Pete Dowson

Okay. Glad it is sorted! Pete

The values are entirely meaningless. Every axis you use needs calibrating as every instance of the hardware will vary to some extend. Please just calibrate ALL your axces, including trim, following the instructions provided. Pete

Yes, until you have a program ready to attach a key too, then it depends whether it is freeware or not. Regards, Pete

Yes. Search the Programmer's Guide and you will find the pathname of the current AIR file. See offset 3C00. "Reload aircraft" is an FS control. They are listed in the FS2004 controls list, and can be sent via offset 3110. Yes, if by "station" you mean the fuel tanks. Obviously changes to fuel levels in tanks not fitted to an aircraft will make no difference. The fuel levels are expressed by values representing proportion filled, so for absolute values you need also to read the capacities. All this stuff is listed in the tables in the Programmer's guide in the SDK. Regards, Pete

Yes, I also found out that this can happen. It is usually because one of the add-in gauges or DLLs in your FS installation is hung (i.e. waiting for something which will now never happen). I think this can only occur with modules running with multiple threads. When FS closes it terminates all of its own threads tidily, but doesn't know about threads created by other add-in programs. And Windows cannot unload the process until everything has finished running in it! One DLL once known to cause this was, I believe, ActiveCamera. It was fixed fairly quickly once discovered, however. I think it was related to differences between FS9.0 and the 9.1 update. If you ever get this happening, check that all your add-in modules are up to date. As well as my own (which in fact only scantily use multiple threads and do apply forcible deletion of those if waiting for them doesn't help) look at FSNav, ActiveCamera, PMDG, Squawkbox3, etc. Regards, Pete

I received one good result with PFC 1.942 anyways, though it may not be relevant to your query, depending how the trim wheel works on your Cirrus. This is from a message mistakenly (I hope) sent to me privately: Thanks for the quick feedback. As you are talking about trim units I assume that you have a similar Cirrus to me, and not an analogue trim wheel? You do know you can have two speeds for the trim, based on how long you press the button for? I tend to prefer fine adjustments with quick short presses, but still need major adjustments at times so hold the button down. Since the days I wrote that part of the code I found out that on airliners such as the 737 the electric/autopilot trim actually operates at twice the speed when there are any flaps down. This is something I may look at doing in PFC.DLL one day. Regards, Pete

On the contrary, TrafficLook is a program which provides a tabular display of AI or MP-injected aircraft positions in a manner which is completely unrealistic. It is only a test/development program provided to show the sort of information which can be obtained. You seem to be a little confused. TrafficLook (the free program included in the FSUIPC.ZIP) is not "used" by anything else. Other programs, like TrafficBoard and FlightKeeper, may use the same information from FSUIPC -- as do some (but not all) TCAS radar type display gauges and programs. I think the F16 gauge is one of the latter. Neither I suspect. It's just that although the author has been provided with free access keys so that his TCAS displays will work with FSUIPC, he has never actually amended the gauges to build them in and so make life easier for his users. This means you have to register the gauges manually yourself. You will find the key for that one in the Freeware Keys list above. Note that others have had difficulties with that gauge, however (it seems to conflict with some other things in some systems), and I would recommend that, if you don't want to pay for an FSUIPC user registration, you look for a replacement gauge. The Lee Hetherington gauges (ILH-TCAS or something similar) seem to work well from what I've been told. Regards, Pete

Hmm, no it doesn't, for me, sorry. The odd thing here is that you have a trim wheel on the Cirrus console? I've not got one of those. Is it an analogue input? The only analogue trim inputs I've programmed are for the 737NG cockpit, which has analogue trim inputs for all three axes -- elevator, aileron and rudder. That works okay. You calibrate in PFC.DLL just like any other of the axes. I assume you have done some calibration? If the trim axis behaves like any other it should work fine, but I don't know the hardware and have never seen this Cirrus modification (is it the "Professional"? Is that still called a Cirrus?). So, I'm afraid I will have to refer you to PFC support. Maybe it's a hardware problem in any case, I really can't understand what you are seeing. By all means try my latest internal version of PFC.DLL, attached, just in case it helps. Let me know how you get on, either way, please. Maybe a pic of your modified Cirrus would be interesting? Regards, Pete PFCDLL1942.zip

