Pete Dowson

I'm afraid I don't know. But try a search on "Lowrance". I just did and came up with these threads which may be useful: http://forums.simflight.com/viewtopic.php?t=30024 http://forums.simflight.com/viewtopic.php?t=30074 http://forums.simflight.com/viewtopic.php?t=24087 Maybe there's something in those to help? Regards Pete

Ercan you be rather more specific, please? What download page? Do you mean the "Other downloads" Announcement above, where you can download FSUIPC 3.719c ***, or do you mean the Schiratti "Dowson" page, where you can scrolll down and select FSUIPC 3.71? Both of these links seem to be working fine. And I don't see this "Not for FSX" notice. Where exactly are you looking? That's wrong anyway. FS Navigator does not use FSUIPC. You certainly don't need FSUIPC for that! Regards Pete *** 3.719c has juat now been replaced by 3.72 in the Announcements, and this version will be up on the Schiratti "Dowson" page within the next day or two.

I'll look at adding them when I get back from holiday. Sorry, I'm off till the 20th after tomorrow. Please send me an email to remind me: petedowson@btconnect.com. I can file it in "pending" if it arrives before I go. There's an actual, but I've no idea about the other. You could do with discussing this stuff with one of the aircraft design experts around. It isn't really stuff I know a lot about. Regards Pete

You can send those controls like any others via offset 3110. Regards Pete

You will ZIP and send the Controls.DLL then, please? Yes, but it is already available in the FSX Downloads Announcement above. I may need to make another change if Controls.DLL is different -- but I have to wait for your reply to my email. After tomorrow I am on holiday. Regards Pete

Good grief! You had three Firewalls set up? You are very worried about invasion? ;-). Or is "Symantec Firewall" the same as "Norton Firewall"? I've not seen this error before, but I am sure Microsoft will be interested. If you check the "FSX Help" Announcement above, it tells you how to get a Simconnect Log file. If you can do that, please, then send your error report (exactly as you have said here) along with both the FSUIPC4.LOG and the SimConnect LOG to tell_fs@microsoft.com , that will be the best way to get this fixed. I just hope it is in time to allow them to find and fix it before the expected FSX update. Also, try re-installing SimConnect, as suggested in the FSX Help Announcement. I'm afraid there is nothing I can do to fix SimConnect problems -- if re-installing doesn't work we are wholly dependent upon Microsoft I'm afraid. Regards Pete

Good. I will place it into the FSX Downloads Announcement above, and release it properly on the other places when I return from holiday. I'm afraid I have no time to make a formal release before I go. Also, I need to check that the CONTROLS list (in FSX's Controls.dll) is in the same place in the Japanese version. I am sending an Email to you about this now. Regards Pete

Well, even if FSUIPC4 was "poking values" as it used to in previous versions of FS, there would still be some asynchronicity due to the nature of Windows messaging and process scheduling, but I guess the answer then would be to send the updates a *lot* more frequently than the FS frame rate, assuming this didn't cripple anything. The problem with the greater separation from your program to the Sim is greater latency, and the possibility of queues "bunching" requests sometimes, with corresponding lapses in others. I would have thought that the use of the TCP stack for the communication between SimConnect and FSX would be a main source of such behaviour, and I did campaign against this. In fact I am still hopeful that some short-cut method will be found to speed things up. At present, your best bet would be to try using the SimConnect interface directly. It won't bypass the TCP stack, but it would at least remove the message latency between you and FSUIPC. Have you considered using FS2004 until the FSX performance issues and other bugs are resolved? Regards Pete

Hey, good catch! There's a line of code missed out! Easy to fix of course, and it will be, in the next version, or increment 4.073. But I am on holiday from Saturday. Do you need a quick fix? Regards Pete

