mkusch

What have you got the rate set to in GPSout? And what have you selected to be sent? I can get rates of up to 10 times a second here at 19200 bps, using two NMEA sentences, but at the usual default NMEA rate or 4800 you have to be careful not to have too much data for the time available for it to be sent -- if you do that the buffers build up and you not only get a backlog (and therefore an artifical delay) but also a penalty in FS performance. 4800 bps = 480 bytes per second (there's a start and stop bit per byte). The average NMEA sentence is about 70-80 bytes, so provided you are specifying less than 6 sentences (a lot less preferably), then a 1 second update rate should work fine. If you are using AV400 the calculations are different. I don't recall the AV4000 block size offhand. Regards Pete I have my settings set to AV400,COM1, 9600 and now I've set the interval to 100. It's is working great. I'm pretty computer illiterate so, I'm not sure what all this means, but, thank you for your patience (and help) Pete. Marty

My Garmin 296 provides facilities far beyond those in the FS internal GPS - roads, towns, obstacles, VRPs, user waypoints, terrain warnings, vertical nav profile, next heading alerts, etc, etc. Driving the 296 from FS helps keep me current on the device without the £110+/hour cost of renting a plane, and the potential danger of being distracted by the GPS at a critical time inside a real cockpit. The extra information means I can identify my position as Shipston-on-Stour, instead of 10 miles South of EGBW -- very important for situational awareness, particularly if you're a RW pilot (which is likely, given the cost of these things!). I even can program the 296 to work like an ILS, but there's no way I'm going to teach myself how it works in a real plane! In summary, the internal FS GPS is feature poor, and not even close to a simulation of a Garmin 295, despite what it says on the skin. As regards GPSOut, the FSX version is better than FS9. The functionality might be the same, but it is more stable. In FS9, it would glitch from time to time, and throw out a position report that was somewhere completely different (like maybe in the middle of the ocean), which could unsettle the GPS, and cause it to flag the current leg as completed when it wasn't. In FSX, the output is rock stable. The one feature I'd like to see that isn't present, is the ability to transfer flight plans back and forth. The FSX planner may be able to use user waypoints, but it's useless for trying to route via a town (say) if you have no indication of where that town is. I can accurately and quickly set up the flightplan on the Garmin (or retrieve it from stored memory), it would just be nice to have the ability to transfer it to FS. or vice versa even. This summary hits the nail right on the head for my experience. I was using FS9 until the glitches started concerning me. I switched to FSX and haven't had a problem. The update rate going into the Garmin 296 is slow and I'm not sure if that is fixable or not (the 296 unit updates once per second) however using the flightsim seems to slow the rate to at least three seconds. One thing is for sure...Pete you have an awesome program! Thanks, Marty

There's no transfer of route or waypoint information. All that the protocols available do is provide positional and movement data (latitude, longitude, altitude, airspeed, ground speed). The whole system is actually designed to make FS look like a GPS device to the receiving program, which was intended to be a moving map, probably on a separate PC or notebook. Using FS+GPSout to feed a GPS has always appeared a strange twist to me. Really the comparison I would have in mind is a GPS, in your real-life cockpit, connected to a notebook PC presenting you with a map and pinpointing your position on that map. In that scenario, FS+GPSout is the GPS unit. That said, folks do link it to their aviation GPS units. I really don't understand the attraction in that. I have three real GPS units but none of them accept external position inputs in any case -- they all OUTPUT such information, if required, in exactly the same way as GPSout. In this sense GPSout is a GPS simulator. Regards Pete My ultimate goal is to stay proficent at programming my Garmin 296 by flying flight simulator since the real airplanes are becoming so expensive to operate.

Thanks Pete. I did search and found all the threads for GPSOut. I ordered the serial cable from Garmin (my USB cable didn't work). I'm hoping that will put me in business. I was also interested in some feedback on whether I can use my Garmin 296 as I would when I'm actually flying or if routes and "Direct to" functions have to be programed into the Flight Sim GPS in order to be displayed on my Garmin 296. Marty

Is anyone currently using FSX GPSOut with a Garmin 296, 396, or 496?