Pete Dowson

Hmmm .... I am really very surprised you can migrate such a complex FS9 aircraft successfully to FSX. You mean you enabled them? My instructions? I assume the aircraft uses FSUIPC for its Fly-by-Wire control. Is that it? That sounds like something peculiar to that aircraft. I really know nothing about the Airbus thrust setting system. Sorry. There is a problem I believe with SimConnect and FSX which can result in spontaneous axis reversal -- the previous report (from the Mouse-As-Yoke author, a while back now) said it only happened when engaged in some of the missions. I think it is a function of how overloaded FSX becomes -- maybe the combination of a complex aircraft and FSInn/FSCopilot's activities produce the same symptoms. It was reported to Microsoft at that time, with as much evidence as could be mustered. Naturally I couldn't reproduce the problem here, so the evidence came from the one and only sufferer. Whether Microsoft could reproduce it too and therefore fix it I don't know -- and my normal MS contacts have really been far too busy working on the forthcoming SP1 update that I've not been able to ask. It is something which will have to be re-checked, by those who can, when SP1 is available. Meanwhile, in case they still need more evidence or corroboration, you should submit full details of the problem to MS at tell_fs@microsoft.com . Please also report it all to PSS and the FSInn/FSCopilot authors, as if they too can reproduce it they may be able to supply hard evidence to the FS team more directly. Be sure to install SP1 as soon as it is released and re-check this. I'd also like to know as soon as possible. Regards Pete

Not sure what you mean. If you mean what are does the WX at a WX station cover, the answer would be very little -- the weather will be interpolated with the WX at other WX stations around as soon as you leave the station's position. Also, as it is dynamic anyway (even if you put the WX dynamics slider to minum), by the time you read the WX it may have changed somewhat even at the station. If you mean how far away from the WX station can you be and still read its weather, then I really am not sure. It depends whether the stuff FS provides me is the weather loaded for that WX station (e.g. by FS's own download), or the weather actually set in the current WX matrix surrounding the user aircraft. In the former case there is no range component, the question is only whether anything has been supplied for that station, in the latter case then it will be limited to so many nautical miles -- maybe 80 or 100, I don't know. This may also be different btween FS2004 and before and FSX. Regards Pete

Ah, I see. Thanks. Pete

How are you assigning and calibrating the throttles? FS's own assignments don't normally provide reverse on the THROTTLE axes. Are you using the FSUIPC Joystick Calibrations, with 2 or more separate throttles? if so, then you need to calibrate it so that the lower of centre pair of values (which denote the dle) are pretty much the same as the left-hand minimum value, which is for max reverse. The upper of the centre values then denotes the high end of your IDLE zone. If you cannot do this close enough, then either make the IDLE zone larger and devise a way to never bring the levers right back (some sort of block), or edit the throttle entries in the [JoystickCalibration] section of the FSUIPC.INI file after you've done it in the options screen as best you can. You'll see the numbers there. Just make the first two numbers the same, or, better, reduce them to -16394. Regards Pete

It is a bug in FSX and it is NOT due to anything in FSUIPC4. It is a result of other programs, not so well-behaved as FSUIPC4. The crash actually occurs BEFORE FSUIPC4 is even loaded -- because another add-on is doing things in FSX too early! The difference between your earlier version and 4.09 is not in FSUIPC but the fact that you installed a less well-behaved program in between. You should not attempt to apportion blame and diagnose the problem when you don't know. Please only report symptoms in future, not try to answer them with no knowledge. Regards Pete

No it does not. No where! And without giving any other information to back up your unwarranted assertion how do you expect a helpful answer in any case? You do not really expect any support without providing some justification for such statements, do you? It is likely you are confusing FSUIPC crashing things with the way other add-ons are using FSX. There has never been a version which "crashes FSX". I am guessing here, but I suspect you've not bothered to do any research on other threads here. Please start by going and reading thread http://forums.simflight.com/viewtopic.php?t=61357 ("Security warning after installing an update crashes FSX"). Pete

I am sorry but Version 3.52 is now 17 months old and hasn't been supported since January 2006 when 3.53 was released. I am not going to answer questions on old versions. The current version is 3.74. Please update first. Regards Pete

FSUIPC4 is not FSUIPC3. The keys sold for FSUIPC3 work on all versions of FSUIPC3. That is one payment for well over three years now of continuous development and support. I had to almost start again for FSUIPC4. Please read your receipts. You purchased a key for FSUIPC3, not 4. All the documentation, the paybooths, the download site, everything separates these as products. What sohws you are registerd, FSUIPC3 or FSUIPC4? If you have and FSUIPC4 key and you registered then you get all the benefits. What is your confusion? No, Version 3 was, back when FS2004 was released. Version 4 only came out for FSX last September. Good. So what is your problem? Regards Pete