I'm lost already. What's a "UAV control system"? With the current FSX performance I'm rather surprised you get it as good as that sounds. Are you limiting FSX's frame rather to your data rate, to try to get the whole thing synchronised? How are you preventing FSX's own simulation engine moving the aircraft instead of you? Are you sure it isn't FSX trying to fly the aircraft too? Or are you setting it into slew, paused or zero frame rate mode? Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean there. But don't forget the SimConnect connection is aysynchronous, via TCP packets from FSX to SimConnect, then via Windows messages to the client (in this case FSUIPC4). And then, aynchronously again, via messages and (in a single core at least) process switches to your program. You could eliminate some of that by writing your application as a direct SimConnect client, of course. I'm sure that's what Microsoft expected folks to do. Regards Pete

Ah, you don't need to purchase it to check its performance! ;-). I doubt you'll realyl notice any difference with 4.07, just as you wouldn't between 4.05 and 4.06. What concerned me was whether you were seeing a performance drop from a previous version. That would be a worry for me. For all things regarding FSX performance, we are hoping for the best from Microsoft's promised update ... Regards Pete

I have made a quick change, to accept the new FSX.EXE build number, and hope that the Simconnect part is still okay. I am sending you FSUIPC 4.072 to try, now. Could you let me know if it works okay as soon as possible, please? The FSUIPC.LOG file would be useful, if you get as far as running it. Thank you, Pete

This is a calamity!! :-( The Japanese version of FSX is an entirely different build to the international FSX. This is a mess made by Microsoft I'm afraid. I will write to them to find out what is going on. The checks the FSUIPC installer makes are essential, because the "manifest" checking made by SimConnect on the Client applications is thorough and prevents even loading of DLLs with incorrect non-matching builds. I am sorry, but I cannot resolve this without more information from Microsoft. This comes at a bad time as I am on holiday from Saturday for two weeks. I'm afraid you may not get anything resolved until after that -- February 20th or so. But i will do my best. Regards Pete

There's nothing I know of. There are the constants: DESIGN SPEED VS0: straight & level stall speed with full flaps? DESIGN SPEED VS1: straight & level stall speed clean? I can obtain these in FS2002, FS2004 and FSX if anyone wants them -- no one has asked these past many years though. they would presumably be the fixed lower white-line points on the typical ASI. I assume that whether the aircraft is going to stall at any particular time is dependent upon the entire simulation. I am not even sure that an airspeed would be derived first. There's certainly nothing I know of supplied via the Gauges interface, nor in the otherwise reasonably comprehensive set of values supplied by SimConnect in FSX. Regards Pete

First, please find the Caps Lock button on your keyboard and press it -- typing in all CAPS comes across as SHOUTING and is also more difficult to read. Second, this problem is most certainly because you don't actually have Administrator privileges -- apparently Vista does its damnedest to stop you doing things that you should have a right to do! According to all the testers who have been using Vista and FS with FSUIPC you should be able to get around the problem by using the "Run As ..." option when executing FS, and selecting the fully-privileged Administrator account, whatever that may be called. Regards Pete

Please use 3.719c, not 3.719!!! I know about a possible CTD with 3.719 and fixed it! All other testers are now reporting no problems whatsoever with 3.719c, and it will be released as 3.72 tomorrow or Thursday. Pete

Compared to which previous version, please? Have you tried 4.07, the current version at all? A 10-15% drop is what most folks have reported, including myself, though there have been some saying as much as 30-40%, but I think there are other severe problems with those systems. As far as we can tell, this performance impact is apparently down to the TCP/IP protocols being used between SimConnect and the main parts of FSX. We are hoping that the expected performance update for FSX will provide some improvement here. Regards Pete

I think you need to ask such questions is another forum, to do with gauge design perhaps? Mind you, there won't be many FS98 gauge programmers around now, they'll all have moved on I expect. Regards Pete

Okay. Well using KeySend is a reasonable answer then. You will have no difficulty having different KeySends detected by different WideClients, even if they end up sending the same keystrokes locally. But just don't try bypassing WideServer and changing 330F etc yourself. Either send the KeySend controls to FSUIPC via the facilities at offset 3110 -- check the numerical equivalents of the FSUIPC controls in the list in the FSUIPC Advanced Users guide -- or, as I suggesteed earlier on in this thread, use your hardware to operate the virtual buttons at offsets 3340 and the program them in FSUIPC itself. Personally I've always thought the most flexible is always to make all your buttons and switches look like buttons and switches to FSUIPC too. Then you have complete flexibility in how you program them and you can do it whilst running FS. Regards Pete

