With FSX was a pain for me to not have 2nd PC really - exclusive full screen was good, and using 2nd monitor, you would black it out if using exclusive full and not borderless.

With P3D, as Vic said, it is more of a convenience, but since P3D doesn't have exclusive full screen, you can also run 2nd monitor as well.

In terms of performance - I was long running secondary apps on a laptop. I dumped it. There is absolutely no impact if all-on-one, only work to maintain two computers and setting everything up (incl. looking for errors, if something isn't working). And even if AS is doing something, I sure am not feeling it. I have a fully blown AI, addon airports, PMDG/FSL...

That said, running 6700K at 4.8Ghz, with 3600Mhz RAM, GTX980 and an M2.SSD. So YMMV.

I have been using for years and there are many benefits, e.g my CLIENT PC  runs AS16, Project magenta,  SimToutch plus 2 and sounds etc I have project magenta running 2 displays for instruments and a touch display for SimToutch and a separate display for map. It became a second nature to me , can't live without.

At the moment I'm running everything on same PC, but in past I had run on two PC's. Now on 1 PC, it just not convenient to run all the things I did when running networked. It can be a real PITA to run two, but if you keep notes and backups or certain files that get overwritten during an update, I can't see how you can say a bad word against a client and server setup.

I also found it a PITA just to keep 2 monitors going, I'd rather put in the maintenance time in on a network.

 

So is it not possible to have the SIM run on 1 PC, and offload the Out-The-Window (Visuals) to another PC?  This is with the current Sims that are available to consumers.  I know it is done on much larger commercial sims.  According to LM, P3D will talk CIGI but I just don't know if the sim is set up to operate that way.  Anyone know?

32 minutes ago, Gavenger said:

So is it not possible to have the SIM run on 1 PC, and offload the Out-The-Window (Visuals) to another PC?  This is with the current Sims that are available to consumers.  I know it is done on much larger commercial sims.  According to LM, P3D will talk CIGI but I just don't know if the sim is set up to operate that way.  Anyone know?

On FSX it is possible to do this using a suitable networking program to synchronize two copies of FSX. The only two such programs I am aware of are Wideview and OpusFSI. OpusFSI also supports P3D, I can't speak for Wideview. That said, I have recently experimented with this (using OpusFSI) and found it to be an utterly inelegant method that introduces a host of new problems that may well outweigh the benefits. Earlier versions of P3D had similar ('multi-channel') functionality built-in but I understand it is now only available if you buy a 'Professional Plus' licence, which costs about the same as a buying a new PC that's of running P3D with decent performance.

1 hour ago, MarkDH said:

On FSX it is possible to do this using a suitable networking program to synchronize two copies of FSX. The only two such programs I am aware of are Wideview and OpusFSI. OpusFSI also supports P3D, I can't speak for Wideview. That said, I have recently experimented with this (using OpusFSI) and found it to be an utterly inelegant method that introduces a host of new problems that may well outweigh the benefits. Earlier versions of P3D had similar ('multi-channel') functionality built-in but I understand it is now only available if you buy a 'Professional Plus' licence, which costs about the same as a buying a new PC that's of running P3D with decent performance.

 

 

Wideview also supports P3D you just have to have a P3D license for each PC, not to confuse wideserver which FSUIPC needs on the Client PC to run  Addons  such Project Magenta. 

After setting up a nice AMD based "gaming" machine, or so I thought, for flight simulation I discovered Intel/Nvidia was the way to go.  So I assigned that PC as my 2nd PC to run follow-maps, glass and steam gauges, Super Traffic Board... all sorts of goodies that I off-loaded from my main PC.

Plus I can use it for the web when flying, doing other PC work.  I have found it quite indispensable these days.

For a long time, I have been building a new flight sim PC every 3-4 years, and when I do, I rotate the old one into place as my secondary PC. 

I run flight planning (PFPX, FSBuild), ATC (Radar Contact, PF3, Pro/ATC-X), moving map (Aivlasoft EFB), weather (AS 2016/ASCA), and some other ancillary utilities like Quantum Leap, VASMon etc on the second PC, as well as reviewing Navigraph/FAA map products.  ActiveSky, in all of its incarnations, has been and continues to be fairly CPU-intensive at times, and having that workload moved off the sim PC prevents the stutters that occur when the wx program eats too far into the headroom between normal FS CPU load and 100% CPU utilization on a core.  Smoothness on P3D is very good when there is enough headroom between CPU utilization under FS load and max load to accomodate spikes in workload without hitting 100% on the CPU cores.  Widening that headroom gap does not result in better FPS for me (I run with vsync lock on a 30Hz monitor) but increasing that headroom gap reduces the number of stutters when those spikes do occur (most often terrain/scenery loads).

Also, having ATC audio coming from a different source than the sim PC allows me to put that on a headset or side speaker with separate control over volume/tone etc, with ambient acft surround sound from my sound system (a home theater system dedicated to the sim machine).  It's a very flexible way to configure audio.

The second PC does not need to be cutting edge, either in the processor or GPU dept.  Until recently, I was using a 2009 vintage i7-975 with a GTX480 as my secondary PC, and it was way more than enough for the job.

Finally, it's helpful to be able to look at weather, computer flight plan, maps, etc off to the side without disturbing the sim.  And I can surf AVSIM while at cruise...  ;-) 

Regards

Can you run this other pc as a wireless connected laptop?

Just now, warbirds said:

Can you run this other pc as a wireless connected laptop?

Yes

That would be ideal for me then because I don't sit at a desk with the main pc and sit back from a large monitor with remote mouse and keyboard. Also the laptop would have the monitor built in so no need to add that..cool. Now all I need is a network guru to come over and set this up for me :)

Another great thing about networking PC's in Sim is you can kill or adjust the addons on the fly without pausing the sim. just be careful using wireless depend on the addon it might cause issues if your wifi is too slow.  

If you are then using 2nd computer, but want to use a single input device (mouse/keyboard), eg. only that of your main computer, there is a simple program I used for a long time:

https://www.inputdirector.com/

 

6 minutes ago, SimonC said:

If you are then using 2nd computer, but want to use a single input device (mouse/keyboard), eg. only that of your main computer, there is a simple program I used for a long time:

https://www.inputdirector.com/

 

 

I just use this as you can switch up to 3 PC's https://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/mx-master?crid=7

Hi,

See here, Hi-FI commented about using AS16 on networked PC (no gain)

Mike