Pete Dowson

I think it will be extremely difficiult to get an accurate figure, as the vertical speed will be changing a lot faster than you can reas it. The best you could hope to do from an external program is to match or better the FS frame rate in you read loops -- e.g. for 20 fps, read every 50 mSecs. However, of course, doing this you risk slowing down FS and thereby effectively altering what you are trying to read. However, assuming that you wouldn't expect the touch-down V/S to be substantially different to the V/S a fraction of a second beforehand (based on the pilot's inability to affect it very quickly), I would imagine that you'd get close to the value you want by reading it at, say 250 mSec intervals, and taking the one BEFORE the ground flag gets set, or even the one BEFORE that (or averge the two?). I suspect this is what Flight Keeper does, as if anything it seems to reckon you hit a bit harder that the pilot things. The only other solution would be for me to try to do it for you, inside FSUIPC, and provide a "touch-down" V/S by getting the last V/S I saw before the "on-ground" flag is seen. It still wouldn't be precise, but at least FSUIPC can guarantee to read it on every frame. Regards Pete

I've not heard of such a problem before, excepting those definitely caused by mis-entry of some part of the information -- all three parts must be correct, and, of course, the name and email must be the same for both FSUIPC and WideFS. If you send the details to me at petedowson@btconnect.com I will check them here. Please be sure to ZIP up your FSUIPC.KEY file and attach the Zip, and also provide details (extracts best) of the registrations as sent to you by SimMarket, and I will check them here at once. Regards, Pete

Have you checked the Programmer's guide for FSUIPC, part of the FSUIPC SDK? "Aircraft Labels" is not, I think, something a real cockpit would have a switch or an LED for. What are you wanting that one for? I would have no reason to supply an indicator for that. As for doors, so far I have only succeeded in finding the FS flag for the main Aircraft Door, i.e. the 1st one. That is signalled by a bit in offset 3376, as documented. As for this "master ignition switch". Can you tell me what you think that does? I see the listed FS control, but I'm not sure what it is. There are Master Battery and Master Alternator switches. And there are separate ignition/starter switches for each engine. But if you mean the Left/Both/Right ignition selector for jet airliners, such as the one on the overhead of a 737 between the two starter switches, then I'm afraid FS doesn't appear to simulate that. Perhaps your "master ignition" operates all of the separate engine switches together? Regards, Pete

Not that I know of, I'm afraid. The position is availble in so many ways just in FS itself, without even using FSUIPC, that you'd need to really hack into it to find out how to stop them all, or make them all misleading. Apart from the easy Shift+Z display there's the Map view, the GPS 'gauges', as you know, and any number of ND gauges which can display airport and navaid positions. FSNav doesn't use FSUIPC, by the way. It and other add-ins like it can easily read position from FS in any case. Regards, Pete

In every case so far such things have been reported it is due to the sensitivity be set to zero in FS. This will actually stop it having any effect in FS as well -- even though it will certainly see it for assignment. Go to the Options-Controls-Sensitivities dialogue in FS and check them all. All sensitivty sliders should be to rthe right, all null zone ones to the left. Not sure where you are seeing "detente". But the user documentation for FSUIPC suppies a step-by-step list of instructions for using its calibration system. Did you check there? For anything with a "centre" position ("idle" in the case of a throttle with reverse zone) there will be 4 "clicks" to do -- Max, centre/idle TWICE (to set the range for the idle), and Min/reverse. Please just follow the instructions. They are easy enough and go into more detail than I will here. Regards, Pete

