MELKOR

Right, I should have mentioned that: [*:31jo02vv]FSX: Disabled joystick controllers in the settings. [*:31jo02vv]FSUIPC: All axes are defined with an action of "Send to FS as normal axis". [*:31jo02vv]FSUIPC: All defined axes are calibrated. Since posting my original message, I actually tried switching all of the axes to use an action of "Send Direct to FSUIPC Calibration". Unfortunately, this didn't seem to make any difference. Thanks for your feedback, Pete, always appreciated! - Bill

Hi Pete, This is a mere annoyance, but I'm curious to know if there is anything I can do. Whenever I first start a plane, OR when I go into FSUIPC control panel then back out again, FSUIPC seems to think all my controller axes are at "IN=0", regardless of where the axes are actually positioned. I need to wiggle the controllers in order for FSUIPC to read the correct value for IN (I have verified that Power Management is not enabled on the controllers, and besides: I can repro this just by going into FSUIPC control panel then back out again). The same behavior can be seen when I go to the FSUIPC calibration pages. Interstingly, just wiggling ONE of the levers will "fix" ALL axes that are attached to that controller (by fix, I mean the correct values for IN are suddenly being read). As you might imagine, this can lead to some odd behavior. For example: with my throttle axes, IN=0 maps to OUT=8192. So, if I am idling on a taxiway, go into FSUIPC, then back out again, the engine(s) will rev up suddenly, and I have to quickly wiggle a lever on the controller! If it makes a difference: I am using USB controllers from CH Products. The behavior is not seen from the CH calibration tool. Any thoughts? Thanks! - Bill

Hey Pete, just FYI: Everything is okay now. None of the graphics-related suggestions helped, so I resorted to re-installing all of FSX + FSUIPC + other third party stuff. Who knows, may have been due to a cosmic ray shooting through my hard drive. hehe :wink: - Bill

Thanks Pete, sounds pausible to me, I'll give your suggestion a whirl. - Bill

Hi Pete, thanks for the detailed response. I am still able to reproduce the issue at will, and after some experiments have some more detail. 1) Only occurs when in full-screen mode, and only after I go to a settings menu then back to the sim. 2) In fact it's not a "lockup" per-se - I can still control the sim, although the window is drawn completely black! Inputs have an effect, I just cannot see what is going on. 3) Going back to windowed mode does not cure the issue. "Once it starts drawing black, there is no going back". =) 4) Stopping, deleting my fsuipc4.ini, and restarting did not help - can still repro. 5) Does not seem to matter what airplane I select. Can repro with stock Cesena up to PMDG 747X. I've attached a fsuipc.log (see below) with the log settings that you recommended. One interesting thing: Once I have repro'd the issue, I get the following line (sometimes multiple times, not sure what the correlation is) in the log file: **** No SimConnect events or states being received! Re-connecting now**** What think you? For now, going back to 4.294 again so that I can fly VATSIM tomorrow. =) - Bill ********* FSUIPC4, Version 4.30 by Pete Dowson ********* Reading options from "D:\Games\FSX\Modules\FSUIPC4.ini" User Name="William Ruppel" User Addr="wcruppel@rogers.com" FSUIPC4 Key is provided WIDEFS7 not user registered, or expired Running inside FSX (SimConnect Acc/SP2 Oct07) Module base=61000000 Wind smoothing fix is fully installed DebugStatus=15 62 System time = 01:38:22 62 FLT UNC path = "D:\Profile\My Documents\Flight Simulator X Files\" 62 FS UNC path = "D:\Games\FSX\" 1125 LogOptions=00000001 1125 SimConnect_Open succeeded: waiting to check version okay 3984 Running in "Microsoft Flight Simulator X", Version: 10.0.61472.0 (SimConnect: 10.0.61259.0) 3984 Initialising SimConnect data requests now 3984 FSUIPC Menu entry added 4062 D:\Profile\My Documents\Flight Simulator X Files\CYKF.FLT 4062 D:\Games\FSX\SimObjects\Airplanes\C172\Cessna172SP.AIR 180125 Advanced Weather Interface Enabled 180781 System time = 01:41:23, FSX time = 01:38:27 (05:38Z) 180906 Aircraft="Cessna Skyhawk 172SP Paint1" 207437 **** No SimConnect events or states being received! Re-connecting now**** 207437 SimConnect_Open succeeded: waiting to check version okay 217562 **** No SimConnect events or states being received! Re-connecting now**** 217562 SimConnect_Open succeeded: waiting to check version okay 227687 **** No SimConnect events or states being received! Re-connecting now**** 227687 SimConnect_Open succeeded: waiting to check version okay 237781 **** No SimConnect events or states being received! Re-connecting now**** 237781 SimConnect_Open succeeded: waiting to check version okay

