Running Helios Control Center Remotely
The general principles for how Helios Control Center runs on a second computer are set out in this video
The high level activities are as follows:
- Edit profile on PC1 'DCS Export Configuration' to reflect PC2 IP address.
- In section below click 'Update DCS' (exports LUAs are updated) and save.
- Copy profile to PC2.
- Open Profile Editor on PC2 and open copied profile.
- Reset Monitors (configure as desired) and save.
- Run Control Center on PC2 with the profile and start DCS. This is working correctly. Gauges are working on PC2!
- "Setup DCS" to declare the remote IP address interface
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DCS and Helios Control Center always communicates over a network, but for a single machine setup, the IP address which DCS communicates with is 127.0.0.1 which is often referred to as LocalHost and is an alias IP address for the current machine. To be able to tell DCS which machine your Helios Control Center will be running on, first you need to know the IP V4 address of that machine. Microsoft provides the following information to find your IP address. The information you need is the information in the IPv4 address field. If there is a forward slash (eg 192.168.1.4/24) in the information, the address is the four sets of numbers before the '/'.
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Note: Unless you have set up your own network, then your computer probably has a dynamic IP address which is likely to change every time the computer restarts. It is possible to configure a static IP address which does not change, but that is outside the scope of these instructions.
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The next step is to run Helios Profile Editor on the machine where DCS runs and load the profile you intend to run.
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Go to the interface page for the aircraft which your profile is using. On the page for that interface, you will put the IP address found above into the IP Address field.
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- Helios will then warn you that there is a problem because by typing in the new IP address, file HeliosExport16 no longer matches the configuration.
- Press the settings / cog icon at the top right of the screen and you will be returned to the Interface panel, and this time you will be able to press the Setup DCS
- There is no need to change Helios settings on the PC running Helios Control Center & the aircraft profile.
If you have different monitor configurations on the two PC's, then Helios Profile Editor needs to be run on the PC where the Helios profile needs to run and a Reset Monitors operation will need to be performed on the profile.
If the profile requires Viewports, then Iris Server can be used on the PC running DCS World, and the Iris Client can run on the PC running the Control Center and Profile. Iris will capture the viewport which is rendered by DCS World, and transport it over the network to the PC running the profile and render the viewport there.
If the profile uses the keyboard interface to send commands to DCS, then the Key Receiver will need to be installed on the PC running DCS World.