Pete Dowson

66C7 is a "private use" offset, so it's down to what you wanted to use it for. I'd be interested to know what difference you've found between FS9 and FSX there, though -- maybe it is something I should deal with in FSUIPC. Yes, as long as you've not been trying to use stuff below 4000 which may have been re-allocated. Check the current allocations as listed in the SDK document available in the FSX downloads above. See the FSX downloads announcement above. That's where all the updates are provided. FsInterrogate2 is provided in the FSUIPC SDK just for that purpose, of course. If follows FSInterrogate 1 which was released years before! ;-) Regards Pete

I am still trying to make 3.717 crash -- I managed to get one CTD with 3.715 using LeeWang's suggestions, but I can't so far make any CTDs occur at all, on one ATI-equipped PC nor two nVidia ones. It's a puzzle. It must be sorted -- I cannot support 3.70. Pete

Currently the only outputs from GPSout giving altitude are GPGGA, PGRMZ (a Garmin proprietary one), AV400, RPY (non-standard, added for someone I can't remember now) and the Text output format. Is there perhaps another sentence providing altitude you'd like me to add, to try? Or is GPGGA the only one accepted by the unit? Regards Pete

Your firewall is merely stopping the broadcasts from Server to Client which are received on port 9002 (or as configured). -- as I am sure I mentioned earlier. This is why the Client cannot find the Server automatically. If you cannot enable the mailslot reception through your firewall settings then all you need to do is configure the INI file for the Client to tell it the ServerName and the Protocol to be used. Please review the documentation! Regards Pete

There's no connection that I know of between the two events in FSX, nor in any of my software, and it certainly doesn't happen here. It sounds very much like you have some button or keypress assigned for two different things. Regards Pete

It sounds like your friend is using an older version of FSUIPC. The substring facility was not added till version 3.70. Pete

Ive had trouble before with loading another flight at startup so I always start with the default FS flight (cessna at Seattle) and move my way from there. Is there a weather file (.WX) associated with that? If so, could you try just renaming that, or even deleting it? I don't know -- it should not be. We are clutching at any straws we can get at present. Could you try booting FS without ActiveSky running, please? Probably. It sounds like you have Explorer set to that awful mode where it is hiding the proper filenames of things. It probably says it is a settings file or something. The other one you call a "notepad" file is probably the FSUIPC.LOG, which I will also want to see, please -- after one of these crashes. Aha! Which version? Although it doesn't use FSUIPC at all, some of the earlier versions had a nasty conflict with FSUIPC causing FS to crash pretty convincingly. Can you make sure that your Active Camera version is fully up to date, as i know that problem was fixed in a later version. Regards Pete

Could you try again with the KEY file in place, but after removing or deleting the FSUIPC.INI file, please? I assume ActiveSky isn't actually running when you start FS? Does your default Flight use any of the above aircraft? If so, could you try booting up FS after renaming the default flight please? If it still does the same thing, could you check the FS Modules folder to see if there are any other add-in DLLs, like PMDGoptions, or others, maybe from ActiveSky or the other aircraft installations. If so, could you temporarily remove them? Just move them into a work folder for now. We are trying to find out what program or file is interacting oddly with FSUIPC in order to cause this problem. This process of elimination shouldn't take long or be difficult. Please let me know what you find. Fine, but is it also a possibility that something you installed overwrote your FSUIPC with an older version? You say it is 3.71, but is that because you know you installed that, or have you actually double-checked? If the version is older than 3.51 there will be problems with your key which are effectively the same as if it were pirated -- that was the point of my comment. Regards Pete

I think you are asking in the wrong place. I've really got no idea about FDS hardware nor PM's support of it. Have you emailed PM support? I would think that would be your best bet -- or FDS, possibly. I've no idea -- those aren't necessarily connections, but RE-connections -- i.e. as if the connection has dropped, or timed out, and re-connected. Log files from Enrico's programs aren't really any use to me -- all the information about wideFS will be in the WideClient and WideServer log files. That's what they are for! I don't see how this is at all related to your MCP hardware problem above, though -- why are they mentioned in the same report? These connection reports are well spaced in time: 69859 Connected to computer "PCSIX" running WideClient version 6.700 (skt=2260) TCP .... then over 6 minutes later: 456109 Connected to computer "PCSIX" running WideClient version 6.700 (skt=1404) TCP .... then after another 3 minutes or so: 647234 Connected to computer "PCSIX" running WideClient version 6.700 (skt=960) TCP .... then another 35 minutes, just about: 2722265 Connected to computer "PCSIX" running WideClient version 6.700 (skt=960) TCP .... and finally a gap of another 4 minutes: 2962672 Connected to computer "PCSIX" running WideClient version 6.700 (skt=960) TCP Without any information from the WideFS logs I'm afraid all it looks like is either you closed and restarted that PC's wideclient 5 times, or some other problem is occurring causing timeouts or whatever. The logs should tell you. Pete