No code, just a list of keypresses. No. "com" isn't a character. You need a c then an o then an m. Think of it as pressing keys on the keyboard. There isn't one called "com"! This is NOT programming, it is simply a list of things you want the button to do! i.e. To press keys for you! In each line you have to also tell it whether you want it on the Press "P" or release (U for Up), and you have to tell it the joystick and button number -- else how can it know? None of this is anywhere near as hard as flying an aircraft and most certainly not nearly as hard as getting things right with Squawkbox and on-line ATC. If you are that clever you are most certainly easily clever enough to read a little bit and apply yourself. I already did. PLEASE read my messages. You have to do a little bit of work too!! I don't know your joystick number or button number. And the keycodes for all the keys on the keyboard are very clearly listed. There are also examples in the document. This is not programming and many many folks before you, much less technically able than you, have managed it from the documentation I have written. I really don't see the point of writing documentation if I have to repeat it all here -- if I could have done it better I would have, and it has served folks well for several years! If you have at least tried and have examples you can't make work, I can spot the errors for you, but I am NOT going to do it all for you. I have been very patient but you do not seem to even be bothered to read things and try things. You are obviously not an idiot, so why pretend to be? I support my programs as well or better than anyone, but I am not in a position to do everything for everybody. Please try to do a little bit for yourself! :-( Pete BTW I will be off-line now till sometime next week.

As I said, I think it will work, but only editing the INI. In the on-line options the TAB will be taken as a shift, to multiply the number of key combos available. Have you not seen ANY of my replies in this thread? I started off saying how it could be done, and I elaborated on it. Have you looked at the document I mentioned at all? There is NO FACILITY TO SEND TEXT STRINGS as such. You have to program it as a sequence of keypresses, as I keep saying. Please please please at least read my replies here. I feel I am completely wasting my time contributing to this thread! :-( Regards, Pete

By editing the INI file, yes, probably. I say "probably" rather than "definitely" because I'm not sure if it will send TAB on its own -- it is used in FSUIPC as an extra shift key. But it should be okay -- by entering the TAB code in the INI, with "normal" shifts (i.e. value 8). All the codes, including TAB are listed in the advanced guide, so it shouldn't be difficult. You just need a series of lines in the [buttons] like 1=P,,Kn,8 2= ditto where the , identifies the button (eg. 0,1 for button 1 on the first joystick) and the "n" after the K is the Keycode -- one for TAB then one each in subsequent lines for the other keys you need. If there has to be a delay between TAB and the rest, you may want to program the TAB on the Press (P), and the rest on the release (U). Regards, Pete

FStarRC doesn't depend on exporting -- there's not enough information. It intercepts the printing output as you print the "Report". I have version 9.04 of FliteStar, and I really doubt that Jeppesen would remove the printing options. In my version these are in the File menu -- there's a range of print options there. You need to select the 2Reports" view then print that report -- in my copy it is "File-Print-Print report". Pete

Thank you very much! Have a very good Christmas yourself too! Best regards, Pete

How odd. Can't Squawkbox use the COM1 radio in FS? Or am I missing something here? It's a little depressing if you cannot use the radios already implemented -- I have a hardware radio stack, and many folks have GoFlight radios and the like. Can't they use these with Squawkbox? You can have as many entries in the FSUIPC.INI for the one button as you like (well, up to the max limit for all entries). You can't do it in the FSUIPC options on-line. Please refer to the Advanced user's guide for FSUIPC. The button entries are processed in the numerical order of their entrties, i.e. 1=... is done before 2=... etc. All entries referring to a single button press will be performed every time the button it pressed. Regards, Pete

It won't work anyway because multipliers and divisors have to be literal numbers. As stated in the doc here: Really you are trying to do programming with a little simple utility which is only offering to transfer values from FSUIPC to a display. I can see that GFdisplay's role should be enhanced to provide some more useful formats, like strings as numbers, but deriving new values based upon two or more others is really way beyong its scope. There agai you are talking as if GFdisplay is some sort of programming system, a compiler. There's no facilities to WRITE values back to FS at all. Its job is only to move values from FS to GF displays. To do what you want to do would, I think, require FSUIPC to be enhanced with a "time to station" variable. That's the only sensible way. If I'm going to have to do that I may as well leave GFdisplay as it is and instead of having a "string to number" formatting option, just provide three new FSUIPC variables for each VOR -- DME distance, speed and time, all in numeric format (probably 16-bit integers as tenths miles/knots/seconds). I'll make a note, but this is now not trivial. If I don't do it soon after Christmas remind me in February. Regards, Pete

Sorry. I don't deal with registrations. Please read the announcements and things near the top of the Forum. There's one there specifically for this. Pete

