject: ua-cam.com/video/pAo-t0W5J5M/v-deo.htmlsi=7Xs7gixZNznTn4JR.

Hi. Normally, for this kind of setup you require projectors. If you don't have that then you would have to place the projectors a distance from the screen to get both focus and screen coverage. You don't mention your projector model but searching '4K smart projector' shows me anything from high-end Epsons to low-end no-name Amazon brands that aren't really 4K at all. Hopefully you don't have those. In any event, none of the results I got back was for a short throw projector. You need to know the throw ratio for your projector, and the zoom as well, and with this and the screen size you can work out the distance you require. The calculators at Projector Central will be useful for this. In my setup I was zoomed almost to the maximum in order to reduce the distance from the projectors to the screen and keep everything in focus. As I recall (my projector setup has been dismantled now) they were about 1100mn from the screen surface. You can do the calibration using one PC with all projectors connected to it, yes. Because it's very common for people to have a PC running the actual simulation and then one or more PCs running just as image generators, Fly-Elise NG was designed as a client/server app, but it doesn't have to be used that way. There's an additional program 'single.exe' in the folder for Immersive Calibration Pro which contains both parts of the system in a single executable. That said, the problems in the centre of the screen usually come from having projector images overlapping (as is required). That will be an issue whether you use one, two or three PCs in your setup. You just have to work on it for as long as it takes to get things to line up - you will get it eventually. You can use gamma adjustments in ICP etc to improve the blend of images. Making sure you map the overlap correctly when defining the screen grid is . Also, your projectors need to not move due to vibration or heating (lens drift due to heating is pretty common), or else they will drift out of alignment and the central region will become blurred. If that happens you need to manually re-align them using the test grid. Hope that all helps.

Hello ​@@FlyerOneZero Thanks for the reply. I managed to successfully calibrate and export the calibration file. But I'm having trouble right now... When I input the calibration file to do the desktop warping. Its still shows the desktop as 2 separate screens as I'm using 2 projectors... Any advice you can provide for this? I know it's meshed because as you show on your video as you drag the window across it had that cut off in the middle but I'm trying to avoid that to play Microsoft flight simulator.

@@zeroslim7221 I don't think you can do what you want to do with MSFS. The Fly-Elise support for MSFS is experimental and based on the also-experimental multi-monitor capability Asobo introduced (and has since not improved *at all*). This does not allow you to have 2 displays with the centreline in the middle between them. You can have 2 displays, but one must be the 'main' display covering the centre of the field of view, and the other must be to the left or the right of that main display. To achieve a 180-degree field of view you would need 3 displays, one in the middle and one each to the left and right, and it would be the same with projectors. What Fly-Elise does is manage the angles of the views and apply edge blending. This is, unfortunately, a much less flexible system than in P3D or X-Plane, where you can have multiple view frustums that are individually controlled. You could join your projectors together as a single display with NVidia surround and apply warping to that display, but then you would need the images to be butted together, not overlapped, since edge-blending only works on non-Surround setups, and you wouldn't get perspective correction, you could only do the warping around the curve, and probably only manually, not with Immersive Calibration Pro. Unfortunately I don't think there's any way to have a blended projector display for MSFS with 2 projectors at the moment. You would need multi-view support much closer to what P3D has, and there's no indication that this will ever happen. It's the main reason why I haven't tried to build a projector setup with MSFS. I will be building a 3-TV solution instead. You could try asking Fly-Elise NG for support, but I think they'll tell you the same thing.

I was able to get (for me) a good warped image during set up using your video - all seemed to have gone correctly including the export. I'm using version 5.2.2 of Calibration Pro and version 4.6.5 of Display Pro along w/ P3DV5 - also running both projectors off of one computer. I edited the Viewgroup file in P3D and imported the calibration files into Displaypro. When I launch P3D the image from both projectors is confined to just the area of overlap in the center of the screen (using 2 projectors/180 degree screen) - Ironically, the warping between the images is very good, but I can't figure out why is sizing the so far off (note - I have a photo but couldn't figure out how to upload it so you could see it). Any help would be appreciated. Thank you!