Yes. Looks like you got pretty close to the Maximum and Minimum the article mentioned! Sorry that there's no easy solution -- if you use the GPS for FS Navigation you'll need to treat the altitude with suspicion! Regards Pete

The names in FSUIPC are the internal control names assigned by FS itself, but those wordings I think you'll find are directly quoted from FS's own list of joystick button assignments. Obviously the FS2CREW folks were trying to make it dead easy for you to assign these by giving the precise instructions for assigning them in FS. Off-hand I don't know what the true internal name is for 'Increase Decision Height (Concorde)' -- or at least not why it is special for Concorde -- there are only INCREASE DECISION HEIGHT DECREASE DECISION HEIGHT but maybe the fact that they were only implemented on the Concorde explains why they seem to do nothing. The Marker sound toggle control is called (possibly obscurely?) MARKER SOUND TOGGLE If you really want to use FSUIPC for assigning the FS supported controls rather than use FS itself, then you should find the List of FS2004 Controls, packaged with FSUIPC, useful -- you could do searches on key words. This is how I found those above -- searching for DECISION and MARKER, respectively. I think the FS2CREW folks tried to make it very simple for you, maybe too simple as it turns out? ;-) Regards Pete

No. It sounds as if you have something installed which is faulty, and which only activates with FSUIPC. In order to help at all as a minimum I need the FSUIPC version number and the FSUIPC Log file (from the FS Modules folder) for a complete session which crashed. A list of FS add-ons you have installed may also help, as it is most likely one of those. If you are using FSUIPC version 3.71 or later, then user registration merely allows the use of all of the extra facilities in the FSUIPC Options menus. It doesn't change its behaviour of its own accord -- unless the Registration is a bad one. For instance, using a pirated Key, or using FSUIPC versions before 3.51 with a key made in 2006 or 2007. Regards Pete

I've no idea what that message means "connection has been cutoff". Is that literally what it says? Which link are you trying? The main FSUIPC4 user release download page on http://www.schiratti.com/dowson or the interim updates in the Announcements above? You should get the main user Release before any interim version in any case. For the Schiratti page you need to ask support@schiratti.com I think. For anything in SimFlight you'd need to ask someone like Francois Dumas over in the FS2004 Forum. I can ask on your behalf idf you can tell me more, but all these links work fine here and there are no other similar problems reported, so I would think it must be something your end. Regards Pete

Sounds like it has some sort of table or computation to deal with the "Geoid99 undulations with respect to the WGS84 ellipsoid". It may be interesting to try to find these places mentioned in your reference: the "biggest anomalysoutheast of India where the geoid is 105 meters below the ellipsoid, and its highest swellingeastern Indonesia." In my opinion, whilst it may be making these corrections to its internal world model deliberately to correct it's own GPS reception, a very nice thing for it to do, it should not also do so for information fed to it from what is, as far as it is concerned, another GPS which may already be accurate. However, I don't know the designer's original purpose for the NMEA input facilities so I may be wrong. As I mentioned, none of my GPS's have such a facility in any case. Have you checked to see if you can select a different world model (other than WGS84?) to which it won't apply these 'corrections'? Regards Pete