It won't make any difference what version of FSUIPC you use. FSUIPC just provides you with the value from FS. It doesn't do anything with it. It knows nothing about it. I suggest you search for FS Real Time. It includes BGLs to correct most if not all of the time zone bugs in FS. Also be aware that the seasonal differences will change this. It isn't a Zone offset, as you seem to be interpreting it as, but a local time offset, so it will change in areas where there's a Summer Time difference too. Possibly your FS2002 and FS2004 were set for different seasons? Regards, Pete

Ah, you mean FSUIPC offsets? Where does "TRC#" come in? I have no idea what the lamp illustrates, but it is presumably related to the starter switch simulation in FS. Go to http://www.schiratti.com/dowson and download the FSUIPC SDK. Search the table in the programmer's document for "starter". There's one for each possible engine of 4, but of course only the #1 engine applies to the helos. Incidentally, I think FS models the Robinson as a prop aircraft, not a real helo like the Bell. Regards, Pete

Sorry, what is a TRC# code? What warninglight and switches? Please clarify, I don't understand the question. I provide technical support for my programs here, including FSUIPC and WideFS. Are you sure you are in the right place? Does your question relate to any of my programs? Regards, Pete

Are you using PFC.DLL? Which version? What exactly do you mean by "calibrating the elevator trim"? On my Cirrus console the trim is by buttons on the left yoke handle. It operates incrementally. It is not an axis, there is no calibration to perform. Please clarify what software you are using and what sort of trim control you are attempting to "calibrate". Pete

Have you lost all the details which were sent to you to register FSUIPC? You can simply use them to re-register FSUIPC on the new PC. The same would apply if you had to re-install Windows on the first PC. It is always best to keep details of things you actually pay for! If you still have the old PC, look in the FS Modules folder. There is an FSUIPC.KEY file there. It is an ordinary text file and you can read the details there. When re-registering, use the same Name, Email and Key -- all three parts need to be exactly right. It doesn't matter if you changed your email address, or your name, use the ones you used when buying the key. Regards Pete

I assume you are using WideFS 6.47? Does the WideClient Log file record the shutdown notification being received? The only incidence I've seen which is a little like this actually results from timing problems, and in fact the applications often close but start again directly, so look like they never closed. If this is what is happening then it should be okay using the interim version I released here to fix that. Please check the thread "Problem with shutting down apps on the clients" from a couple of weeks ago -- just scroll down a bit. Let me know. Regards, Pete

The only easy way is to use the FS PARKING BRAKE control (see drop down list in FSUIPC's Buttons page). It is a toggle, so first you'd need to synchronize your toggle switch with the FS PB setting. Then you'd assign the Parking Brake control to both "press" and "release" -- the "press" means "off to on" and the release meanse "on to off". If you wanted it to always synchronize, it is more complex because there is no FS control for Parking Brake on and a separate one for off. You need to program the switch to send values to the parking brake offset. This is a word at xBC8. Write 0 to it for off, 32767 (x7FFF) for on. Use the Offset Word Set control in the dropdown. Regards, Pete

Surely you didn't pay before downloading it? How do you know whether you want to pay for it? All the documentation is in the download. You don't to pay for it if you don't need any of the facilities described. Which site are you trying to use? FSUIPC is distributed to about 50 websites, though not all may put it up. The main one is http://www.schiratti.com/dowson, but only because it is the only one which displays all of my FS programs, and is also usually the quickest with new versions. Whichever site it is you were trying, please send a note to the site manager. There should be a link for that on the page somewhere. If it is the Schiratti site then I really don't think that the problem can be their end as it is being downloaded many times a day without problems. Regards Pete

I tried it recently because there is a freeware program being made which will link to it from FlightSim using the FSUIPC interface. Sorry, I wasn't aware that it took a COM port interface too. I'm afraid for that you'll need to get support from Google to see what sentences they need. If they are standard NMEA ones which I don't currently support I can add them, but I think you'll find I already support all of those which include the Latitude and Longitude. I don't support any specific map software, only specific standard NMEA or Aviation format outputs. That is what you need to ascertain. I'm not terribly interested in looking specifically at this way of doing it when there will be the better (more direct) way provided soon from a third party author. I'll ask him if I can yet release details, or else get him to write to you. Regards, Pete