Found the issue - but now have another...the issue was a bad setting (my bad) in the Frustum tab which was pushing the the image deep into the screen. But now I can only get one of the two projectors to accept the video images from DisplayPro - it previews correctly in CalibrationPro but not in P3D....

Success! Found an 'unticked' box to turn on Immersive Calibration Pro w/in the sim itself. Thank you for your video.

Glad to hear you got it working in the end!

It's a solid brick wall between my house and next door. I think they might have a problem with that 🙂. The new sim, when it finally materialises, will have a deeper footwell.

@@FlyerOneZero do it at night, they won't notice. Seriously, I'm impressed with your set up. Looking for ideas to move my XPlane rig from my office to a dedicated room this year so your approach is most informative. Keep them coming!

@@Back2TheBike Thanks! This setup is the remains of my previous sim, which was in my back bedroom (hence the old channel name Back Bedroom Pilot) which was a bit more involved, with a 180 degree curved projection screen setup. You can see this on my older videos. I've been learning new and better building and fabrication techniques so that the next sim can be better again. Still not a patch on some of the setups out there; I'm constantly amazed by the work some people in this community do.

@@FlyerOneZero my passion is building heritage airfields. Currently RAF Little Staughton, where dad was A Sgt Pilot on Lancs. 300 buildings, about 30% done. The aim being to fly what he flew, where he flew it.

There is a combined option where you just run one program if you have only one PC running everything. This is the program 'single.exe'. But the last time I tried to use this, it seemed like it had not been updated with new features that had been added to the client/server versions. Perhaps it has now.

Interesting. I had never heard of them. These are plugins for the Elgato software, it seems. Certainly if you want something ready-made for an aircraft type, it's a great resource. Thanks for pointing them out!

Spad can certainly have a steep learning curve. I'm a coder by profession so I guess I'm more used to the DIY approach. I often hand-edit the Spad XML files in my editor rather than use the UI to program things. I've even built some tools to automate making new Spad profile including all my 'standard' functions. Something (profile inheritance) that Spad is supposed to be getting as a feature this year.

@@FlyerOneZero …..yes, have really liked their products. They are extremely active on Discord as well. So getting support is pretty easy.

Yes, it does have a fairly harsh learning curve. Ive got a civil engineer’s background, I only reference to make the point that Im fairly analytical. But software and I dont seem to get along. There are some profiles, like the inibuilds a300, that I desperately want, but Flight Panels has not produced one, and have been a bit secretive as to whether they will or not. So I started trying to get light switches (nav, taxi, landing etc), as well as the typical external power, batteries, adirs, apu etc etc. While I made some fairly significant progress inside of Stream Deck, I really feel it would be best in the long run to use spad. Ive already purchased it, but I really just feel lost. Its tough to know how to get started

Yes indeed. I linked to his channel in the video notes!

Oh, I still have it. In fact I have two. The FlightBox was taken apart a while ago and the parts are sitting on a shelf. I plan to reconstruct the throttle quadrant portion as a separate device at some point, but I have no need of a four-lever jet quadrant right now. The spoiler and flaps panel I've already re-constructed into a separate unit and it's part of the pedestal panel you can see in this video. Meanwhile I acquired another custom Throttletek throttle, an A320 stand-alone unit which you can see in the video from 09:50 onwards. So I have plenty of Throttletek kit, I just no longer need a FlightBox setup since I want to lay out my controls in a modular way.

Hi Jay. I don't have the Stream Deck Plus, so it's not really something I could do. Depending on how your hardware is constructed, there are several different possible approaches to automation. Are you intending to use a Plus for your radio panel?

@@FlyerOneZero …yes. I have other stream decks for ecam panel, and SD+ for autopilot. Just purchased SD+ for radio. Im just not a software guy, so I bought flight panels autopilot profile, but they dont make a radio/comms panel.

@@jay-rus4437 If you’re not into the idea of setting up via Spad.next, there’s always PilotsDeck which is a stream deck plug-in: flightsim.to/file/35298/pilot-s-deck-a-streamdeck-plugin. I am planning to do a video on programming Stream Deck with Spad but that will only cover buttons since I only have regular units, not the plus.

