Pete Dowson

Actually, the "run ready" facility doesn't work that well in FS2004. I have quite a lot of difficulty from inside FSUIPC knowing when it is safe to access aircraft paramters in SIM1.DLL simply because there's nothing clearly obvious to tell me when a previous flight is deleted nor when a new one is completely loaded and initialised. And it isn't only Flights, simply loading or reloading an aircraft is the same problem. All the data structures are deleted then re-built for the new aircraft in both cases. And different structures are built for each aircraft type -- prop, jet, turbo, helo, glider. It's a nightmare in fact. In FSUIPC I take some precautions to simple avoid trying to access areas which are not valid at any time, but it isn't foolproof. I use pointers in other, more general structures, and before accessing those I check for validiiy by APIs like "IsBadReadPtr". If I do ever find a foolproof way, I can certainly provide some sort of indication. It could be useful for my other modules. But it might help for me to actually understand why an application (rather than FSUIPC) would need to know. Can you explain? Regards, Pete

I think it would be easy enough to do this, but it has not been requested at all before. I only added what was specifically requested there. I can add it to the list of things to do in the next version, if you wish. Regards, Pete

I think Elite do their own thing, probably writing direct into FS. I know nothing about them and they've never contacted me. I think your only recourse is to contact their suport. Regards. Pete

Delete your FSUIPC.INI file then -- if FSUIPC is assigning buttons for you it is because you have told it to at some time. It does not touch joystick buttons at all of its own volition, those are all user facilities. If you dete the INI file it will delete all such erroneous assignments you made before. Regards, Pete

A 64-bit (8-byte) floating point number, also called a "double" in C/C++. There's no easy way you can generate those directly in EPL, and there's no 8-byte data transfer facility in any case. You can do it through EPICINFO which has facilities for dealing with these things, but I don't know FSCOMM. Maybe you could ask the author? Regards, Pete

It should work, but there was a bug in some versions of FSUIPC where the button repeat action didn't work. Make sure you are using the latest version (3.11). Regards, Pete

You need to send both emails you got from SimMarket and also tell me which one you have used or want to use. Send to petedowson@btconnect.com. Regards, Pete

The problem is two-fold: 1) Depending on what you do in "doSomethingwithData", your program is not relinquishing the processor and this will affect performance. Certainly, the call to FSUIPC_Process will cause a process switch, but doing this possibly very fast is actually only wasting much processor time switching unnecessarily. 2) The loading on FSUIPC, processing the end-to-end requests, is a loading on FS itself, which isn't a good thing. Since the most if not all of the data you are using cannot possibly change faster than the FS frame rate, most of those calls be will just an overhead and doing nothing useful. The solution depends on what else the program is doing. If it is actually doing NOTHING except when it gets new data, and you don't mind it being rather unresponsive to user interventions, then simply try inserting a "Sleep" in the loop, say for 15 or 20 or more milliseconds -- experiment and use the biggest value which works well. Alternatively, trigger this section of code on a windows timer call -- either by WM_TIMER messages or using the TimerProc facility in SetTimer. Using the loop in a separate thread with a Sleep would also work, but is probably an unnecessary complication. Certainly do not have it in a thread with no Sleep, that could be worse (especially, as I found out recently, on Pentium 4 HyperThreading processors). Regards, Pete

Since AFCAD is freeware I have made a freeware key for it to access FSUIPC. Please see the Free Key list which is a Sticky message up above. Regards, Pete

Sorry, but FSUIPC has no relation to anything graphical whatsoever. In fact by itself it isn't even doing anything., unless you've set some options. There's something else going on there. I'm not sure how you can go about determining exactly what it is, but start by removing all add-ons and re-installing one at a time. Regards, Pete

Check the "module users" part of the FSUIPC SDK. Whatver you do, do NOT use the normal external interface. It is fat and inefficient for use withing the same process. The module users method is a simply message passing system with you maintaining the data area. Regards, Pete

That's odd. I don't know of anything that would change that. What was the previous version of FSUIPC you were using? Regards, Pete

Sorry, I don't know any way to do that "on-the-fly", only through the menu. Regards, Pete

As documented, it is available as freeware for its true original purpose -- as a successor to FS6IPC for interfacing external programs to FS. I have merely put a price on the additional facilities. I am afraid that, if the default FS and Windows facilities for joystick calbration are not sufficient for your needs, then there are only two alternatives: either write a driver for them to interface to FSUIPC (for freeware I provide a free key), or purchase a user key for FSUIPC so you have access to all the optional features. Regards, Pete

Sorry, I know zero about FF and it isn't an area I want to get tangled up in. You'll need to report it to Microsoft. It won't be anything to do with FSUIPC at all. Regards, Pete

Ugh, really? I'll have a look this weekend. Sorry. Regards, Pete

I don't understand. GPSout is intended to make FS effectively look like a GPS to an external map program, normally running on another PC. Sending GPS outpput data to another GPS sounds rather odd. I have a Garmin GPS and the only input it can take is feed from an external GPS receiver/amplifier, for more accurate or sensitive operation. The format for that is not NMEA. If your GPS can read NMEA output from another GPS, then presumably there's some appropriate mode for this. I think you'd need to determine this from its handbook. Regards, Pete

Sounds like an ATI card problem -- there seems to have been a number of flicker problems with ATI cards. Is that what you are using? Try the latest drivers, or check it in maximised Windowed mode. Regards, Pete

Is AFCAD2 released now? As it is freeware I can make an access key for it, but I need details first. No one has asked before. I need the EXE name, and details from the Version Information (right click on the EXE and select Properties-Version). I need the "Product Name" and the "Company Name". These things must be exact. Then I can publish a Key in the Sticky thread above. Regards, Pete

The smoothest you can get it is by going to Options-Settings-Display-Weather and setting all top three sliders to maximum. Most certainly never use anything but 3D clouds. Regards, Pete

Hi Jonathan -- I was going to say "Yes! I have one other report!" when I saw it was the same one -- yours! :) Did you try setting "SyncInit=No" as I suggested? If that fixes it, then it is something to do with the automatic restart introduced in version 1.70. Unfortunately, since you skipped from 1.61 to 1.70, missing the main change, in 1.63, I've no other way of isolating it at present. If "syncinit=no" works, then leave it that way for now and I'll investigate it when I get back. Regards, Pete

Yes. See the FSUIPC SDK, Programmers Guide, offsets 088C etc etc. Regards, Pete

Sorry, no. I've really no idea how to find other aircraft data in CFS1. In fact the fact that FSUIPC partially works in CFS1 (and CFS2 for that matter) is more luck than judgement. Sorry. Regards, Pete

Sorry, but FSUIPC doesn't have any influence on any of that. As far as I know the only dependence on FSUIPC was for the accelerated adjustments on one of the gauges, but Pete McLeland can tell you more. Regards, Pete

Have a scan through the FS2004 Forum, not far from here. In general the main ways seem to be (a) reducing sliders and (b) getting a faster processor and more memory. But I'm sure there are manay more specific hints folks have come up with. Regards, Pete