Pete Dowson

Didn't you read any of the WideFS user guide? The part on configuring your network, with a RED BOLD message asking that you be sure to read some of it at least? All you need to do is provide the Server PC name or its IP address to Wideclient, in its INI file. You never even thought of looking at the documentation? :-( Regards Pete

No it doesn't!. What do you mean "working intermittently"? The logs show no connection at all! It looks like the attempts from the client are blocked, maybe by a firewall in either PC. That's the main thing to check. SimConnect doesn't support FSUIPC client applications, and FSUIPC doesn't support SimConnect applications, so your choice is surely what applications you use, not whether to use SimConnect or FSUIPC. Pete

Hmm. Strange. No relevant changes in Lua between 4.929 and 4.931. In fact pretty much the only changes at all were for P3D 2.2, to match the hooks into the P3D code which had changed. none of that would touch Lua actions. For some reason you have ipc Write logging enabled, which is not relevant to any Lua plug-in (at present -- that's something I may change!). The only logging which might have been useful in the Lua debug/trace actions. But don't bother. I've tried it here and I don't know what ThrottleManager is supposed to do so can't really test it. And in any case I do not understand the code, at least not without spending a long long time working through it. i'm afraid i am completely dependent upon the author telling me what is wrong. Okay. Tell him I'm away till 20th May. Pete

There's no change I'm aware of which will affect any previous Lua plug-in. Maybe it's a bug, but i can't help with no information. What was your previous version of FSUIPC? What exactly doesn't work? Is it loading? How is it loaded/ started? Have you checked the FSUIPC log file for errors? It may need tracing (using the option in the FSUIPC Logging tab) to see where it goes wrong. [LATER] Well, I've had a look at that plug-in. Actually there are several versions in that thread, one of which even uses Lua sockets. And they are all so complicated I don't understand what they are doing at all, so even with a trace I wouldn't be able to identify the problem. So, can you contact the author and see if he can find out what the problem is -- if it is something I've messed up, somehow, I would dearly love to know and fix it. There's one problem -- I'm off on holiday on Saturday for 10 days. Do you think you can get "pilotjohn"s involvement very quickly? Maybe a private message? Pete

It is superseded by the proper release, 4.933, now. Please use that. The colour isn't actually anything FSUIPC can control. The size is controlled by yourself -- you can always resize and reposition these sorts of windows yourself. FSUIPC remembers this. It sounds like you somehow had a corrupted save at one time. This updated version fixes bad saved window positions and sizes. There should be no backaground for the docked window. It is always transparent. If it was opaque it sounds like it must have been the undocked one? Either way, FSUIPC has no control at all over transparency. Pete

Not sure why you think that? There is a huge number of "custom controls" which can be assigned for the PMDG NGX -- they mostly are assigned by number, obtained from the .h file in the PMDG 737NGX SDK folder. And in any case, isn't the NGX controllable via assignable keystrokes, or does it only use mouse clicks? Even if this is the case, there's lots of evidence showing that it accepts programmed mouse macros -- see the thread about this entitled "FSUIPC Mouse Macros for PMDG 737NGX" in the User Contributions subforum above. Without knowing what you've assigned your button presses to do, I can't possibly help you there. And I don't use the PMDG 737NGX myself. You should refer to the assorted User Contributions for this aircraft, or talk to folks on the PMDG forum for the aircraft. Sorry, you haven't mentioned any particular way of programming it, so I can't really say. Pete

Well I'm sure Active Sky can provide older METARs, so I assume they are keeping them on their website. It's not quite like Opus, because Opus also deals with views and spreading FS across different PCs on a network. I don't think weather was or is its main focus, thpugh it does do it quite well. On the other hand, it is Active Sky's only interest, and it has held the prime weather position for FS for many years. Pete

Well something must be providing the values 0, 90, 180 and 270 for the USB joystick "POV" type input. A normal pushbutton indication would just be a bit in a 32 bit word. You might not think of it as firmware, but it is a program in a chip, and that's what I call "firmware". Pete

All weather suppliers for FS use METAR data, of course. Even FS's own downloaded "real weather" if that still works. Take a look at Active Sky if you want historical weather. I think it might cover a lot more. If all you want is the METARs from weather stations for a specific time and date, why not find then on the web in any case? Does it have to be a particular place? ActiveSky Next (ASN) has a facility for searching for things like storms, and then it is easy enough to locate the aircraft there. This is how I tested my own weather radar graphics displays linked to ASN's facilities. Try using ASN. It is possibly the most advanced weather program at present, and supplies ready-made weather radar data. See the ASN WXradar stuff I included with my more recent FSUIPC releases. Several add-on aircraft have been enhanced recently to use its WX radar data facilities (PMDG 737NG and iFly 737NG, to name but two). Pete

If you are using a weather program such as Opus then you surely don't want to also set the weather yourself as well? Maybe I'm misunderstanding you completely. Why do you want two sources of weather? Pete

What does it do if two are pressed together? That's all a normal 8-way hat works -- the firmware in the device converts that to the intermediate positions. Pete

Basic arithmetic. The heading provided by the offset you are reading is in units of 4,294,967,296ths of a full circle. That number is more easily remembered as 65536 x 65536. Nothing magic about that. You convert to whatever units you want. Obviously your should have units of 36,000ths of a circle, so you need to do the computation as (unsigned value from offset)*36000/(65536 * 65536) By using unsigned you get 0-35999. Do the computation in floating point then take the integer part of the result. Then you can use the value directly. Pete