@@FlyerOneZero ….thank you so much for the response and recommendation. I did not know about pilotsdeck. Will look into it. Is it a program that has preset button and knob “functions” so that one can then build out a profile? If Im saying that correctly

@@jay-rus4437 Looks like it, yes.

Hmm. I had that once when installing on a second machine, but realised I'd had the trial version installed on that machine previously. Otherwise sounds like a false-positive. The developer is usually fairly prompt at addressing support tickets.

Ich glaube nicht.

Sorry, I missed this comment. Each knob has a cap which you can remove, and under the cap is a screw that you have to loosen to get the cap off. The dual rotary encoders have a second screw for the lower ring which is revealed once he remove the top knob. Hope that helps!

I’m also wondering, if I have size of screen, resolution and how can I determine the position of projector

@@hungkieu5434 Not quite sure what you're asking in your first comment; but if you're asking if Fly-Elise NG can span a single Windows display across multiple projectors, or the other way around, then no. Each projector is a single display. To work out the optimal position of the projector you need to know the size of the image it will project at a given zoom factor, for which you'll need to know the throw ratio. The simplest way to achieve this is to to Projector Central's throw calculator here: www.projectorcentral.com/projection-calculator-pro.cfm. This will give you exactly the data you're looking for.

@@FlyerOneZero Thanks for your response. With my second comment, Exactly, I want to know how can you determine the position of projector in your video to create that screen. How calculate overlap for reasonable , projector’s position, projector’s angle ? Hope to receive your feedback soon and thanks your share

​@@FlyerOneZero I have done with Immersive Calibration Pro to edge-blending two pjojector with 2 laptop client, 1 laptop sever. However, I don't know how can I run one video on this system, could you help me this issue? Thank you.

@@hungkieu5434 Go to the Projector Central calculator I linked to. Put in your projector model. Select an image width that corresponds to about 60% of your screen's surface width (including the curve). Press Enter, which will calculate the distances. The 'throw distance' is the distance you need from the projector to the screen, assuming your projector lens is mounted on a line extending from the center of each projector image at 90 degrees to that center line. You can then use the zoom function to precisely adjust the image to your screen size (since you'll need to over-zoom the image to compensate for the warping the Immersive Display Pro will do). Does that help?

Fair comment. I guess ‘introduction’ was the wrong title. My production values were not great on this one. Hoping to reset the channel with new content soon. In the meantime I can recommend Les O’Reilly’s series of Spad.neXt videos.

Hi Monika. I measured the screen and divided it into rows and columns and then I used a laser level to identify each point on the screen.

and?

Not in the current app, no. The developer there is building a new app which emulates the NXi but has not been clear about what features are being included. This has been asked for multiple times but he has not indicated whether or not he plans to add it. I've left Simionic behind, to be honest.

See my reply to your other comment above...

Hi. Well, that's a whole other topic. In my setup, with a projector-blended display, I was using Fly Elise-NG's Immersive Calibration Pro to set up my display system. It generates viewgroup configurations (which I *think* work in P3Dv3, it's been a long time since I used it) that can be imported directly into the sim and which will ensure that the views are aligned correctly. I'm assuming you're using LCD screens? How many and how are they set up? Also, you say you're using WideView but that you want to use one PC, which is confusing - WideView only works across multiple networked PCs. Do you have a 1 x server (maybe with the a central screen) and 1 x image generator setup, looking to have two screens on the image generator PC? For LCD screen setup design and alignment, Fly Elise-NG makes a tool called Immersive LCD Pro which will help you do what you want, but it's not free (indeed, it's quite costly at EUR270). Otherwise, you need to get into manually specifying view frustums and doing the calculations necessary to ensure all the angles line up. That's pretty complicated. P3D does have the ability to auto-generate a cylindrical viewgroup and this might well do what you want. It wasn't something I ever needed to get into. All the documentation is available at the P3D web site.

