funkyp

Hi Pete, thank you for your rapid answer. No, I haven't any programming experience with FSUIPC yet and don't have any insight how FSUIPC did wind smoothing before. But from your reply I conclude, that you don't overwrite FSX weather stations anymore, as according to your release notes was the case before. That is good to know, since it is a chance to use wind from a weather station, or from interpolated observation to determine the wind conditions for the thermals situation, even with wind smoothing is on. My problem is, that all connected clients have to produce the same set of thermals, which tends to become very difficult, the more influences are engaged. Regarding the axis questions, writing a program is of course possible. In effect I would like to suggest to consider a shrinking of the effective control range from the FSUIPC control panel. Sometimes controls appear overefficient and the sensitivity parameters of FSX seem to do just damping, or a non-linear reduction around the neutral position of the controls, rather than a reduction of the full-scale deflection. best regards, Peter

Hi Pete, I'm working on a new soaring plugin for FSX, in tradition of CCS2004 of Eric Carden. I'm registered user of FSUIPC4, although I do not need it for my project. I hit on a potential problem with wind smoothing. I'm trying to develop "natural" thermal patterns from the weather condition, in particular I'm busy with realising streeting patterns, that occur a medium wind speed. In order to keep the thing multiplayer compatible, every party has to experience the same weather conditions, which is normally fulfilled, when you have joined in a multi-player session. What happens now with FSUIPC's wind smoothing? Could it happen, that the multiplayer engine and FSUIPC starts fighting each other? I suppose, at the end winds are different over time for the different parties. But are the wind data in average the same? In this case I could again smooth it out, to have in average the same wind conditions for all participants. Another question is, whether weather remains totally unaffected in unlicensed versions. Or is the only reasonable recommendation to turn off weather settings entirely, as long as the multiplayer session runs, and if wind conditions in particular remain unaffected then? best regards, Peter BTW: Is there a way to scale the joystick axis such that there is less than 100% full scale output? Input range reduction is simple.

Hi Pete, maybe this information may help to track down the problem further. The initial situation was real weather with 200°/9kn and wind smoothing turned on, with an interval set to "2". I tried a flight with built DG808S. Thereby I noticed a regular pulling to one side for 20 sec, while holding straight course with the stick, after another 20 sec the initial behaviour restablished. During the 20 sec swaying to one side I could compensate with Ctrl-4 (aileron trim left). Consequently, after another 20 sec. I had to compensate with Ctrl-6. Because of the aileron trim offset, it is not clear if the biased siutation tends to left or right. There was also a regular dipping of IAS by approx. 20 kn, with a higher rate of 1-2sec (est.). I noticed also a high frequent jitter in the last digit of wind direction (which may be normal of course). After switching to user defined weather, first the Shift-Z wind direction "rotated" constantly through full 360° for est. 20 sec, than came to a rest at 200°. The 20sec-effect of pulling to one side remained, the dipping has nearly disappeared. After selecting "Turn off all weather settings" these effects disappeared and returned after switching wind smoothing on again. It seems a bit, as if the actions of wind smoothing interfere somehow with the controls of the aircraft. Basically, DG808S has no aileron trim at all, still you can effect it by pressing the associated keys. I hope this information helps you along to find the problem. best regards, Peter Edit: Sry, I'm not sure If I basically meant the 4.127 wind smoothing thread.

I may well be, that thermals created programmatically are not affected, I will give it a try soon. It looks also, that missions and external weather "corrections" might be mutually exclusive. In that case the mission thermals may be unaffected, too,though not really being a substitute for a thermal simulation. So hopefully, it's only the built-in thermal engine, which isn't of much use anyway (because it usually doesn't fit to the rest of the weather). regards, Peter

Hi Pete, I've just tried out the new 4.168 with the wind smoothing. It appears, that the updating of the weather stations interrupts FSX' internal thermal engine. The effect is, that all the thermal visuals disappear, and so does the lift. About 10 seconds after removing the checkmark "Allow to change FS own weather", the visuals reappear. Then the lift gradually ramps up again over another 10 s. Because FSUIPC makes an update every 2 seconds, thermals will never appear, unless that FSX WX changes are disabled. The same problem I discovered with FSINN 1.3. I think I read soemthing, that it does it in a similar way, by tweaking the nearby WX stations. There you can prolong the interval to 300 seconds, still producing a highly unrealistic effect. The internal thermal engine of FSX obviously checks the current weather conditions to a certain extent and decides then if thermals are being produced or not. Apparently, there is no gradual influence, it's just yes or no. It seems that after an update to the WX stations, the existing thermal situation is discarded entirely, and then rebuilt. regards, Peter

Hi Pete, tnx for the quick reponse. Indeed, FSX apparently is not prepared to accept 64 bits wide joystick information. Could it be, they have reserved just one 32bit word for holding the information? :mrgreen: Of course, I have a workaround by using SST, only that it makes the tanker a bit more sluggish again. Yet, I understand and agree fully to your reasoning. regards, Peter

Ok, just found the answer in the doc. "... FSUIPC does not use DirectX ..." regards, Peter

Hi Peter, I'm using an older PC-Dash II of Saitek (aka P8000), which has 37 buttons. Originally, it is released in DX7 mode which only supports 32 buttons per gaming device. There is a software tool included, to set it into DX8 mode which supports also the 37 buttons directly, as one can see in the control applet. In both configuration, buttons can be mapped to keysequences with the supplied programming tools. Actually, I would like to map buttons directly to appropriate actions in FSX, to guarantee sending events to FSX, rather than keystrokes to the window in focus. However FSX only supports 32 buttons. As I'm a registered FSUIPS users, the obvious alternative would be to use FSUIPC. Apparently FSUIPC supports only 32 buttons, too, which means I'm still bound to the SST Programming tool, at least for the last 5 buttons. Is this a principle limitation of FSUIPC, or would it be possible to consider in a future release? best regards, Peter