MFD on second Monitor (No VNC MFD)

[Adrian]

Hey everyone,

I have been searching through the Simpit Forum for a while now, and I couldn´t find a solution for my particular case. I am building a simpit (see the image below) which works with a single PC that has 3 Monitors. My goal is to display the simulation on the center screen, and 2 MFDs on the side screens.

The easiest solution for that would obviously be ExtMFD, but it has a positioning problem, a focus problem and a aspect ratio problem, which is already perfectly outlined here. Now the solution this thread proposes, and which all roads seem to lead to is VNCMFD. This is the perfect solution for most simpit builder who want to use tablets and rasberry pis as MFDs, but in my case it makes no sense at all. Sending an MFD over the Network to a different screen on the same PC? Doesn´t seem very sensible.

But for some reason, it seems like there is nothing for my case. I found some obscure post that says it should be possible to multiscreen with a few modifications to the D3D9 client, but it didn´t really go further into detail so it was not very useful and I can´t find it anymore.
Am I missing something, and if not, what is the difficulty in solving the focus problem and the aspect ratio problem for ExtMFD? I found the Simpit Controller Addon, which seems to solve positioning of the MFDs, but not much else and has been dead since 2008.

Any pointers what should be done in my situation would be much apprechiated.

Adrian

 

[jedidia]

Sending an MFD over the Network to a different screen on the same PC? Doesn´t seem very sensible.

Why would that not be sensible? It is a very convenient way for two processes to exchange information. Nothing is actually going through "the network" if the routing can be resolved in the machine itself.

 

[Adrian]

Why would that not be sensible? It is a very convenient way for two processes to exchange information. Nothing is actually going through "the network" if the routing can be resolved in the machine itself.

Wouldn´t it introduce unnecessary security and stability risks?

And could you go more into detail on how the routing could be resolved on the machine itself?

 

[jedidia]

Wouldn´t it introduce unnecessary security and stability risks?

If coded properly, no, neither of those two.

And could you go more into detail on how the routing could be resolved on the machine itself?

This will mostly depend on the local configuration. The add-on needs to run a server either in the orbiter plugin component or in the MFD process (intuitively I'd put it into the orbiter component). I'd expect that server to require a port configuration, while the client needs to know the servers IP and its port. If the client is running on the same machine and addresses the server port through the loopback interface (127.0.0.1:<port>) directly instead of through its network IP, the request will never leave the machine before arriving at the server.

 

[Adrian]

Alright thank you. I think you convinced me to use VNC MFD. As I understand it, I should be able to simply enter 127.0.0.1:<port> in my VNC client and everything should work locally right?

I also finally found the time to read through the entire developement thread of VNC MFD, which basically serves as documentation for that addon, and it explained many problems I had when I first tried it like button layout and weird background textures.

Now I just need a way to position the windows correctly, but that shouldn‘t be too difficult.