@@FlyerOneZero Thanks for the reply. I have no issues using Fly Elise and often use it to set up 3 projectors and 250 degree views. My current problem is I have 3 pcs set up to run 3 monitors each with a 45 degree offset and it works great. Now I have added a much more powerful pc to add 2 new windows port and starboard so they would be 90 degrees from the front view. WidevieW says you cannot use the set angles because it is 2 windows but you can manually more them to fit. WidevieW says this is possible and you use the dummy file and set it slightly higher off the ground, but it just doesn't seem to work. I just wondered if you had ever tried it. thanks , I do like to vids.

and yes they are monitors all 30inc and the new ones are identical, just another sim fun and games situation ;)

Some info that may help you and others in the future. The image was bouncing, basically you run the view in pause, i.e. you pause p3d, strangely it works. The second issue is stupid but I have not worked out how to resolve yet. I have created a new view which is the front view and then turned this with the keyboard 90 degrees plus some other adjustments. The issue is so obvious now. The front view has a speed the scenery moves, when you turn it 90 degrees it is going the same speed, that's wrong it should be much faster, so when you align it doesn't take long before the speed being too slow makes the view then go wrong. So the solution is I just need to speed it up. Hopefully that will help others. At some point I should make a vid when I have finished the solution.

Might be worth me mentioning here that I have actually stopped using Simionic. But that is mostly about my particular set up (where I fly a lot of different aircraft) and the fact that MSFS pop outs now work properly. Sort of. I still think it’s a good system, but right now I would mostly recommend it for those looking to do C172 sims. The new NXi app may change that.

@@neil_hewitt that is a good point. I’m mainly between Simionic and realsimgear. They are about the same price for just 1 screen.. setup wise, I’m looking for one that is easier to get into game so I don’t have to spend 20 minutes setting up. I boot up the game, set the head tracker, and don’t want to add too many other steps if that makes sense

Oh, I just realised I’m posting as me and not as the BBP… presumably you realise that we are one and the same :-)

Well, I do like to hear myself talk. And I guess that’s what the fast forward button is for. I do try to put chapters into my videos now.

@@FlyerOneZero Sorry buddy, disregard. I was frustrated with the lack of support for the Logitech Multipanel and I guess I took it out on youtube, lol. I appreciate your efforts.

@@silkysifaka1908 Not a problem. Honestly, I know I am a bit rambly sometimes. It's the downside of not scripting (or really planning) videos and just saying stuff as I think of it. Also, I really do like to talk. A lot. People who know me will tell you it's a real issue. Maybe if I were more 'pro' in my approach to video-making I might get more than double-figure views on my flight videos (they tend to do terribly, whereas how-to videos like this do much better; you'd think I'd have learned by now and pivoted my content), but honestly, I do this for my own amusement more than anything else. If people find anything useful or entertaining, so much the better. I owned the Multipanel but I haven't used it for a long time (mine got fried by a USB power overload and I never bothered replacing it as I'd moved on to an Opencockpits MCP and G1000 hardware), so I can't really help out much there, but Spad.neXt features solid built-in support for all the Saitek hardware so you should be able to do what you want. Their Discord is super-useful, much more so than the terrible forum.

Thanks for the comment about the useful discord and the terrible forum. That's really useful.

@@fgaryam u are 9 months and 3 comments out of date. read the subsequent reply and my response to it. 🙂

No. The current Simionic apps simulate the pre-NXi G1000 only. They can support multiple aircraft types but the customisation is limited to the EIS and v-speeds. Particular custom pages for particular aircraft are not supported. The developer is currently building a new app which will simulate the NXi. As usual with Simionic, no timeline is available but he did recently post a quick preview video in the Simionic users Facebook group showing the work so far. The new app will be a single unified app for MFD and PFD (so you'll use the same app on both iPads). Beyond that I have no idea how configurable or customisable it will be.

@@FlyerOneZero Great feed back. Thx so much

No, that's basically it. I mean, setting up the projectors and building / buying a screen etc all need to be done before you can get into configuring the display. Don't forget that your displays must be set up as individual screens, not spanned with EyeFinity / Surround etc. Otherwise, follow the steps here and you should be good.

Thanks, Dave. How's your ATR sim going?

