Pete Dowson

Ah, I don't know this "mouse look mode". Can you tell me more? It certainly is possible for me to make this change. Unfortunately, I've just finished finalising and releasing the biggest set of releases for a while -- 4.26 for FSX and 3.80 for everything else, along with fully updated documentation and SDK. A couple of days ago it would probably have been dead easy to "slip in". I am still developing FSUIPC4, but hopefully less so on FSUIPC3, so if I only do this change for FSX, is that okay? You failed to mention which it was you were using! I'm afraid it won't happen for at least three weeks either way though, as I am way from next Tuesday until the 24th and I am desperately trying to tidy up a load of stuff before I go! Regards Pete

Ahyou read the Advanced User's guide before the main User's guide? Oooh. That's brave! ;-) I hadn't realised it still said just "Settings" there. The FSUIPC options dialogue (which appears when you select FSUIPC from the Add-Ons menu) is actually entitled "FSUIPC Options and Settings", so really it should say that I suppose -- I'll change it for the next edition (shame, just missed this one). However, reading it it does go on to say "... obtained by selecting the FS Add-Ons menu, then FSUIPC (ALT, D, then F)", so it is a little difficult to construe that as going to a Settings window first, I would think. Anyway, mostly I'd hope that by the time folks got to referring to the Advanced guide they'd be pretty handy with the options setting in FSUIPC already. Well. if you insist, but I prefer not to really, in case it helps others. I'm sure no one will think less of you! ;-). Someone once set the only foolish question is the one that isn't asked (or something like that). Regards Pete

The Add-Ons menu, which is created by SimConnect for any add-on which requests it, is in the main FSX menu, not the "Settings" menu. In fact there is no "settings" menu, only a dialogue. The main FS menu is where it always has been, at the top of the screen when you press "ALT" in flight modes. The install log shows that it is installed correctly, and the FSUIPC4.log shows it is running correctly, as far as you've allowed it. Since it was only running for 48 seconds I doubt whether you ever even got to normal flight mode, where you first get a chance to see the FS menu bar. I think you must be getting confused with FS's start-up dialogue? There's no menu bar till you are ready to fly, never has been. Menu bars, as in all windows programs, are the little strips along the tops of Windows. The left-most entry in FS's Menu is labelled "flights", for instance. There's none labelled "settings" -- that's an item in the Options menu entry. And I've no idea where you got the idea FSX put its "Add-Ons" menu into a "Settings" dialogue. Please, please, please do read just a little of the User Guide, and always try looking at it when you run into trouble. If you had you would see that it says, right in the first line after the heading Okay I've installed, and optionally registered. Now what?, that it clearly says, and emphasises: :cry: Pete

I don't know why it is giving you an error. A not-present COM frequency should simply read zero, so giving you a result like "100.00". The flags at offsets 3364 and 3365 are used for this sort of thing -- only when both of these bytes are zero is FS actually fully "ready to fly". But if you are getting an error on the COM2 offset, I don't see why you won't get an error on every offset. What is the error in the first place and why is it occurring? Are you sure you aren't trying to connect before FS, and therefore FSUIPC, is even finished loading and running? If you get FSUIPC to load your program for you you will know you can connect to it as soon as your program is ready. If you are connecting via WideFS from a Client PC, use the "RunReady" method of loading your program, so that you know FS is "ready to fly" when your program is started. Regards Pete

You need Project Magenta offsets, documented by Project Magenta on the Project Magenta website. Look for the Documentation item on their Home page. Pete

Sorry, I have no idea about installing add-on aircraft. It sounds like it is one intended for FS2004 not FSX. Either way, best to ask at Simviation.com I would have thought. Sorry, what says what where? How is this related to the above? Obviously 4.26 is later than any previous version, as I only published it today! Pete

Correct. just enter the same Name, Email and Key, exactly as before. Since any folder cannot ever have two files with the same name, you don't even have to do that. You just put the latest DLL into the modules folder, and confirm when (if) it asks you if you really want to replace the one that is there. Yes. You mentioned that already and I answered. All this hassle sounds like it is just because you changed your motherboard battery and forgot to restore the correct date! Pete

No. Just put today's date and time into the PC and your existing registration will work fine. It just won't work if your system date precedes the date of purchase, because it then looks like an illegal key. If you've deleted your Key file whilst messing around you will need to either restore it from the backup you made (as advised in the User Guide), or re-register using the exact same details as you did originally. Regards Pete

Evidently you changed something, then. What? Multiple copies of FSUIPC? That isn't possible in any case. And it is most certainly not a good idea to go deleting things without knowing what you are doing. Why delete things in any case? You can only mess things up, not fix anything. FSUIPC itself is only ONE file, it is "FSUIPC.DLL". That is it. Nothing else. Everything it does is in there. If you are registered there is then also a KEY file (FSUIPC.KEY), which contains your registration. Once you have run FS, there is an FSUIPC.INI file, which contains your settings, and a Log file, FSUIPC.LOG which is created each time you run FS and which tells you what is happening. This last is the important one. Always look inside it when you have a problem so you can see what you have done wrong. It sounds to me as if either your registration Key is invalid, or your system date is set earlier than the date of your registration. Alternatively, the DLL codesigning might not be valid -- there's a section in the User Guide telling you how to deal with that, as well as Announcements above. If you cannot spot your error, run FS, close it. Wait till it is closed. Then find the FSUIPC.LOG file in the modules folder and paste it here. Regards Pete