Yes, isn't that what I said? Sorry. The whole reason the FSUIPC_Read and FSUIPC_Write calls are separated from the FSUIPC_Process call is to allow you to read and write more than one little item at a time. The FSUIPC_Read and FSUIPC_Write calls are really nothing whatsoever to do with FSUIPC. They are just supposed to make life easier in your programs (though in the case of VB they may be making it harder by the look of it!). All the code for those procedures is inside your program. The only call which deals with FSUIPC is FSUIPC_Process. That sends a specially formatted message to FS which causes a Process Switch (i.e. your program loses the processor, FS gains it) and allows FSUIPC to process all the read and write requests you queued up. The process switching takes A LOT LONGER that the processing of the reads and writes is likely to -- the latter are rarely as much as 1 millisecond (thousandth of a second) altogether, whereas the process switch could easily cost as much as 10 or 100 milliseconds, an order or two more. So, if you request 10 items separately, i.e. each with their own Process call, you could be using up 1000 milliseconds just for process switching (time wasted to both your program and FS), plus the 1 millisecond (max) for the actual work requested, instead of 100 milliseconds for the one process switch plus the 1. The more stuff you ask for so inefficiently the more processor time you waste. Regards, Pete

AhI have no idea why Traffic 2004 would install FSUIPC. I don't think they use it for anything at all. Furthermore, FSUIPC does not have anything to do with any "Tools" menu. The only program I am aware of which provides traffic "Tools" via such a menu is the Traffic toolbox from Microsoft -- that is a DLL downloadable from Microsoft's own FS web site. I think you may be getting mixed up between something else and FSUIPC? Regards, Pete

Well, first you are only reading 1 byte, which would only contain the first character in any case -- please do check the sizes of the various offsets, these are shown in the table. You cannot get many Aircraft names in 1 character! Anyway, it probably wouldn't come out correctly in any case because of the strange way strings are formatted in VB. I think you need code to deal with it. Hopefully, as before, you will get a VB programmer to show you. I hate to keep saying this, but VB is a big pain for me and support. In C, C++, Delphi, even Assembler, it would all be so straightforward! ;-) By the way, I hope, when you have these things figured out, that you are not doing "Read/Process" pairs all the time. It would be extremely inefficient, both for you program and for FS. You want to bunch all your Reads and Writes then do one Process call to send all the requests over to FSUIPC in one visit. Regards, Pete

What's difficult? Sending a control to FS? That only involves writing one number to offset 3110. I don't understand. Apart from the fact that I think, for VB, you need to use FSUIPC_WriteS (for Write String), and also that you have used a length of 1 byte for what looks like a string of 4 characters (plus terminator, so 5), I'll have to leave this to a VB programmer. I think VB uses a completely different string format to FS (and to Windows for that matter). Both Windows and Flight Sim use 8-bit ASCII encoded characters with a zero byte at the end terminating the string. I think VB normally uses 16-bit wide characters or Unicode with a length byte at the start. There are more things put in place to trip up VB programmers than in any other language you can use. Sometimes I think even Assembly code would be easier! ;-) Pete

What "new fsuipc"? I've not made a release since 3.48 in April. What version were you using before? What do you consider "new"? What "traffic radar" program are you referring to? Your subject line says "traffic look", but my own TrafficLook program has no "tools" option nor a "toolbar". Please be a little more specific when you ask for help as I need to know more in order to answer adequately. Also note that there has been no chasnges in the traffic information system in FSUIPC for many a release, and it is certainly still working well. Regards, Pete

Sorry, I don't understand. You mean reloading scenery progress bar? To force FS to reload scenery after you've moved the aircraft like that you need to send the "Refresh Scenery" control (look it up in the List of FS2004 controls supplied with FSUIPC). You can do that via offset 3110. It isn't so much that as me being frightened of losing my cool and getting irritable. I really am not a good teacher (ask my children!) and I can, these days, recognise when my patience has expired -- and that's when I have to stop or risk getting horribly unpleasant. On top of that I do not even know VB -- and what I do know of it makes me horrified that such an inconsistent and illogical language (to me at least) is an entry for new programmers. Regards Pete

Great! Thanks! Pete

Yes, this is what that control does. See, in the FSUIPC user documentation: You need to set the parameter if you want a different value. FSUIPC doesn't actually know what the setting was in FS before hand, it simply changes it to 0% if it is enabled, or 100% if not -- unless you give a parameter. Do you press the "Confirm" button after making any such changes? This control accepts parameters 0 - 100, not decimal points or % signs. For 50% just enter 50, press Confirm when you are happy with what you have set. Regards, Pete