3rd Party Tools: your setup

[Ser Xav]

Hi all, just out of interest, I was wondering how you all set up your 3rd party tools, if you use them. I’m referring of course to the likes of Inara, EDSM, EDDiscovery, ED Market Connector, Spansh, etc.

Whilst running ED, I have a second monitor and arrange EDDiscovery app, and a web browser with Inara and EDSM as the primary tabs (split of half/half across width of monitor). Currently running ED Discovery with History tab as the primary page (although and trying to learn the additional tabs, there’s a lot of information, and configuration potential, here)


Obviously I am running ED in borderless mode to ease the mouse focus transition between ED and external apps.

So: how do you set yours up? Second monitor? Third monitor? Use an iPad or laptop instead? Mobile phone? Which apps do you use? How do you use them? How are they arranged for maximum information and usage? Which bits of each app do you use and rely on most?

Interested to hear any response or general description of what works best for you pics even more welcome!

 

[Aussiedroid]

For me, I only have one screen in my cockpit setup currently so I end up using the Steam Overlay to pull up websites. Most others things for me are more passive in the background while playing. I do run a batch file to start all my apps up together with the game launcher though, which saves a bit of messing around.

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[Dommarraa]

When I am in the bubble, I run EDMC in overlay mode with the ScreenShot and Canonn Addons.
When I am exploring, I run EDDiscovery instead on a second monitor.

Inara and Discord are permanent tabs in Chrome

 

[DragonIV]

I have twin 20" monitors along with a DK2. My graphics card drives the rightmost monitor and the DK2, onboard vid drives monitor #2, literally, the reference monitor.

Stuff in use outside of VR: eddb.io, inara.cz, occasionally coriolis.io or edshipyard, EDMC, and ED Profiler. iTunes when trading, mining, or hauling delivery missions.
In VR: EDMC, Voice Attack + HCS (Eli) and ED Profiler. iTunes again for the same type of things, but I more often do bounty hunting in VR.

Really glad FDev seems to have fixed the multi-monitor game out of focus bug that would freeze the game when coming out of a jump or other transition change. That drove me nuts for years, but realized since a couple of updates ago, that seems to have been corrected.

 

[Chromezero]

I run a second monitor with EDMC(for EDSM/INARA), Voice Attack, Discord, and Winamp(music). When I'm using VR, then I use OVRDrop to bring all those things into my cockpit.

 

[Robert Maynard]

I run a 3 monitor setup - one for game, one behind my MFDs with my app displaying information from the journal and status.json, and the last for two more information displays from my app plus browsing / Discord.

 

[Mohrgan]

I use just one monitor, and have shed the Voice Attack software I used for a while. So, I'm really just running E|D by itself now. I have links for INARA, EDDB, and Coriolis shipbuilder, that's about it.

 

[Ser Xav]

I found that when I went on the 5000 ly trip for unlocking Palin, that having the EDSM 3d travel plot up was quite fun and informative as a way of seeing the progress of the journey.

And whilst I’m only really using the History tab on EDDiscovery, this one tab alone contains a lot of useful real-time information. I need to test some of the other pages and functionality to see if it supplements main the ED flying and navigating in any meaningful way. It’s a nice supplement to the main game but one can’t help feel that it would be awesome if this information was more readily presentable in game as part of the cockpit presentation. I customised the colours to match my blue HUD in Elite.

Clearly having Inara open is useful when mat hunting, and it’s ‘finding nearest feature’ option is super useful. I recently started customising the Inara menu to have quick links to my most used features like ‘find nearest’, ‘stations’, ‘stars’, ‘my crafting’ etc.

I need to learn to use the Market Trader properly. With overlays onto top of the actual ED HUD.

Having two monitors is great but I find the second monitor gets a little overcrowded. I might try a third monitor powered direct from the integrated onboard graphics.

Edit: oh and of course EDDI is amazing- sooo useful. The game feels incomplete without it. Is there any way of seeing s text log of what EDDI says? Sometimes I find the speech hard to understand.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

My setup of third party tools is zero. Don't need them, don't want them

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

I have EDMC and discord running in the background.
And discord, inara, eddb, these forums, on my phone.

 

[Riverside]

I don't use any external tools at all, I don't follow how-to guides & I try to avoid advice threads on the forum (and rarely give advice, although I may describe what I do or have done).

