Sim Innovations Forums

I read the descriptions for both of these, but there is no mention of what the difference is between these two desktop applications.

What is the difference between the two? What additional features does Air Manager provide that Air Player does not?

Hi and welcome to the forum jonnycat.

Air Manager has all the creation tools built in and one copy of AM is required before you can run an AP. AP is just that a player only. You use it for the display of panels. AM can do everything AP can and all the creation aspects.

Tony

Thanks Tony, so if I wanted to run Air Player on a Raspberry Pi I would need to purchase Air Manager first?

Yes, that’s correct. You need AM to create the panels and then if you want to you can push them to additional AP machines.

Thanks Sling. I found a video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb6NPSkz58E that explained the difference, and it finally makes sense to me (I wish the WIKI and/or user manual explained this). It looks like Air Player functions just as a "dummy" terminal instead of running the panel from Air Manager. I can see a benefit for this if you have multiple panels, as the license for Air Player is cheaper than Air Manager.

Do you know if Air Player has a limited number of hardware resets like Air Manager does? That is my main concern with this software, I'm not fond of having to spend more money when I change out a part on the computer.

Everything is available for Air Player.
Air Player is mainly useful when you have multiple computers with instruments.

Thanks Ralph, I edited my response to Sling with an additional question (see post just above yours).

jonnycat wrote: ↑Sat Sep 12, 2020 7:03 pm Do you know if Air Player has a limited number of hardware resets like Air Manager does? That is my main concern with this software, I'm not fond of having to spend more money when I change out a part on the computer.

You are allowed up to 3 user resets. After this you will need to contact Sim Innovations for a reset. Generally this is fine but I guess if evidence pointed to it being abused they could say no. For the frequency you would normally change any hardware it shouldn’t be a problem in my experience.

The limit is there because we use an offline license system. Having no limit would make the license system useless. It can be reset, but like Tony said, you'll need to contact us.

Note that you always need an active Air Manager license to configure Air Player.

Sling wrote: ↑Sun Sep 13, 2020 12:04 am You are allowed up to 3 user resets. After this you will need to contact Sim Innovations for a reset. Generally this is fine but I guess if evidence pointed to it being abused they could say no. For the frequency you would normally change any hardware it shouldn’t be a problem in my experience.

Ralph wrote: ↑Sun Sep 13, 2020 7:00 am The limit is there because we use an offline license system. Having no limit would make the license system useless. It can be reset, but like Tony said, you'll need to contact us.
Note that you always need an active Air Manager license to configure Air Player.

Thanks guys, I really do appreciate it. My concern is that I don't have piles of money to invest in a simulator, and so I will need to figure out what this runs on. If I try an old laptop and it doesn't work, that's strike one. If a Raspberry Pi doesn't work with the 15FPS limit, that's strike two, etc.

If I have the option of contacting the company directly and being able to still use the application, I can work with that. I don't like it, but I can understand your need to protect your IP.

BTW, what is the hardware ID based on? Is it just the mainboard, or also the CPU, GPU, RAM, etc? I kept my last system for 10 years, during which time I upgraded the CPU once, the RAM twice, and the GPU twice (all from ebay parts), so hopefully you can see where my concern is coming from. I realize that most of your users have thousands of bucks to dump on a simulator, but I'm not in that demographic, and can't afford to have to keep re-purchasing the application after a few upgrades.

Thanks again.