Where does this "runkey" parameter come in? Didn't you read the documentation: In other words you can do RunKey1=c:\programme\freefd\eadi.exe and Keysend3=runkey1 and that KeySend will run "eadi.exe" when sent from FSUIPC! Starting and Stopping programs isn't what you want at all, so why are you copying parameters blindly out of a section about how to do that? Why not, instead, read this part: There are even examples there for you to see, in black and white! So, for one of your programs: Run1=c:\programme\freefd\eadi.exe and Keysend3=87,8,Run1 See how the "Run1" parameter matches the parameter telling it which program to send it to? What could be easier? It does say "this is by far the easiest and, usually, the most reliable way." (or, at least, it does now after I corrected the "bar far" to "by far"! ;-) ) Please do read the documentation a little more slowly. You are making things much harder than they really are. Regards Pete

Okay. Thnks for letting me know. I wonder why the time setting has any relevance, though? Regards Pete

I'll have a look over the weekend. I may have to ask you do do a variety of tests if it doesn't look obvious. Regards Pete

It has to maintain the offset image. The SimConnect interface is asynchronous. ou don't ask and get, you ask "to be notified", then, when the value is ready and Simconnect decides to reply, you get notified. It's a server/client model, quite different from how FSUIPC used to interface to FS. It's efficient enough, as it only gets notified of changes, which are in surprisingly small info blocks per frame. And by always getting all the information, not continually changing the data definitions to suit each application as it comes and goes it is smoother and much more efficient in terms of memory usage. FSUIPC 1 through 3 are the same, except synchronous because of the direct reads. All the overheads are out of the way in the first seconds -- EXCEPTING of course when a timeout causes a re-initialisation, then you have all the overhead all over again. If you look at one of the initialisations in the SimConnect long you will see what is involved. The log file isn't relevant. It is recreated on each new session in any case. I hope you won't find some application which you want to use which is more time critical, as I think there will be a need to resolve the problems on your installation then. Maybe SP1 will resolve them anyway -- here's hoping. Please do check the logs again after SP1 and let me know. Regards Pete

That's obtained by sending the string "Hello world" to FSUIPC offset 3380 and then writing a control value to offset 32FA. Please check the SDK documentation. It sounds like the provided test application is designed to do exactly this, in other words the FS equivalent of the standard Hello World test used for introducing every language! What did you expect it to do? Is there no source code in the example? Pete

Maybe it is this additional SimConnect client which is clobbering things? ;-) How many SimVars does your program read? How many Events is it intercepting? Does it get positional and other information on every AI aircraft every time they move? If you read them all, as FSUIPC does, based on changes, every frame not only every 166 milliseconds, would it build up TCP/IP queues, as appears to be happening to cause these 5 second timeouts? If you are happy with everything, that's fine. Sorry if I was worried about your problems. :-( Regards Pete

How strange. I've not made any changes in that area that I know ofbut it is a long time ago, relatively speaking. The current version is 3.74 of course. I have no Goflight equipment. If you had reported this with 3.72 it might have been so much easier to locate. Now it will be next to impossible! :-( Why didn't you ask before? I'll try, but I cannot track back changes over 4 versions, only the last one or two. I always thought that to be enough!! What button numbers are they in 3.71? Pete Best regards Jose

Well, it hasn't solved it so much as worked around it for now. As long as you don't have any uses for FSUIPC which cannot tolerate 5 second delays in receiving information, orhaving FSX acting on it, you are okay. Since SimConnect is supposed to keep FSUIPC abreast of all Sim Values on every single change, or per frame, having it only update values at 5 second intervals, even if only occasionally, is not good at all and most certainly indicates some serious problem in your installation. Regards Pete

A key for FSUIPC4 is valid for all FSUIPC4's, but WideFS needs a separate key. Please check the documentation and visit SimMarket where you'll find a discount if you purchase both together (though it may be too late for that it seems!). Regards Pete

All versions of FSUIPC have had registration optional. You just don't get all the user facilties. Please read the User documentation, it does explain what you get and what you don't. The key is never asked for, you enter one if you purchase one. Regards Pete

Yes, the interface is the same. Regards Pete

Hmmm. Most have said the at least the free version of AVG gives them no problems. If you have no firewalls and no spy-sweeper type programs, but you do have AVG installed on both PCs, I would suggest trying to uninstall it on one of them as a test. I can of course simply take out the stall detection in FSUIPC4 and allow it to simply stop working when SimConnect data traffic quits -- that's what it used to do in the very early releases -- but this sort of silent failure is not nice and makes it look as if FSUIPC is to blame. Have you tried extending its timeout as I suggested? Maybe you are getting periods of very low frame rates. The SimConnect log should show what is happening from its point of view. Every single visual FS frame there should be listed an event and several data frames sent to FSUIPC. If these stop for more than a few seconds, FSUIPC reports it in its log then re-initialises the SimConnect connection -- that causes an immense amount more data in the Simconnect log because every single Sim Variable and control has to be added again to each of the data sets maintained in the link. Incidentally, I use Norton Anti-Virus which is always fully engaged even when running FS, and have never had any problems, but I only use the Windows Firewall, if at all. I had to scrap ZoneAlarm as it didn't get on with SimConnect at all, and many reported that all the McAfee stuff is incompatible too. Quite a few folks switched over to the freeware AVG so I thought that was okay. Regards Pete