How weird. Certainly the altitude provided by the GPSout facility is correct -- I use it together with Jeppesen FliteMap and it displays the correct altitude, just as if it were being fed from a real GPS. That is the whole idea. Yes, it does sound that way. It is not a normal thing for a GPS to do, I am sure. Really? Did it say why at all? If this is an adjustment made by all GPS's then programs displaying the altitude, like Jeppesen's own (FliteMap), and the Memory Map Navigator program I use (Ordnance Survey 1:50000 of the UK) will get the altitude wrong, as it is displayed correctly on those. Well, certainly not according to any of the programs I've tried, which are designed to show altitudes from a GPS. Checking the reference you provided, it only actually says the difference in sea level datum is 32m in one place (Redlands California) -- 10 miles away it is already 0.5m less. Reading further it varies all over the place. What about this part: "The maximum range of the Geoid99 undulations with respect to the WGS84 ellipsoid is 192 meters. The biggest anomaly was discovered southeast of India where the geoid is 105 meters below the ellipsoid, and its highest swelling was observed in eastern Indonesia." Furthermore, it says "A brief examination of elevation readings for ESRI headquarters in Redlands, California, demonstrates these differences. The campus elevation is shown on topographic quadrangle maps and high-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) for the area as approximately 400 meters above MSL. However, a precise, nonadjusted GPS reading for the same location typically shows the elevation as 368 meters." which explicitly states that the GPS reading at redlands would or does show 32 meters lower than the map. If this is the case, why is your GPS adding 32 meters? And what happens in other parts of the world where the difference is greater or less? But to do what? If it subtracts 32 meters it will still only be correect at Redlands, won't it? I don't know. I have three GPSs and none of them have a function to take input from anything but their own GPS receivers. Really, GPSout is designed to feed computer programs which feed them output FROM a real GPS, and display the correct position and altitude. I don't know what your GPS is doing, but maybe there's another mode it can use which takes the altitude as given to it? What model is it, by the way? Regards Pete

Bear in mind that an FS module cannot be run on a separate PC on a Network, over, for example, WideFS. This is my only problem with FSNavigator, for example -- I would be a keen user it it would only run across a Network, but it is an FS module, unnecessarily so, I think in this case. Modules are most easily built upon the basis of the Microsoft panels SDK for FS2002 or before, and that revolves entirely around C. C++ is okay but exports would have to be pure C types, and some of the other stuff would need C parentheses. I have heard of folks managing to make FS DLLs using Delphi, but I don't think this would be a beginner's route -- not that C/C++ programming is for beginners, of course. For an external program (EXE), Visual Basic or Delphi are fine and if you are beginning programming I would have thought this would be your preferred route. You may like to visit more FS programming-oriented forums, like the one that I think exists in Avsim. Regards Pete

There are existing users with Vista and I am not aware of any problems at present. I hope to upgrade to Vista on one of my PCs later this year and then I can do more thorough checks myself, but at present I am fairly happy it will all work correctly. Regards Pete

Oh, I am sorry. I did try, along with SimMarket, to make it clear. Regards Pete

But if you have installed FSUIPC4, you do have access to the menu, which is where you register. You don't need to be registered to access the menu in order to enter your registration. All that happens once you've registered, via the menu, and re-started FSX, is that you will find more entries in the menu. Check the pictures in the User Guide. They show the sorts of things you will see in the menu. Until you actually install FSUIPC4 and run FSX and enter the menu, there is really nothing to be done with FSUIPC4. It runs when FSX runs, not before. Regards Pete

That is a much more normal sort of crash, and it is actually where you can get more useful information, such as the address of the error, often also the module, and even some status of the stack at the time. You get this by the button for more details. Unfortunately nothing in any Event Log I've ever seen contains anything useful whatsoever, at least not to a programmer. I think it's intended for system administrators, not programmers or testers. I find myself now in a very difficult position. The problem which I reproduced here, which seemed identical to yours, is not now reproducible here wth 3.717. So far nothing I've done has induced any sort of crash whatsoever. So it seems I fixed a problem which you don't get. I'll keep trying, but please let me know anything specific you find. Unless I can make it crash here I do not stand much chance of doing anything about it I'm afraid. I may actually be forced to freeze all pre-FSX development back at 3.70, discarding 3.71 etc, and all additions so I can get on into future things for FSX and beyond. The strange thing is the lack of any really serious changes between 3.70 and 3.71. It is a shame no one reported this problem with any of the increments -- 3.701, 3.702... 3.709, all of which were provided for several weeks each. Determining exactly WHICH change brought this on would be oh, so useful! Alas, although I do keep some increments, for a while, it is now over 9 weeks since 3.71 was officially released (9 weeks till the CTDs were reported to me!) and I do not keep prior histories so long. Even the increments between 3.70 in July last year and 3.71 in early November were pretty evenly spread over those four months, with, again, no adverse feedback like this. :-( Looking through all of the changes from 3.70 to 3.71 there was really only one related to its interface to FS (which is where this problem must be occurring), and that is the one providing new data for the HSI. I wonder if the code accessing that data isn't so well protected against a change of aircraft. Maybe I will provide another interim version with that data removed for now, as a test. Regards Pete

