How to use a tablet or phone as an instrument panel in MSFS 2024

A tablet or a phone next to your keyboard can show your aircraft's instruments in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, on a PC. There are three ways to do it: turn the tablet into a Windows monitor and pop the screens out onto it, use an instrument app that has its own tablet app, or open a page in the tablet's web browser. The third one needs nothing installed on the tablet, and it is how PanelSight 1.3.0 does it.

On Xbox, none of this works: the sim can't pop out screens there, and it can't run the programs on the PC that instrument apps need. A tablet can still show charts and checklists.

1. Make the tablet a Windows monitor

Apps such as spacedesk (Windows, Android and iPad) and Duet make a tablet into an extra monitor for your PC. You install a program on the PC and an app on the tablet, and Windows sends the tablet a video of that part of the desktop. Then you put instruments on it as you would on any monitor: pop out a glass screen with Right Alt and a click, and drag the window onto the tablet.

• It is free or cheap, and it works for anything on your desktop, not only the sim.
• Every pop-out costs frame rate. The sim keeps drawing each pop-out window, many times a second. We measured what that costs in MSFS 2024 pop-outs: the frame rate cost.
• Only glass screens pop out. Analog gauges, such as a Cessna's airspeed indicator, never do (see why you can't pop out steam gauges), and some glass screens, like the A320neo's, don't pop out on their own either.
• You place the windows yourself, after every flight you load, unless a pop-out manager does it for you.

2. An instrument app with a tablet app

Some instrument apps come with their own app for tablets, which connects to a program on your PC. Air Manager has iPad and Android apps, sold separately, that show the gauges you set up in it. GlassOut sends the sim's glass screens to phones and tablets, with no pop-outs. We compared these apps in Air Manager alternatives for MSFS 2024.

These apps do the job well, but you set up a panel for each aircraft yourself, and the tablet needs its app, which may be sold separately.

3. A page in the tablet's browser

Since version 1.3.0, PanelSight can show its panel in the web browser of any phone, tablet or computer on the same network as your PC. There is nothing to install on the tablet, and nothing to set up per aircraft: PanelSight builds the panel for each aircraft it supports, and the browser becomes one more screen for it, like a second monitor.

• It shows drawn instruments, analog gauges included, and live glass screens.
• Touch works as it does on a touchscreen monitor: press the buttons, and turn a knob with its knob dial.
• You choose what it shows, and you can arrange its instruments in the layout editor, just as on a monitor connected to your PC.
• When the browser comes back, it reconnects as the same screen, with what it showed before.
• The tablet's screen stays on while it shows the panel, and the page fills the screen when you first touch it.

To set it up:

1. Open Settings, go to the Screens tab and turn on Browser screens.
2. On the phone or tablet, scan the QR code that Settings shows. Or type the short address shown there into the browser, then click Allow on the request that appears in Settings.
3. The browser now appears under Monitors, where you set its size and choose what it shows.

We have tested browser screens thoroughly on desktop computers and Android devices, in Chrome and Firefox, and on iPhones and iPads.

What it doesn't do:

• It works only with MSFS 2024 on a PC, and only with the aircraft PanelSight supports.
• A browser screen is always an extra screen. The panel over the sim view stays on your PC's main monitor.

What a browser screen sends over your network

A browser screen is not a video of your desktop. PanelSight sends each part of the panel in the way that suits it:

• Drawn instruments are sent once as pictures, and after that only the positions of the parts that move, such as needles. A whole panel in flight takes tens of kilobytes a second, so it stays sharp even on a busy home network.
• Live glass screens are sent as video, made by your PC's graphics card, and play a fraction of a second behind the sim. On our test computer, this cost at most about one frame per second in the sim.
• Your touches go back to PanelSight, which presses the button or turns the knob in the sim. The knob's click sounds on your PC, with the sim.

It stays on your home network. PanelSight answers only devices on a private network, such as your home network, never the internet. And a browser can only become a screen with the key in the QR code's address, or after you click Allow in Settings.

If the page does not open

• Check that the tablet is on the same network as the PC, for example on the Wi-Fi of the router the PC is connected to, not on mobile data or a guest network.
• Allow PanelSight on private networks. The first time you turn on browser screens, Windows may ask whether PanelSight can use the network. If you closed that question, Windows now blocks it.
• Make your home network private in Windows. Windows doesn't let PanelSight in on a network it calls public.

Click Page does not open?… in Settings for these steps. Its Allow through Windows Firewall… button lets phones and tablets on private networks reach PanelSight; Windows asks for your permission first.

Which one to choose

• You want a tablet as one more monitor for everything on your PC: a display app such as spacedesk, with pop-outs for the glass screens.
• Your aircraft isn't one PanelSight supports, or you fly another sim: one of the first two ways.
• You want your aircraft's panel on a tablet or phone, analog gauges and glass, with nothing to install on it: PanelSight's browser screens. PanelSight builds the panel for you, and if you want it laid out your own way, you can arrange its instruments in the layout editor.

For other ways to get an instrument panel next to the sim, on a monitor rather than a tablet, see 3 ways to get an instrument panel on a second monitor. For turning knobs with a finger, see cockpit knobs on a touchscreen.

Found something wrong or out of date in this article? Please let us know at contact@panelsight.net.