Month: May 2022

773: MSFS Multi-Monitor Setup

| Tom Tsui

One of the features I missed the most after moving to MSFS from P3d is the 3-monitor setup.  I believe many friends feel the same.

A friend, KaseLite, who told me in an earlier email saying that he is running MSFS on three PCs with Wideview and the result is very good.  But he admitted that the approach isn’t economical.  Besides the hardware cost, you need to buy the same flight simulator, aircrafts and addons for all machines.

Nevertheless, KaseLite says that the graphics are the best this way.  You can run all machines at maximum solution.

Here’s a demonstration video of his 3-monitor MSFS setup KaseLite took upon my request to share with other friends here.   Thank you.

Builder: KaseLite
Aircraft: N333ZS
Home Airport: KSBA, Santa Barbara Municipal Airport

Project Notes: Continue reading →

772: Where Do You Buy Addons From ?

| Tom Tsui

Saw an interesting discusion from an MSFS forum yesterday about where we should buy our addons from — the MSFS MarketPlace or the Developer’s website or their partnered webstores ?

Most people support the latter because in comparison the price is generally cheaper and the product release and update times are faster.

I agreed with them in general.  But the truth I found is: not all developers have good customer services and not all developers/webstores will prompt you for updates and bugs immedately.  And the most frustrated is this “missing link” sometimes leads to CTDs after MSFS updates.

There were many times I had to Google and trial and error to find out what addon(s) was (or were) the cause(s).  Spending hours to catch the bugs wasn’t uncommon in my experience.

A recent example Continue reading →

771: Scrolling FUN with DHC-6 Altimeter

| Tom Tsui

The hybrid-style altimeter which has analog needles and digit display are always my favorite.  While flying the Aerosoft DHC-6 lately, I noticed that the “thousand” and “10-thousand” digits on the altimeter are not simply linear scrolling according to height.  The numbers start to scroll up or down to the next value only from the last “50” and “500” at every hundred and thousand segment respectively.

I then thought it would be fun to add this little effect to the DHC-6 altimeter as such, although I tend to prefer the flipping style as it is more precise and easier to read. 


So here’s the updated DHC-6 altimeter.  The Clean Version with the new scrolling effect is on the left, and the Extended Version with the digit flipping on the right.  Continue reading →

770: RedBird Alloy RD1 Review Cont’d

| Tom Tsui

After received my second RD1 unit, I immediately swapped it with the first one being used in my main system.  Assuming it could run directly straight out from the box.  Sadly, no, it didn’t.–

NO TWO RD1 ARE THE SAME

Truly, the joystick axes for the rudders and brakes are the same.  But the new RD1 performed far from normal using the calibration from the first RD1.
RD1-2GIF
The Rudder Axis wasn’t centered at rest.  And the left and right Brake Axes were jumping up and down and didn’t return to zero when released, meaning that the toe brakes were somehow pressed all the time.

Obviously, the two RD1s are two individual equipment and they couldn’t be treated as the same unit.  Initial calibration for each individual RD1, therefore, was mandatory and inescapable. Continue reading →

769: My RD1 Rudder Now Fly in pairS

| Tom Tsui

Truly, the Thrustmaster Pendular Rudder (TPR) performs nicely in my second system.  But I found it more and more alienated when the Redbird Alloy RD1 has become my primary rudder and be used everyday in the last six months.

Consequently, I couldn’t help having two RD1s flying in pairs.
RD1_Extra_01S
Thanks goodness! Continue reading →