Multichannel or wideview?

[Landy]

Hello everyone!

I have a full-size cockpit for a 737-800 simulator for almost 10 years now… running perfectly fine with no problem. As everyone in the cockpit building scene, we want to keep improving our "baby" and now we are moving it from the current room to a larger one. We also have a big curved screen made by ourselves with three projectors on it covering around 220º.

We are updating some things in the new room (such as linked yokes, new vibration system, new FULLHD proyectors...) and one of those is of course migrating from FSX to Prepar3d. Our sim is stable and hard as a rock and the setup is as follows:

Computer 1: Our "server" FSX+fsuipc+wideview(server)+prosim systems+most of USB controllers (yokes, pedals, tiller, MCP, etc)
Computers 2,3 and 4: Our "visual clients" with just FSX+fsuipc+wideview(client) (curved screen 220º around 22m2 and warped with Inmersive Display Lite)

Computers 5,6 and 7: CDUs+cockpit screens, sound systems, etc.

We actually have a pretty decent performance and an average of 60fps with very low stutering (Visual Client Computers do nothing but graphics, and even the vision of each projector its just 75º of FOV) while our server runs the FSX on a tiny window 320x240 with everything on VERY LOW (no one can see this but the guy in the instructor station)

I have been flying a lot and reading a lot less since my cockpit was "finished" years ago and now after several tries I still dont know which way should I go with Prepar3d... Should I go with the WideView method or try the "new" multichannel Prepar3d is offering? I've tried but seems like not many people is using this system, or at least I have no access to that information.

I already purchased a profesional licence to do some tests in my personal computer, but I have just discovered that only profesional plus have the Multichannel Setup. Im ok with "upgrading" to Profesional Plus but I must know first if that is working and if its a better choice! Seems like the way to go, but I dont want to be the first...

If someone has a multichannel setup either wideview or Prepar3d native way, any advise will be great. Dont know if I can post URLs, but you can view our simulator here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYHnAoFtTH0 The video is pretty old and many of the panels have been replaced with better quality ones, but you will get the general feel. At the end of the video you can see the "nose" of the airplane with everything expose (hard days...)

PD: Forgot to mention… video is in spanish! sorry for that!

Thanks in advance!

[MHargrove]

I have a similar multi-PC setup, running 4 PCs and 6 displays.

There is a third alternative: an application called OpusFSI. OpusFSI provides the same networked-display capability as Wideview, along with a number of other nice things (weather injection, for example). I would certainly give that a try before you try to take on Multichannel in the Pro Plus version.

I experimented heavily with Multichannel about two years ago. At that point in time it worked, but did not do what I wanted. It also had some behaviors that I did NOT want and couldn't disable (for example, I still use a hat switch to pan around the cockpit instruments on my panel view. At the time, multi-channel operation would ALSO pan the external views and there was no way to suppress that). I have not re-evaluated multi-channel recently. It might be time to do that.

-M.

[Landy]

Thanks for the answare mate. I remember to discard OPUS software a while back, but forgot why (sorry for my bad memory).

I defintely have to try. last weekend we start the las step in our new sim, and make the first test with P3D and multichannel and still not sure if its the way to go for us.