Yes, but it shouldn't be as much overhead for them as for the FS PC running GPSout which still has to send all those sentences out, and manage queues and interrupts on two or more serial ports at the same time. I'm certain I'd know where I'd rather the overheads be! With GPS devices only needing a frame rate or 1 or maybe a very few per second -- try flying FS at such speeds! ;-) Regards Pete

Try 3.719c above before going to all the bother of re-installing FS. Strange. I don't think there was ever a version of my driver with such problems. Ahthere is a bug in FS which occurs to do with LandClass. I had problems with stuff like that. There's a program called "Flight Sim Manager" which can help resolve those problems. It identifies potentially problematic land class files and offers to move them to a folder structure which makes them work properly. Ah, that one isn't something I recognise as being related to the FSUIPC fixes in 3.719c (but please try it anyway). But have had such crashes when flying at night. I got fed up with them and only fly FS9 in daylight or dusk. Regards Pete

Which version of FSUIPC are you using? Some folks have reported problems with version 3.71, and after working furiously on these over the last two weeks I think we've overcome them in version 3.719c, available above. I hope to release this as 3.72 this week. Oddly, I was unable to reproduce the problems here and yet they seemed to plague others quite a bit, so I had to rely on testing on other folks' systems. What sort of problems? "Null zones" aren't complex, they are just small parts of the overall movement you leave out of the calibrated range so that minor fluctuations don't mess things up. Incorrect driver? There's only PFC.DLL (for FS98 through to FS2004) and PFCFSX.DLL (for FSX), unless they sent you the very very old original drivers they had, which seems unlikely. If you mean an older version missing some facility you needed, then, as with any new hardware, it is best to always look to get the latest update after receiving it. The same happens with video cards, especially. By the time they burn the CDs, package the goods, and get them shipped, the drivers have moved on by three or four versions! ;-) Of course. All the settings for FSUIPC, PFC, WideFS and so on are stored in INI files, in your FS Modules folder. Surely you back these up now and then in any case, along with the FSUIPC.KEY file? If you simply deleted everything without saving what you want first, then of course you are correct. Re-formatting the hard disk would do the same. Incidentally, simply using FS's own uninstall won't delete most of the add-ons you've got in any case, as these weren't installed by its installer. They'll be left in bits and pieces wherever they were installed to. Yes, that's what the files are for. I would suggest you do the same with any other INI and CFG files you have, and of course the FSUIPC.KEY file, especially if you are registered. Regards Pete

Eryou mean restart it, or re-install it, or what? Can you explain what you are posting about please? I don't understand -- some sort of context would be useful I think! Right. Good choice, very nicely made hardware. Erdo you mean my PFC.DLL? Why? What caused this "considerable time and frustration"? My drivers, which I did for my own convenience, have always been well received. What on Earth was the problem? Can you not explain anything? It seems odd to be so secretive. If you have questions or problems, why not ask? Is the documentation not clear enough? Most PFC users seem to think that the software is reasonably well designed, flexible and easy to understand. It is why PFC chose to change over from their previous drivers. 1. The settings for PFC.DLL are always saved -- in PFC.INI. What on Earth makes you think they are discarded? I really do not understand where you are coming from here. 2. Why are you having to spend hours? You have only to select the console, to calibrate the 6 throttle axes, the yoke and pedals, and to choose whatever options you want, and it is done. It is a matter of a few minutes and only needs doing on first installation. I really don't see the point of your posting as it stands. If you could please be rather more explanatory it would really be appreciated. Regards Pete

Well, I apologise. It was not intended as any sort of insult. But the problem I have is that there have been many complete beginners trying to tackle programming to interface to FS over the years, and it really is not a good place to start, at all. Regards Pete

I don't think anything actually asks you to register, but to register please follow the instructions in the documentation. If you've ever registered before I would have thought you would remember? It really isn't so difficult when there's a button clearly marked for it in the options. Pete