Well, in that case you should be having no trouble at all with stalling. It is really sounding like either a security program conflict or a bad Simconnect install. i've no idea, sorry. I've never had any of these problems on any system -- three under XP and one very recently on Vista Ultimate. I have the VFR X scenery installed on one of the XP PCs. All I can say is that some folks who've had such problems have fixed them by re-installing Simconnect -- so it is worth a try. I don't know if MS has discovered why that part of the FSX install sometimes doesn't work properly, but it is certain that it sometimes doesn't. Possibly it is, again, related to other software on the system. Okay. Regards Pete

But on XP the FSUIPC files are still in the FSX\Modules folder. I only moved them for Vista because Vista stops me writing to that folder when FSX is installed in PRogram Files (the default) unless FSX is "run as administrator". But what's the problem if the were always FSUIPC4.xxx for FSUIPC4 data files? Sorry, I'm missing something here -- if I don't correct this blunder it will make life more difficult for me if they have different names as I'll be saying things like "check your xxx file" or "show me ..." etc and getting responses like "I don't have any such file". There won't be any work for you -- FSUIPC4 will simply rename the files for you. Something is seriously wrong then. What are your frame rates like? Are they dropping way down? Check the SimConnect log, see if there's anything odd there. I've only ever known this to happen with overloaded PCs and multiple clients, unless Simconnect has been messed up (re-install it) or you have some firewall or antivirus program blocking the TCP/IP routes. Have you only recently moved to FSX, or only just noticed this problem? Pete

It's been mentioned many many times and has always come down to one or a combination of three things: 1. Such an appalling frame rate in FSX that it sometimes drops so low as to invoke a timeout in FSUIPC. 2. Multiple clients clamouring for Simconnect attention on an already overloaded PC. 3. Third party programs, usually security things, slowing down the TCP/IP processing and building up queues and thereby invoking FSUIPC's safety timeouts. 4. A bad Simconnect nistall. What other programs have you got using SimConnect? This won't be something new in 4.09. Have you checked the SimConnect log or tried re-installing SimConnect as per the FSX Help above? You could try increasing FSUIPC's timeout, but there could stil be related problems like severe latency in responses and so on. The relevant parameter is SimConnectStallTime, which controls the timeout from 1 second (default) up to 9 seconds. Adjustment should really ever only be needed on systems where the normal frame rate drops to 1 fps or less. I have no idea, at present, sorry. There have been enough complaints about how frail SimConnect is with multiple clients and other TCP/IP processing programs, so one would hope MS would have been able to look at it and sort it. But I've never been able to reproduce any similar problems here on any of four FSX installations, so it is going to be difficult for me to check if there are improvements. It may be a matter of getting feedback, again, from those who do see such problems. I think it must be very much associated with other things on specific systems, usually programs interfering with the TCP/IP processing and getting the exchanges bogged down. Ooops! So it is -- Ouch! And the KEY and INI files too have lost their '4'. :-( This must have happened in the process of moving them to the "My Documents/Flight Simulator X Files" folder! I'm going to have to rename them else documentation and so forth will be wrong! Drat! That's have to wait till after SP1 now. Regards Pete

Okay. How's this? Pete

What made you think FSUIPC4 could add weather effects to FSX if it doesn't provide them in any case? I am not aware of a lack of turbulence in FSX, but if this is the case it should be reported. Too late now for the forthcoming SP1 update I fear. Please be clear, too, whether you mean cloud turbulence (which I think does work), or wind turbulence (which I am less sure of). Have you actually tried setting turbulence in FSX itself, in the weather menus (select user-defined then go through the Advanced menus)? As explained elsewhere, I pretty much gave up on FSX weather for the first user release as there were too many problems. I advised folks not to use the FSUIPC filter options, yet - and most certainly not the "change FS's own weather" option. I have more hope for these facilities in the upcoming SP1 update for FSX, where I hope they have fixed some if not all of the problems. In general you have to use it twice, I think, but I'll re-check that. It operates by trying to put the FSX weather into Global mode, then sending a Global all-clear METAR. After that it probably sends a command to put FSX back into whatever mode it was before (else I'd get complaints that FSUIPC changes weather modes). Maybe this brings back the localised weather from the stations -- I'll have to check. I'll check all this in the SP1 update and hopefully get back to looking at the FSUIPC weather facilities once more when that's available at last. ;-) Gusts are variations in wind speed. There's also variance which are variations in wind direction. Both may seem like turbulence, but they are not the same effect. Turbulence should have a high change frequency but, usually, less amplitude. Maybe your friend is mixing them up? And if he got them, why don't you? Best, especially as things stand at present, when flying on-line or with ActiveSky to let those programs deal with the weather. Click the button on FSUIPC's first tab to set minimum weather interference. Let us re-visit this when SP1 is available. I honestly think expecting any predicatble control with FSX as it is at present is a little optimistic. Regards Pete