My earlier analysis was wrong. Sorry. It was a long time ago and my memory of how it worked was incorrect. For a docked window the figures are proportions of 16384 of the Flight Sim's width and height. The "fix" I've implemented, apart from checking the values, is full separation from the recently added "TextMenu" facility operated by WideClient. Pete

Sorry, I don't understaand the "only 4 inputs" part. Would 8 inputs give 8 way, 16 16 way and so on? Would less give more? I don't understand your point there. I have no idea. I have never built a hat nor connected one to any board. All I can explain is what FSUIPC or FS will see and how it can treat what it sees, and that is what I have done. For hardware support I can only suggest you visit the appropriate maker's support forum. You will probably find both Bodnar and Digikey users over in http://www.mycockpit.org/forums/ too, so worth visiting there, perhaps? Pete

A proper hat, recognised by Windows as a POV ("Point of View") device, and not just a collection of buttons, returns to FS and FSUIPC a value in either degrees (0-359) or 1/10ths of degrees (0-3599). Whether it can only supply discrete values like 0, 90, 180, 270, or many different values depends entirely on how it is made. I think the normal cheap ones consist of 4 buttons, but usually with the firmware in the device it is connected to able to detect two adjacent ones pressed together and so give you the intermediate, 45 degree, positions -- i.e. 8-way. FSUIPC4 can see POVs as axes, in the axis assignments tab, in which case it takes the number provided, 0-360, as an axis value. It can also see them as a set of up to 8 buttons, 32-29, (this method derives from how FS98 and earlier saw them). In that case it merely treats values 337.5 - 22.5 as 0 == button 32, 22.6 - 67.5 as 45 = button 33 ... and so on. There is of course no way FSUIPC can detect values which aren't supplied by the hardware. It can't "interpolate" given only one value, obviously. If the Bodnar implementation doesn't do the 2-button detection in order to send the intermediate values, then I'm afraid your hat will remain 4-way, not 8. Pete

I've tried all sorts of things to reproduce this, and I can't. I can have the RC menu window, a GSX menu called up, and a message strip from FS telling me my QNH setting is all wrong and to press 'B', and all are independent of each other. The only way I can clear the RC menu is to write an empty message to it, or to set it to time out via the control parameter so that it limits how many seconds it is displayed. I've tested it on FSX and P3D in both Windowed and full screen mode. So, I'm going to give up on this one for now and make a release 4.933 tomorrow or Wednesday. I'm sure it is now working as it was designed originally. If something else is making it disappear I'll need to try and get that identified at a later date. Regards Pete

Of course no one "understands LUA" without at least looking and reading and thinking. You only need to read the brake settings (one of the ipc.readXX functions) compare the numbers returned to whatever your threshold should be, and so decide whether to write to the offset which controls your switch (using one of the ipc.writeXX functions). I can help and advise, but I don't write programs for folks. Try at least looking at what it provided -- there are lots of examples. Ask questions if you get stuck, but make a start. You can't actually get stuck if you haven't even started! Pete

You could do that easily with a small Lua plug-in. Pete

This is really the wrong place to ask -- I support FSUIPC and WideFs, but no weather programs. Certainly programs like ActiveSky and OpusFSX and others are capable of providing weather for almost any date, time and place. Please refer to their documentation. look for "historical weather" or somesuch. There is no XML in FSUIPC. It does not support XML. Offset C000 is the start of a 4kb area in which binary encoding of current weather in FS can be read and written. It is documented as "New Weather Interface" in the FSUIPC SDK, and demonstrated by the program "WeatherSet2". METAR string data can be read and written as an alternative to the binary data, and that is in the 4kb area starting at B000. This is a direct interface to the METAR facilities of SimConnect. Pete

There aren't different versions. Registreation is simply a matter of providing the key and valid user details during installation. Why? That really is not a good idea! Either you purchased the wrong key -- make sure it is for FSUIPC4 not FSUIPC3 -- or you are entering something incorrectly. All three parts, name, email and key MUST be exactly right. Use cut and paste to be sure. And the Installer you should be running is the current one, for version 4.931. (Version 4.933 will be released later this week). Pete

ActiveSky uses SimConnect, not FSUIPC or WideFS. you need SimConnect configured correctly for network use. See ActiveSky documentation. Pete

Shouldn't be a factor. Pete

Well, it would seem unlikely if it doesn't happen with FSX. You could test one more thing. Just remove PFCHid.dll from the Modules folder (or simply rename it, eg PFCHid.DLX), then see if running P3D still stops the PFCtest program without a PC power cycle. If so it is most certainly down to something odd in P3D and needs reporting. If the controllers are disabled they should touch any USB devices at al. You could try asking PFC what they think, but they'll point to it being okay with FSX. One other thing. in case it's a problem between P3D and the specific USB ports, try different ones. Maybe its a clash with a keyboard or mouse -- USB ports are in pairs, and it's best to put some devices separately. Pete

Well, it isn't quite right yet, then. It shouldn't disappear. It's a separate Window. The sim is able to support many of them -- I can open several and keep them open with no problem. I'll see if i can reproduce this here. At least with FSX most of my testing tools are usable. Pete

Does the PFC test program work if you unplug and replug-in the devices after P3D seems to disable them, as this appears to help PFCHid after all. A PC power cycle seems to indicate something even more serious. Pete