Pete, Installed version 4.30 last night, and shortly after launching my flight, FSX locked up solid (had to use Task Manager to kill it). Was able to reproduce this several times. Reapplying 4.294 resolved the issue. Have you had any similar reports? If so, let me know what you need from me. In the meantime, I will try deleting my fsuipc.ini file to see if something in there is causing the issue. I'll let you know. - Bill

Pete, Haven't had time to perform "upper limit" testing on TurbulenceRate, but I did some flying with the default of 1.0,5.0. Flew at FL310, with 100 knot winds coming from the side. No control problems, all the way up to turbulence of 4 (although there was much bouncing about!) Hopefully I will find some time today to find the upper limits. If not, this will have to wait until Tuesday. Thanks, - Bill

Pete, I'll be darned... I thought I'd start with the worst case scenario and work myself down. But, even with TurbulenceRate=10.0, and a turbulence of 4, the 747X managed to keep her track quite well! :shock: And, if a RW pilot is happy with your simulation, so should the rest of us be! I am going to set my TurbRate=5.0 for the VATSIM FNO tomorrow night - I'll let you know if I note anything odd. Well done, again, Pete - your diligence sorting out all these wind issues is much appreciated by us all! :D Thanks, - Bill

Thanks for the insight into what is going on with layers. And, later, I will post results here regarding the upper limit to the turbulence rate (at least, with respect to PMDG 747X). Thanks, Pete. - Bill

Pete, After I posted this, I saw that 4.252 was available, so I tried that too. Same behavior from the bird, which is good. I did notice that the wind speed and direction seemed to vary at a quicker rate than with 4.251. Thanks, - Bill

Hi Pete! Tried out some scenarios with PMDG 747X tonight, with some manually configured heavy and severe turbulence layers. While I really have no opinion on whether or not the simulation of turbulence effects is "real world" accurate, I can report that the bird had absolutely no trouble maintaining a heading with HOLD, SEL, and LNAV in said turbulence. One thing I did notice while monitoring conditions with WeatherSet - I could see that my manually configured wind layers would occasionally vary (altitude, direction, speed, and turbulence all seemed to change at one point or the other). Do you know: Is this caused by FSUIPC, or FSX? Thanks, - Bill

After some testing with the PMDG 747X, I confirm that wind smoothing is working VERY well! Thank you so much so your diligence in solving this, Pete! I also confirm what others have seen: in turbulence, the 747X has trouble keeping a heading (HDG Sel, Hold, or LNAV). In fact, it's the oddest thing I've seen the 747X do... with wind coming from the left, the plane banks strongly to the right, then to the left to compensate. How strange! Turning on variance suppression does NOT seem to help. But, of course, suppressing turbulence entirely does the trick. Switching to hand-flying in turbulence: with the yoke in a neutral position, and wind coming from the left, the plane starts banking to the right on its own. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that is the expected behavior! Which leads me to believe there is an issue with the PMDG model. - Bill

Pete, I guess you won't be surprised to hear that "Wind smoothing fix is fully installed" made all the difference in the world! Using the same testing methodology as before, all wind direction and velocity changes were very nicely smoothed. Hats off to you, sir! :D BTW, all of my testing was done with the smoothing thread turned off - I think you can safely default this to "No" in future versions (or elliminate it altogether?) Now, going to do some "real world" testing in the PMDG 747X... Thanks Pete! - Bill

Ah-ha, very interesting! Yes, I will do this as soon as I get to my home machine this evening. I will also .zip up the SIM1.DLL and make it available to you for download. - BIll

4.239 nowwell, in about 30 minutes. Please see my other "IMPORTANT" message. ;-) Regards Pete Righty-o, 4.239 it is. And, I've read the "IMPORTANT" posting: interesting find! Oh, a question. I see the following line in my fsuipc.log: Wind smoothing fix is only partially installed Anything to be concerned about? - Bill

Ha, yes, I've had to hack 3rd party code in the past, and I know the feeling. :wink: Yes, I'll do this with 4.238 and post my results later today. Thanks! - Bill