Yes, but I don't think I support such computation in GFdisplay, do I? There are multipliers and divisors, but they are , I think, literal numerics only, aren't they? Not other variables. Maybe I'm forgetting stuff. Please tell me what you are thinking here. Regards, Pete

Please get FSUIPC version 3.52 from http://www.schiratti.com/dowson. The problem you mention only existed in 3.51 and was corrected as soon as it was recognised. You can keep up to date by reading the announcements in this Forum. Regards, Pete

Correct. You have to get its menu up by pressing the ' key, or whatever. That's the way it works. I don't like it either, which is why I use Radar Contact. Sorry, I don't know what does that. For add-on aircraft I'd blame some setting in the aircraft files, but for defaults it should work "out of the box". It sounds like there's some video setting wrong somewhere. But, I'm sorry, it isn't something I know about. Regards Pete

Thanks! Actually seeing my N gauge trains is easy enough (after all I know where they are! ;-)). The problem is keeping the damn track clean. Grrr. A few months of disuse and the whole thing grinds to a halt! Not even any leaves on the line! ;-) A very Happy Christmas to you! Pete

I'm sorry, but FSUIPC is certainly not an application utility of the type you need -- this is quite outside its scope, as well as being very application specific. I think you'd best be directing your request to the aircraft makers who will be familiar with their own FMC (I certainly am not). Regards, Pete

Providing a "numeric version of string" type would probably be easy enough (in fact it may actually be the best solution to the previous problem -- then you can display them as numerics, not strings, to your own formatting needs). But I don't understand how, in the GFDisplay context, you intended to compute time to station from the raw data? Pete

This will be because, although FS has crashed and appearently disappeared, it is still running. When you try to run it again the new copy of FSUIPC sees the old one still there. You can check this yourself. Next time you get the crash, use CTRL_ALT_DEL to get to the Task Manager, select the Process List, and scroll through to find the FS9.EXE process. Terminate it before you re-run FS. I assume you mean 3.521? However, the FSUIPC version is not relevant here. Something else is causing your FS to crash, it isn't anything to do with FSUIPC. You say you just added a new aircraft, so that is the first suspect. It could be a bad (corrupted) texture or gauge, almost anything in that aircraft. Regards, Pete

Okay. I assume this is due to the intervening character being a space rather than a zero? There are two possible ways for me to tackle that -- either (in FSUIPC) ensure that the separator is always zero, or (in GFdisplay) have an extra format selector which says "end on space or zero". I'll make a note to do one or the other, but I'm afraid it won't be till after Christmas now -- but hopefully I'll be able to fit it in before I go on holiday in January. I will have to depend on you to test it though, as I have no GF displays here now. What does the trailing space look like on the display as opposed to nothing? I'm a little confused there. Regards, Pete

No idea, sorry, and now you have deleted your settings we will not find out until you manage to do it again. Regards, Pete

FSUIPC, by itself, will not affect the frame rate at all as it does nothing till asked. It sounds like you have something using it which is the problem. The frame rate drop will be because of the application or add-in, and it is less with FSUIPC not installed because the application cannot do whatever it was trying to do. Regards, Pete

If you can make Windows operate a Network over USB (and I am sure it is possible), then WideFS can use it. The Network part of WideFS uses standard Windows facilities only. Provided TCP/IP or IPX/SPX works between the two, WideFS will too. As for performance and loading, there I don't know. I think an older type USB (version 1?) will be slower than Ethernet, but whether noticeably so or not I don't know. I should think USB 2 (as fitted to all newer PCs) would be easily fast enough, no problem. And I doubt that you could measure any difference in impact on FS frame rates compared to any other Networking connection. Regards, Pete

Thank you very much! And the same to you and yours! No, unfortunately that will never be. The genetic problem isn't curable and is bound to become progressively worse. It is getting more and more noticeably so as I age, too. But I am lucky, the variation I have (there are at least thirty variants) does not end in complete blindness. I should always have some central detail vision, no matter how narrow. Yes :-) Thanks & Best Wishes, Pete