Er, what, precisely, is in your FSX folder? Have you tried following any of the instructions in the documentation? Have you actually looked at the documentation? Have you actually run FSX with FSUIPC4 installed, and looked at the Add-ons menu at all? If you cannot find the section called "Entering Registration Details" (page 7 in the documentation), how will you manage to find later sections on using these "control tweaks" in any case? I'm at a bit of a loss to understand why you paid for it. Can you say why, what you actually want to do? Please, do follow the Installation and Registration sections in the user guide, first. When you run FSX and go to the FSUIPC menu entry under Add-Ons it should be obvious .... and there are actually pictures in the user guide to show you things you will see. Regards Pete

Well, I did it by disassembling and hacking into FS modules, to see what made them tick. At that time (back in FS98 days) it took me many many hours. A good, but expensive, disassembler is IDA, and you might want to consider Soft-Ice as a debugger, which is what I invested in back then. However I think the latter is very very expensive these days, and in fact the latest Microsoft visual Studio debuggers are quite good if you get the Pro editions. Alternatively, if you learn how to do FS C/C++ gauges, from the older FS SDKs, you will find that the DLLs are not really so different. C compiled GAU files are DLLs too, just renamed. There is a "blank DLL" which helps -- i.e. one which does nothing but gives you a starting framework. I'm not sure where that might be found now. But someone may chip in. Else go look at the FS programmers forum, on Avsim I think. Regards Pete

Can you explain how you managed to interpret it like that? Just because, for ease of installation and better performance, I did not maintain the WideServer.DLL separately, does not mean it was not re-written for FSX and is, in fact, a new product and separately registrable. The only common code in the Wideserver7 part of FSUIPC4 with the WideServer 6 DLL is the part handling the Network, which hasn't changed very much for many years, being based on Microsoft examples. Installing FSUIPC4.DLL in FSX is akin to installing both FSUIPC3 and WideServer in FS2004. But in neither case are both automatically registered without a key. The only difference having WideServer code incorporated in FSUIPC4, apart from the performance advantages, is that it saves you having to add a new version of WideServer.DLL. It doesn't not mean WideFS7 is now free. Regards Pete

I don't really know anything about firewalls. I use a router which has my firewall, so usually I don't bother with any software ones. When I have tried them I am simply prompted the first time anything wants to access the Network and I am able to set the correct permission, like "yes, always" or "only this once", or "no, certainly not" (but not those exact words). This occurs with both WideServer and WideClient -- WideServer to send out the Mailslots (port 9002 on the clients, by default, by the way), and WideClient to request connection. Oh, also, Is a "UDP" port the same as a "TCP port"? By default WideFS uses TCP -- did you select UDP instead? In any case, you didn't actually say it would not connect but that it took over 10 minutes to connect. How would a firewall block come to allow a connection attempt only after such a time? I doubt that it would have a setting saying "don't allow any connections unless they are really really persistent!" ;-) Sorry, I am not being very helpful on this subject at all, simply because I don't know. I cannot imagine what took 10 minutes, and without any logs showing any errors I couldn't really even guess. Just glad you resolved it! Regards Pete

Okay, by following your procedure: I can induce FS9 to crash eventually -- seems to take 10-20 attempts here, but only on one of three PCs I've tried it on. Oddly and perhaps relevantly that one is the only one I have with an ATI video card rather than an nVidia. Can you tell me what video card you are using please? I am installing my debugging system on the one PC on which I can induce it, and will try to see what is happening. At first glance it looks to be a timing clash between threads involved in setting up and cancelling data structures between different aircraft types, as the crash is always between a prop to jet, jet to prop, jet to helo, helo to prop, etc etc type change, not for instance 737 to 777. FSUIPC accesses these data types in what is supposed to be a "safe period" (i.e. one in which they are guaranteed to be accessible), but some of my threads may be rather more efficient than they were and need additional safeguards. I'll let you know as soon as I think I may have got somewhere. Are you willing to test a version for me if I send it, or are you sticking to your "3.70 works and that's it" stance? If the latter I will need to find someone else willing to try things. Thanks & Regards Pete