Using a second PC to offload output to ancilliary monitors and or DCS BIOS

[lesthegrngo]

Guys, I'm finally being able to put my rig back together after our recent move. However it is currently using a total of five monitors, one for the main display and four for the MFCD's and other instruments. I am also looking at replacing the CDU TFT with a 5 inch LCD screen to get rid of the character mismatch, which would bring the total to six displays. apart from the main display most are (relatively) low resolution.

I have two GPU's in the PC, so the number of displays is on the limit but achievable with one PC, but I am worried that the need to drive all the displays from one PC will negatively affect it; either slowing the PC or causing lag. I know that before I managed to resolve the issue with RS485 having lots of USB connections caused lag

So I have an older i5 desktop PC in pieces doing nothing, so I started wondering whether it is possible to link it to the main PC and use it to drive some of the monitors, and maybe DCS BIOS so that the main PC can max out the framerate and performance.

Is this erroneous thinking?

Cheers

 

Les

[agrasyuk]

Hey Les,

Yes you can use second PC , run an instance of Helios on it and connect to main PC. However if you want to display view ports on it ( ie the MFD) it gets a bit more complicated. The view port has to be rendered on main PC regardless, be it on visible screen area or rendered on the side. Then this pre-rendered picture needs to be streamed to the target PC somehow. 

 

In any case I don't see this to have any measurable impact on overall performance.

 

Good luck!

[No1sonuk]

I've recently discovered "Spacedesk", which allows an Android, iOS or Windows device to connect to a PC as if it were a monitor.
It's free for one device, and I've not noticed any performance impact outputting two MFCD viewports to my phone (1080x2400) as a test.
I just ordered a cheap Android Tablet that I intend to use with this and Helios to make a CDU.

https://www.spacedesk.net/

[lesthegrngo]

Thanks guys

The intention would actually be to offload some of the GPU work, so only data for the second PC to use to make the displays would be sent, a bit like sending telemetry to a remote PC rather than processing it on the same PC

I know in the olden days PC's could be linked for certain tasks, when processing power was limited - I seem to remember the company I worked for having effectively a network of PC's in order to run their CAD program, where the calculations were shared out amongst the individual satellite units. That still used to be so slow that you would start the porcessing on Friday evening and hope it had finished by the time you came in Monday morning, so I think you can guess how long ago that was!

 

Les

[Viper1970]

This kind of link between two or more machines, to outsource things like the instruments or similar, still works with BMS and also the Flight Simulator 2004 up to P3D V5 ( don't know if the new MS FS also supports it), but as far as my research showed me, has the use of a second PC for all the instrument stuff or anything else no real advantage in DCS. The whole workload in DCS has always to be done by the computer that also runs the sim itself.

Edited May 22, 2022 by Viper1970

[agrasyuk]

Well there is a way to sort off offload -  load mission on a dedicated server running on a separate machine. connect to it via LAN . This way your simulator machine focuses on flying your plane while the server calculates the combat environment, unit orders triggers, etc.  If the mission is complex enough there will be less performance loss vs running it in single player on same machine. For simple missions it's a wash. 

8th gen i7 with 16gb (running headless) seems to do a very good job being my dedicated server. 

[Viper1970]

This sounds interesting! The second PC in my pit is only a retro rig I use for other older sims which don't like Win10 or even 11 so much. It has XP and W7 in dual-boot, to be able to also run simulations from that time-frame and therefor it's only a Phenom X6 1100T with two 660GTX in SLI. But in my command unit (the game-place beside my pit) there is also a Ryzen 7 2700X, besides the other retro-machines, which could do the job. It is primarily meant to play all my more modern naval and tank simulations.

Edited May 24, 2022 by Viper1970

[Invictus84]

On 5/21/2022 at 4:08 PM, agrasyuk said:

Hey Les,

Yes you can use second PC , run an instance of Helios on it and connect to main PC. However if you want to display view ports on it ( ie the MFD) it gets a bit more complicated. The view port has to be rendered on main PC regardless, be it on visible screen area or rendered on the side. Then this pre-rendered picture needs to be streamed to the target PC somehow. 

 

In any case I don't see this to have any measurable impact on overall performance.

 

Good luck!

http://pw-developer.com/soft_dcs_mfd.html

[lesthegrngo]

Thanks guys

This has taken a recent development as due to a windows update, my PC for some reason will not now recognise the second GPU (RTX660) as it keeps coming up with "driver not installed" errors. This halves the number of displays I can connect in a stroke so compromises my display of instruments. Even if there is no performance improvement it still may be a solution that helps me

Cheers

Les

[agrasyuk]

9 hours ago, Invictus84 said:

http://pw-developer.com/soft_dcs_mfd.html

This is a good find. I use Piotr's DCS-UFC app, I knew he had a way to transmit viewports to his tablet app. I didn't realize he has the same for PC. 

With that his claim of " How this app impact on DCS performance?
- affect less than normal export on another screen because viewports is "showing" below Your monitor so GPU doesn't need to render it on screen" simply cannot be true. GPU will absolutely calculate every single pixel on visible and invisible screen area. Even the unused black area. 

 

 

[Invictus84]

I find it does make a difference with FPS, but YMMV.