+Pete, So, 4.237 didn't seem to make any difference as compared to 4.236. I increased the frequency of my weather sampling from 1hz to "per frame when there is a change", as such: hr = SimConnect_RequestDataOnSimObject (hSimConnect, REQUEST_LLA, DEFINTION_LLA, SIMCONNECT_OBJECT_ID_USER, SIMCONNECT_PERIOD_SIM_FRAME, SIMCONNECT_DATA_REQUEST_FLAG_CHANGED, 0, 0, 0); My testing routine was: 1) Started at KLAS 2) Entered slew mode 3) Moved quickly up to about 44000', paused, moved quickly down to ground level. I've zipped up the output of two test runs from my weather sampling tool for each of 4.236 and 4.237, along with my fsuipc.ini and fsuipc.log files. Available here: http://ca.geocities.com/wcruppel@rogers.com/FSUIPC_4235_4237_smoothing.zip You will see that, as I moved up, there are multiple radical wind shifts, but none on the way down... odd indeed. - Bill

I've been trying to make things go wrong doing this, but I can't seem to get the same results as you. Be sure that the layers you're moving through have radical wind direction differences. Also, I used keys mapped to "down quickly" and "up quickly" to slew through the layers. Just FSX's own "real weather with 15 minute updates", and the "download winds aloft" option turned on in the weather display settings. No manual changes. FSX seems to create nasty shifting layers, happily, all on its own. :-) Will test this when I get home tonight, and post results (What I plan on doing: increase the frequency of my weather sampling, retest 4.236, test 4.237, and compare). Thanks! - Bill

Hey Pete, here is some feedback using 4.236 tonight. Methodology 1) Winds page: Smooth wind changes near aircraft=on, with 1 deg/2 sec, Weather Interval=1, All three "supress"=on. Clouds Page: Supress all cloub turb=on 2) Used "Slew" mode to move up and down to make my observations (way faster then doing a "real-time" flight, and weather effects are still reported correctly). 3) Used WeatherSet2 to watch the wind layers in real-time. 4) Used a little C++ SimConnect tool I wrote to watch/log SimConnect weather variables in real-time (set at a 1hz sampling rate). Observations 1) Via WeatherSet2, I can see that FSX is regularly making radical wind shifts in seemingly random wind layers (I presume this behavior is the root cause of our collective woe?). 2) If I sit steady at some particular wind layer, and the wind direction changes radically, the direction change seems to be properly smoothed. 3) If I descend through wind layers with a radical wind direction difference, the direction change seems to be properly smoothed. 4) If I ascend through wind layers with a radical wind direction difference, the direction will temporarily jump to radical values before settling down to a proper smoothing. Conclusion Smoothing is working quite well!! But, because of (4), it seems as if something is still not right... Tomorrow, I am going to increase the sampling frequency of my real-time weather logging tool - I'm thinking that the radical shifts might really be there in (2) and (3), but are not showing up because of the low sample rate... if that turns out to be the case, perhaps increasing the rate at which your "overrides" are applied (controlled by the interval factor, right?) will fix this? Thanks so much for your efforts here, Pete - you are close to nailing this!! :-) - Bill

Dougal, Really, you should learn to be humble. There are VERY few developers out there that give the level of support and attention that Pete does. Shooting off your mouth as you have makes you look like an ungrateful clod. - Bill

I too am having problems at any altitude with Pete's wind smoothing turned on. Guess us PMDG captains are stuck with FS's "crazy winds" a while longer. :-) Pete - any chance that you could contact Lefteris at PMDG to "compare notes", as they say? Thanks, - Bill

Thanks - have sent an email. Not a shred of anger present. 8) Ha ha, yeah I see your point. But, to my eyes you are a hero to adding the smoothing features to FSUPIC. The rightful blame belongs to the authors of the weather code. Keeping my fingers crossed! Thanks Pete! - Bill

So, I read up on the details of what you guys are doing with ASX SP2. I must say: bravo. Pity that the best results possible are less than ideal... (i.e. imperect smoothing, weather resets every 20-30 seconds, and increased CPU) While I congratulate you on the herculean effort to fight the broken simulator, I must say that I'm pretty disappointed with the ACES team. They had a chance to finally fix things for FSX, and completely botched it. :? - Bill

Well, it's the first I've heard that - since it's "public knowledge", I guess I need to get out more, eh? :roll: Jim, I'm curious - is that the reason they give (i.e. there will be no further patches)? Or, something worse like "Problem? What problem?!" - Bill

Jim, Well, that is good news. Would be even better news if they have actually committed to doing something about it! Do you know? - Bill