The only thing I find inconvenient using only in-game information is remembering which engineer offers which upgrades. Every so often I take a couple of ships round the engineer sites to add special effects or non-pinned blueprints.

 

[Shiro Akai]

This is my current setup.

Dual screen with off screen being used for mostly Inara / EDDB when conducting every day business. Last year I was using EDDB exclusively during play time, recently started to use Inara as a primary source of information. When I want to find specific place / route / module availability - I refer to EDDB. After my session is over I upload logs into Inara and EDSM, to keep track on fleet, travel distance, stored modules and crafting materials. For exploration journeys I switch to EDDiscovery.

ED is in fullscreen borderless for quick mouseover between screens. 2nd screen is in full window mode but I have lots of tabs there and constantly switch between Inara, EDDB, Youtube, and whatever is currently needed.

I'm also trying to turn my iPad into another control panel but since upgrading to HOTAS that project went on hold.

 

[xzanfr]

I use EDDN running in the background on the main pc to send data.
A raspberry pi on a second monitor is used to run a web browser viewing EDDB when exploring, INARA for working out materials & cargo runs etc and coriolis for ship loadout planning.
The pi generally runs RISCOS & sometimes linux if I need a site with lots of javascript or a googledoc. When on RISCOS I use my own (very) basic program to help optimise the stacking of cargo missions (shown in pic).

I control the ship with keys only (s,x,<,>, etc) augmented by my gaffertape & arcade button controller, and use the mouse for controlling the discovery scanner and some in station menus.

Finally I've got the usual notebook full of post it tabs / data and the ubiquitous beer, homebrew, lego, projects and general life debris.

Its a mess... but it's my mess

 

[Shiro Akai]

Am I seeing right? Under the screen - Collor Pondat Plug-F Mommoth Split X?

Back on topic - mess or not, as long as you know what is where... I'd be intimidated to use your setup. I must confess, I made some clean up before taking my photo. Usually I have more "artifacts" laying on desk

 

[xzanfr]

Am I seeing right? Under the screen - Collor Pondat Plug-F Mommoth Split X?

Back on topic - mess or not, as long as you know what is where... I'd be intimidated to use your setup. I must confess, I made some clean up before taking my photo. Usually I have more "artifacts" laying on desk

Under the monitor are original cloud car (7119), planets cloud car (9678) & planets pod racer (9675) - some of my ebay sales that i decided to give to my nephew / keep.
I did tidy the area (!) but currently live in a tiny flat so this is my shed, workbench and utility room hence the mess. Hopefully moving to a house soon with a decent room so I can have a setup more like the others shown here.

 

[Shiro Akai]

Know the pain as my cave (I have claimed whole room for myself, all whooping 3x3m) serves as play station (PC), assembly line (Gunpla), service workshop (RC truck and other RCs), paint booth (tabletop) and office with personal library. Most of messy things i try to do outside in attempt to keep desk clean as on pic above.

Thinking of it I either:

• have too many hobbies
• have not enought spare time.

I suspect the latter.

 

[Micha]

When flying on screen, I use triple-monitor. Right monitor has EDDiscovery with the main history tab open, but also a floating System Map.
Left monitor has web browser (EDSM/ExTool/Inara/... as needed), Discord, EDMC, Voice Attack (sometimes; with EDDI and a heavily modified KICS3).
Input is X45 HOTAS, mouse, keyboard, EdTracker (home-built)

Mostly the same in VR, except I pull some EDDiscovery windows into VR space using Oculus Home.

I've also got a script for EDDiscovery letting me type system notes and log entries using the Local Chat in Elite. Very handy in VR. Might need to figure out a Voice Attack script at some point so I can dictate it instead.

 

[Dommarraa]

Fart in a jar. A must have for all CMDRs

 

[Wasp0]

According to some Cmdrs on another thread (Cheating one) it is 'Cheating' to use anything in the game that the developers did not intend, so is all of the above classed as cheating?

 

[Riverside]

According to some Cmdrs on another thread (Cheating one) it is 'Cheating' to use anything in the game that the developers did not intend, so is all of the above classed as cheating?

As far as other players' opinion is concerned sure, why not? Some people consider playing in solo or a group cheating.

It's FDev's opinion that matters though.