@@neil_hewitt Going great Neil I’m the sim manager and Camo manager in Scotland . My Atr sim is being moved to a new location at the moment but my newest vr sim is really good . I’ve made a g seat with air bladders in the seat I’ll send a wee link

@@neil_hewitt Here’s a wee link showing the air bladders in the seat ,the servo board is now placed in a shock proof case behind the seat ua-cam.com/video/g4R7hXvzsJQ/v-deo.html

If you think this one is nice, wait until you see the next one 🙂

Hi Luca. Radius on this screen is 100cm.

Hi. The reason I can see the points in normal light is that the UV pen caused dark spots when applied to my screen surface. Ordinarily it should not do that, and the dots should be invisible in normal light. I bought a UV lamp that can illuminate the whole screen and I can use this to reveal all the UV dots, but since I already know roughly where they are I just used a handheld UV pen-light to identify them for this video.

Do you have the bridge software downloaded from the Simionic website? In my experience it generally just works and is pretty self-explanatory. You have to make sure that the iPads and the PC are on the same Wi-Fi network. Or that the Wi-Fi network can be reached from the wired network via the router. I haven’t tried the one for X-Plane for obvious reasons. There are intermittent connection problems, but this is usually between the two iPads and not between the PFD and the PC. This appears to be an iOS issue which supposedly might be fixed in the NXi app coming, well, it’s anyone’s guess when.

Do you mean that your view windows have title bars? You just need to have the sim in full-screen mode. For P3D (and MSFS for that matter) that's ALT+ENTER and it will remember your setting.

Hi Martin. Scenery has to be installed on all the clients, for other add-ons it depends. It also depends which multichannel solution you are using. P3D native multichannel is quite different from WideView for example. Don’t forget that this may also have licensing implications. There is no requirement to have a separate network for the inter-PC communication. It will work just fine across your existing network.

www.simionic.net/wordpress/shop/

Hell yeah it is!

Hi George. Sorry for the late reply. Yes, you can use SPAD.neXt alongside FSUIPC etc. If the cutoff switches can be set by sending a Simconnect command or changing a data value, you would be able to bind this to your hardware. Sometimes it requires some extra logic, using a local variable etc. But it can usually be done. TBH once I started using it properly, I moved away from FSUIPC for most things. I believe it might also have direct support for GoFlight modules, though I can't swear to it.

@@FlyerOneZero Thanks

Yup, I have GoFlight EFIS & MCP-Pro running in FS2020 with Fenix A320 & CS B77W. Took a while to find the LVARs but was worth it to keep that decade old investment running!

Simionic working independently of the sim for flight planning etc is by design. It doesn't control the sim autopilot, it provides its own. It would be relatively trivial to provide a way to import flight plans from the sim to the app, though, and the fact that it hasn't been done yet is irritating enough that I was working on a program to do it myself. It's true that their support email is often slow to reply. There is a limited comments section on their site where people do interact and ask questions, but really the best support you can get is on the Facebook group (search for 'Simionic G1000 Flyers', you'll need to be admitted as it's a private group) which is semi-official in that the developer does hang out there occasionally and you'll find a community of users helping each other. The real problem with Simionic (and so many other companies in this space) is that it's basically one person doing everything. I don't know how many people Simionic employs but I do know that the main software developer is the only developer. He seems perpetually so busy that he can't really engage much with customers. Particularly now, he's building a new app which models the G1000 NXi which is promised to solve all the problems with the existing apps. No ETA on that new app, though. For myself, I am abandoning Simionic, at least for now, because as you say, popping out the G1000/3000 in the sim is now a viable option that doesn't tank your frame rate (much). I've refurbished my Emuteq units with new screens and I'm able to bind all the buttons to MSFS via Spad.neXt. It works pretty well, with the bonus that I can also do the GX3 and even the Proline avionics in the CJ4, and even steam gauges via AirManager. The Emuteq units aren't the best, they're not the most accurate, but they do work well and they were easy to upgrade to HDMI screens. I am keeping the Simionic units, though, and I will try out the NXi app when it comes. I still think it's a good approach, it's just flawed and not configurable enough, with irritating bugs that seem to be down to iOS restrictions more than the app itself. Maybe those will get solved.