Pete Dowson

I'd be delighted, if you could tell me how? The only access I have is to Local and Zulu time. Surely, the Host's zulu time is imposed on the MP clients as their Zulu time, and this sets their Local time according to their offset, based on time zone. Trying to change the time on the clients would be futile as it would be reset on the next packet from the host. If you mean to change the Host's Zulu time, surely that would not be allowed, not be possible, as that would affect all clients! Are you saying that the time you can see in the client PC is not the same as or derived (by time zone) from that imposed by the host? I don't understand that. I'm afraid that is not correct, or at least that is not the intention -- at present FSUIPC uses Simconnect for 99% of the things it does in FSX, and the remaining 1% are promised, along with further things in the future we hope. Additionally, Simconnect will expand beyond what FSUIPC will offer, as time goes on (in some areas it does already, of course). FSUIPC's interface is essentially only there for backward compatibility. I think you need to put forward your needs in this area to Microsoft themselves (tell_fs@microsoft.com). I really do doubt that it is possible to do what you suggest with the current FSX code. If the FS team won't do it, then someone who is familiar with the MP protocols will need to write a program to act as a filter between FSX and the Internet packets and change the times being set. I'm afraid this is not my area of expertise at all. You may want to talk to someone like Jose Oliveira, who wrote AIBridge, or the Ivap or Squawkbox folks who can perhaps do something their end. Regards Pete

Interesting indeed! Before going into detail, could you please put everything you have, logs etc, and this report together in an email+attachments together, to tell_fs@microsoft.com. Do this as soon as possible, because I know the Simconnect folks in the FS team are struggling with all this at present. I will forward the details from here directly too and ask them to look out specifically for your email. Make sure you have 2SimConnect" in the subject heading f your email. Thanks. Now: The things I need to know here are: 1. The version number of FSUIPC4. 2. If you are using the recent update, 4.067 (from above), then have you tried increasing the FSUIPC4 timeout on receiving data from SimConnect at all? (SimConnectStallTime). It would be useful to know the number of seconds this has to be increased to to avoid the problem. 3. Please show me the FSUIPC4.LOG extract for the bunch of reconnections, so I can see the time involved there. I think if you had been using 4.067 you would only have one or two instead of a spate. If you Zip these up they should be quite small, relatively. Please do that before sending them to FS. If the FSUIPC4.LOG is also too big for you to extract parts (which is less likely I think), then Zip that up and send it to me at petedowson@btconnect.com. Thank you! Pete

Nothing so far. No, not being used by other testers. Regards Pete

Well, I think the "another program" possibility has pretty much been eliminated. I am having a lot of help from one user who can generate the CTDs and with no other FS-related programs running. and of those the only ones I don't use are ActiveCamera and Autower (whatever that is). I don't see anything useful in the hardware stuff either. I assume you are using WinXP SP2, fully updated? Regards Pete

I'm not sure I understand. What has you "main computer not working" got to do with FSUIPC and FS2004 or FSX? Have you just purchased FS2004? FSUIPC3 is one product, with one set of paid registration keys, and FSUIPC4 is another product with an entirely different set of registration keys. sorry, they are not interchangeable. FSUIPC3 can be used on FS98, CFS1, CFS2, FS2000, FS2002 and FS2004. FSUIPC4 can be used on FSX and is destined to be the version for future versions of FS. Regards Pete

I wish I could make it do that here. I've spent about 6 hours today so far on nothing else! Loading flights, changing aircraft, changing views, doing my utmost to make it crash -- zilch. Solid as a rock! Pete

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