In FSX at present FSUIPC cannot change the visibility at the aircraft as it could in previous versions of FS, so it tries to apply your choices to the METARs in the 9 nearest weather stations around. It cannot ask these stations to change immediately, because this casues FSX to stutter badly, so it includes a delay parameter, which FSX is supposed to use to "morph" one weather setup into the other. The delay certainly stops the stuttering, but I'm not convinced there's great success then in achieving the end result either. With a zero delay it does seem to have some effect usually, but it isn't usable. There's also another factor at work. The weather at the aircraft is actually derived from a dynamic interpolation from the weather set at just 3 weather stations. The whole area covered by local weather (and this excludes the oceans, mostly) is split into these triangles, but they are not necessarily of any regular or predictable shape. Some are actualy downright weird. In FS2000 and before I found out how to obtain the identities of the 3 WX stations for each aircraft position, but since FS2004 I failed to find them. I did ask for them to be supplied in FSX's SimConnect, but it wasn't to be -- it is still an outstanding request of mine for FSXI. Without knowing these identities it is possible that FSUIPC doesn't actually get the correct 3 in its 9 stations. It only takes one to be missed to throw the interpolated weather out. Worse, to again avoid stuttering, FSUIPC doesn't keep updating all 9 stations at once, it updates one every "time interval" (at most two stations per second by default). Add to that the fact that the aircraft is moving so the stations are changing, and you can see that the results are at best unpredictable, at worse plain annoying. I have an intense desire to conquer this somehow, and will keep looking for a way to control the visibility more directly, as I have in previous releases of FS. But I cannot hold out any hope at present. Every little clue I've followed up so far has led to nought. Regards Pete

Pete, usually. My wife calls me 'Peter' when she's annoyed with me! ;-) Sorry, I don't have Jeppview. Regards Pete

There are three separate wind effects -- two have wider ranges but longer periods: Gusts (speed variability), Variance (directional variability), and Turbulence which has both wind speed and direction changes (up and down as well as horizontal directions), with much less range but much faster changes. Without knowing more I couldn't say what you have experienced, but it won't necessarily be gusts. Each effect is separately suppressible, and wind and cloud turbulence separately. Pete

This is the simulated turbulence, which was made more realistic and handle-able (?) in the updates which followed 4.25 fairly quickly. It won't be just in climbs and descents, though passing through cloud layers could be the cause there. Many times there's mild to moderate clear air turbulence at cruise levels -- but your aircraft probably doesn't notice those so much. Please check out the FSX Downloads announcement above -- the latest version there is up to 4.257 now, and that is reported to work very well. I've even had good reports about the revised turbulence emulation from the experienced 747 pilot PMDG ask to test their flight models. Otherwise you need to suppress cloud and wind turbulence in 4.25. I'll be looking to replace 4.25 with 4.26 in due course, but I'm not sure I'll have time before I go away on holiday next week. Regards Pete

You need the SDK as well, as it tells you how to use the IPC interface. User Registration is for users to access the User facilities, as described in the User documentation. None of that is anything to do with the programming interface, which the user doesn't need to know anything about. Your guide to the programming interface is the SDK, not the User guide. Regards Pete

Unfortunately there's no such value provided by FSX. You need to obtain the FSUIPC SDK update for FSX, which does list this offset as unsupported. Get it from the FSX downloads Announcement above. Pete

AhFSUIPC isn't in control then. That's just Windows focussing. Maybe it is mouse driver related? Could you see if you can get the cursor in the correct filed by using keyboard only (tab key probably). Regards Pete

Well, it still wouldn't explain how you managed to register okay once, and now cannot do it at all without crashing FS -- evidently something in the System has changed rather significantly. Yes, I'm afraid I don't think it is quite so easy. I'd need to dig into the rather obscure code I generated several years ago to try and make all this villain-proof. On the FSX version, since 4.25, I actually made the Installer call the registration routines in FSUIPC4.DLL to avoid problems with running FSX in "Administrator mode", but of course FSUIPC3 never had (or needed) an installer. It is not a trivial job to write a secure program external to FS to provide the registration function only. Certainly file permissions and so on should have nothing to do with it -- that is taken care of by ensuring elevated admin privileges via the "run as" method. You must have done that earlier to get it registered in the first place. No, the problem now is the crash. Back at the start you said: This implies that all the dialogues in FSUIPC are working, but the keyboard input to the dialogue (which is a function completely inside standard Windows libraries) is freezing. Is this in the first character entered, or not until you've finished a line? Or when, exactly? Looking at the code (which is identical in FSUIPC4) I can't see anything but standard everyday Windows programming, but it might help if I could narrow it down somewhat. Regards Pete

