Simulation Instruments
Fill every screen
Touch monitors and tablets become instruments. Arrange panels that fit your cockpit — back-country, GA, bizjet, or a multi-screen heavy — and launch them where your hands expect them.
One app. Built for serious sim cockpits.
Why Studio
Simulation Instruments is for sim pilots who care how the panel feels — not only how the scenery looks. Put real working gauges on every monitor and tablet in your cockpit. Lay out a single radio stack, or fill an entire flightdeck. Same Studio from a bush plane to a widebody — whether you fly for fun or you’re matching a type you know from the left seat.
Hands on the airplane, not the mouse
Touch bezels and on-screen dials that behave like the real stack — practice flows until they’re muscle memory. When you want physical click, Studio is the platform to build and wire your own hardware (including a DIY NICE knob). We don’t sell the knob; you build it.
Build the instruments you can’t buy yet
When the catalog doesn’t have your EFIS, FMS, or overhead, make it. Design in Studio, try it live, save it, and grow a library that matches the airplane you’re simulating.
Design in Studio and edit Lua in free community VS Code (not Visual Studio) with the Simulation Instruments extension — built for this workflow.
New: put any window on your tablet
Your GPS popout, an EFB, a clock: if it runs in a window on your Windows PC, Studio can capture it and place it in a panel. Put it beside your instruments, or layer it behind an instrument bezel whose knobs and buttons control the captured window. Then send that panel to an Android tablet on your home network. Lean it on the glareshield, mount it by the throttle, and keep the sim’s main view clear.
- Studio captures ordinary Windows app windows, including X-Plane popouts like a GNS.
- The Tablet Viewer for Android finds your PC on the home network. Pick it, approve the tablet in Studio, and you’re flying.
- Touch works on your panel instruments. Captured windows are for viewing.
- Building panels with captures is part of Builder; Basic displays panels that already have them.
Early access: Windows PC and Android tablets (tested on Samsung Galaxy and Amazon Fire), one tablet at a time.
Basic, Builder, or Publisher
Start on Basic free. Subscribe when you want to create — or package, protect, and sell.
Basic
Basic
$0
Fly the panels and instruments you install, on every screen in your cockpit. Try the full editor, but nothing you change is saved when you quit.
- Arrange and launch panels across your sim cockpit
- Touchscreens, second displays, and Android tablets as real instruments
- Auto-launch panels when the right aircraft loads
- Premium instruments and US aviation data in the store when you want them
Builder
Builder
$4 a month or $39 a year
Save your work: your own panels, layouts, and instruments, kept for every flight.
- Everything sim pilots use to fly panels
- Design your own instruments and save them
- Lay out and save new panels for as many screens as your cockpit needs
- Capture windows and place them in your panels, beside your instruments or behind a bezel that controls the window
- Try instruments instantly — iterate without waiting on a full sim session
- 7-day Builder trial
Publisher
Publisher
$29 a month or $199 a year
Package and protect your instruments, then sell them to other sim pilots.
- Everything in Builder
- Package and protect instruments, ready to share or sell
- Grow a catalog other builders and sim pilots can fly
Scale from one panel to a full cockpit.
Start with the stack you reach for every flight. Then keep going — more screens, more instruments, a pedestal, an overhead, a glareshield. Studio scales with the airplane you’re simulating: back-country panels, light GA, turboprops, bizjets, and heavies.
Premium
Instruments that work like the real thing
Premium instruments — like the Avidyne EX5000C and Sandel SN3308 — put real procedures under your fingers. Every key on the bezel does what it does in the airplane. Browse the store for instruments and US data updates; flying your panels in Studio stays free for sim pilots.
In the cockpit
Stay in the flight
Studio is the software platform for a hands-on cockpit: working instruments on your screens today, and a path to physical controls you build yourself. Assign dials and switches in Studio so your hands learn where everything is — across the sims you fly.
No MICE, meet the NICE knob — dual concentric encoders you build and flash yourself. Studio walks you through DIY build and USB setup. Not a store SKU; the platform is what we provide.
Also for real pilots
Built by a pilot who wanted proficiency — shared with sim pilots who want realism.
Simulation Instruments started with a real Cirrus panel and the need to stay sharp between flights. That same idea powers home cockpits and full-motion-style cockpits: if the instruments feel right, the practice transfers — whether your next flight is in the sim or in the airplane.
Studio
Build it. Fly it. Share it.
One app does it all. Sim pilots fly free. Builders design instruments and panels. Publishers package and protect instruments for the community. From first panel to a protected pack for any type — Studio stays the same workflow.
In development
FlightPlanBridge
ForeFlight on the iPad sends flight plans directly to the X-Plane navigators. Route changes can return to the iPad.