2 hours ago, pmb said:

And yes, I agree, shifting as much as possbile work to a second machine takes quite some load from the main FS machine indeed.

Michael,

What level of improvement do you see?Every time that I have tried networking an add-on I saw very little improvement. I initially attributed this to the sim being heavily oriented to the GPU. But then I looked at the SimConnect stream in real time. The SimConnect channel is managed by the local CPU, so gains that are acheived by accessing a remote CPU are somewhat canceled out by the increased overhead due to the SimConnect channel.

Very good question Jay. I don't recall ever seeing that discussed. Its been years since I tried networking any FS stuff. Probably prior to Windows 7.

27 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

Michael,

What level of improvement do you see?Every time that I have tried networking an add-on I saw very little improvement. .

I didn't make a direct comparison, so I simply can't answer this. However, I have been using this configuration for years now and am under the impression I get less stuttering and blurries than others with similar configurations are reporting. I know this isn't a very scientific statement but that's what it is right now.

I am not sure if I want to reconfigure all my settings just for a comparison (with the danger something doesn't work afterwards). While it works very reliable today, It took me quite some patience to set up properly, you have to know port numbers, give fixed IPs to the machines, probably need a wired LAN anyway, etc.; as Sam remarks it's all but simple to set up for the beginner.

There is one definite result though: I use a hardware panel (XTOP) and as I said drive the controls/gauges/panels via SPAD.neXt on a second machine. This way I can completely get rid of the 2D/3D panel on screen which only displays scenery. I once switched on the 3D panel which gave me a pretty hard fps hit (I think > 20 %). 

This works excellenty for the GA planes I fly most but less than optimum for complex jets where you'll just miss elements (like the FMC) which my hardware can't provide (at least not in its present state). Thus I am afraid it's not for you.

And yes, there certainly is an offset by the simconnect data processing. As always, it probably depends on the machine, configuration, and much more if you really get a gain.

Kind regards, Michael