Some programming skills, a software development tool (compiler etc), and the FSUIPC SDK -- see http://www.schiratti.com/dowson. There are some extra SDK bits for FSX in the FSX downloads Announcement, above. Also look at the "Stickies" near the top of the Forum. Depending upon what programming language you choose there are some extras there too. No, you don't need to buy anything. Regards Pete

Okay. That shows exactly what I would expect for an Key file which supplies keys but for an FSUIPC which has not actually been registered (i.e. has no relevant entry in the Registry). Since re-installation consists of nothing more than copying the exact same DLL into the folder where it already resides, you are correct. It cannot possibly change anything. We know that the DLL was not corrupted in any case, as the signature checks out. Thank you for the files -- it was only the key file I needed so I could check it fully. And it is okay, the keys are valid. So, it does all come down to the apparent lack of the registration entries in the system, and I'm afraid I know no way of those being removed except by Registry editing or roll-back. Are you sure you've not had some sort of crash and Windows, on re-booting, then gave you the option of returning to the last safe configuration? Nothing like that at all? At present the only way of getting it corrected is to re-register in FSUIPC's dialogues, so we need to try to find out what is interacting with Windows and FS to cause it to crash in what is after all only a straight-forward dialogue. I'm at a bit of a loss to know how to proceed with that. I don't have Vista 64 at present (though I do have, on order, a new PC which will come with it pre-installed -- but that isn't being delivered until I return from a two-week break, in over three weeks). :-( I'll think further on this and get back to you if I can think of anything. Meanwhile, if you could possibly remember what might have been changed since it was all registered and working, that would really give us the best clues, don't you think? Regards Pete

I need to see a complete log, please. This one is not closed -- as I said, you do need to close FS and when it is completely closed, then show me the Log. Also, please ZIP up your FSUIPC.KEY file and send it to me at petedowson@btconnect.com. I'll check it here. BTW I see it says the WideFS registration is not valid either. It looks exactly as if you've never actually registered successfully since you changed Windows versions? The most likely thing that is missing is the Registry access, and that can only be done by running FS from the EXE, right-clicking on it and selecting "Run AsAdministrator". Yet you said "What is strange is that it was working fine few months ago". Have you restored something, rolled back your registry? Did you try FS in Windowed mode as I suggested? Pete

There are three possible reasons for that: 1. The key or the name or the email are not as originally used for registration. Open up the FSUIPC.KEY file (it is an ordinary text file) and check ALL THREE parts. They need to be as they were, not necessarily as they are now, as for instance if you've changed emails. 2. The system date is set earlier than the registration date. 3. The signature doesn't check. Right click on the FSUIPC.DLL and check the digital signature. There are notes about this in the documentation. That's pretty much always been a video driver problem when previously reported -- the dialogues are normal Windows ones. You might need to switch FS to Windowed mode first. There have been other reasons reported on occasion -- one was a "Kensington mouse Driver" conflict, I remember. There is certainly nothing unusual about FSUIPC's dialogues, they are all boringly standard Windows. AND the dialogue code is identical in FSUIPC3 and FSUIPC4. Anyway, you shouldn't need to re-re-register if you've not reinstalled Windows or rolled back the Registry to a previous time at all. Did you check the FSUIPC.LOG to see if it registered a problem? Run FS, when ready to fly, close it. When completely closed, get the FSUIPC.LOG (from the modules folder) and show it to me. Regards Pete

Sorry, you've got me there. It may well be a macro of some kind. I don't remember how to tell EPIC to read a PH. I don't have any EPL references to hand I'm afraid. Also, EPICINFO mostly applied to the old ISA EPIC card. Things may have changed a lot since the USB version came out and R&R produced a new compiler system. No, no. The scaling operates on the value before it gets sent to the PH. Scaling is done in the PC, by EPICINFO. You get the result in your EPL by whatever means is provided by EPL to get any PH. Regards Pete

Well it has been many years since I used EPL, but surely the part you (deliberately?) missed out of your quotation explains it: Doesn't that very strongly imply that the code following is EPL? What you'd have the CFG file do with the value I've no idea -- it isn't much use to it, is it? Surely the whole point of EPICINFO is to get data from FS into your EPIC? Or are you wanting to use it for something else? No, how would you assume that? Why don't you refer to the list of PH's further on in the same document? Isn't that what the list is for? The one headed "Pigeon Hole values"? Just glancing at that section it explains early on that "getPH8" gets a 8-bit value, and the first parameter is the PH number. You will surely note that the latter is 100, not 8! Again, looking up 100 in the PH list and you find the Engine 1 RPM? Please do use the document -- I really don't remember much of this, not having used EPIC for many years, but I can look this up just as you could. Regards Pete

Check the contents of the FSUIPC4.LOG too, just in case it says there's a problem. Regards Pete

Sorry, I'm not sure I can. Why do yuo think it is FSUIPC? I don't have FDC and don't know why its "window disappears". Have you asked FDC support? Maybe they can help. That just shows that FSUIPC installed okay. If you want to see what was happening with FSUIPC4 in FSX when it was running you need the FSUIPC4.LOG, not the Installer. Regards Pete