Pete Dowson

It's a Trust bug in SimConnect. Please see the FAQ thread "fsx fails to run after fsuipc4 first installed": Pete

There's been no change in such areas in 4.719. Can you give me any more details? What are these "spurious inputs"? Where are you seeing them? If you mean only with the PMDG 737NGX, that's known and is due to the constant FSX control sending the PMDG panels send when the mouse pointer is over a button or switch. I don't think mouse macros will be usable with that aircraft in any case. Do you mean to say you've used no versions between 4.60 and 4.719 and you only just changed from 4.60? Didn't you install 4.70 before 4.719? you should have. [LATER] Just to double-check, I just used 4.719 to create several mouse macros for the default FSX Cessna 172. It worked fine. Regards Pete

It's a Trust bug in SimConnect, but it is recoverable. Please see the FAQ thread FSX fails to run after FSUIPC4 first installed Pete

That sounds like a motherboard video chip, or a very basic business video card. You use that with FSX? That's amazing! In all cases I've seen like that the performance of FSX is simply unflyable! Regards Pete

It is the other way around. Keystrokes are like buttons. They are assigned, either in FS's own assignments or in FSUIPC. The "controls" or "commands" are what they get translated into. The controls are the things which FSX understands, not the keystrokes which can easily be changed. Try visiting the FSX control assignments and you'll see -- keystrokes and buttons and axes are all treated alike, they are all assignable. The 737NGX uses keystrokes, not the FSX controls. You CAN make your axis ranges send those keystrokes, but you'll need to assign to the FSUIPC added control for key strokes, and encode the key combination to be sent as the parameter. Details are in the dox. Regards Pete

What is not to understand? The message says you cannot change that button programming in the dialogue because it is a compound assignment. Once you start editing buttons in the INI file, those same buttons (for the same profile or aircraft-specific set) can only be programmed in the INI file. The dialogue would become far too complex if I tried to provide all of the button programming capabilities there! If you've changed your mind and want to use the button differently, you have to delete the compound assignment in the INI file. I'm at a loss to understand why you went to all this trouble just to undo it! I don't know because i cannot figure out what you are thinking. Pete

That will try to run Linda twice, with only the second one being closed. Of course, because you never put a CLOSE on that one. Each Run line operates on one program. Each is a separate set of parameters to start and close that program. Why? What's the point of that? Pete

Autosave simply calls the FSX "save flight" routines. Whatever is saved is the same as if you do it via the ";" key. All it saves you is doing it manually and entering your own name for the files. If PMDG don't save their data automatically when you use the FSX flight saving facilities, you need to complain to PMDG. BTW version 4.60 has not been supported since 4.70 was released. Please update if you want continued support. Pete

Those are keystrokes. The FS "commands" are Mixture cut, Mixture decr, Mixture incr and Mixture Rich, respectively, and work with FSX aircraft, not necessarily add-ons which do their own thing. i must correct what i said in my first reply, where I got confused by your use of 1, 2, 3, 4 instead of F1, F2, F3, F4. I've now done further tests: PMDG seems to have assigned the same keystrokes as follows: Ctrl+Shift+F1 = Engine 1 cutoff Ctrl+Shift+F2 = Engine 1 idle Ctrl+Shift+F3 = Engine 2 cutoff Ctrl+Shift+F4 = Engine 2 idle The above keystrokes can be assigned to buttons and operate fine. I've just done it. What exactly are you assigning, and how can you do it on an axis? FSUIPC does have a means of sending keystrokes from axis assignments, but it isn't easy and I'd like to know how you are doing it. I suspect you have it wrong. Regards Pete

All that's talking about deleting your settings and re-doing assignments and calibrations to suit the NGX, because it just might be that your own axis calibrations and assignments may not suit the way the NGX is set up. All you really need to do is create a new Profile or Aircraft-specific set. It sounds like their installer destroyed or corrupted the DLL.XML file, which loads both their DLLs and the FSUIPC4.DLL. However, it certainly didn't happen here when I installed the NGX. And in any case you certainly would not have needed to re-register unless you deleted the KEY file in the FSX Modules folder. Yes, the INI file. INI files are configuration files loaded during program initialisation. The terms INI and CFG are interchangeable, but INI was set as a precedent by Microsoft for the standard Private Profile system, which both FS and FSUIPC have used for many years. These days Microsoft prefer that everyone put everything in the Registry, but I think that's horrible and FSX certainly never went that way either. But you've no need to do anything unless you encounter some problem you cannot deal with by just reassigning or recalibrating controls. Deleting all of your existing settings seems rather over-drastic unless you are really stuck. I think the PMDG folks just don't want the bother of trying to explain the differences for the NGX in these matters. Pete

Apparently you are not really looking at the examples in the user guide. The syntax is wrong. You are including "j" and "b" which are only placeholders for "joystick" and "button" numbers in the format definition -- you don't see them in the examples, do you? And you also omitted the joystick number for the active button: The line would be ignored, or even deleted. In other words: 52=CP(+j0,b7)9,C66059,0 should be 52=CP(+0,7)0,9,C66059,0 I think you'll be okay if you read what is written a little more carefully. Computers are pretty stupid and don't understand what might be obvious to you. You need to give them very precise instructions. No, that's not actually true for the conditions, only for the active button. The flags are certainly relevant when a button has a momentary effect and you don't want to keep it pressed. You can effectively turn it into a latching toggle switch using flags. But the conditional use of as button directly can be used if the user is keeping the button pressed at the same time as using the other button, or if it is a latching switch, a toggle. The conditions are all actually checked when the state of the active button (0,9 in this case) changes. Regards Pete

This confused me for a while. You talk about "FSX mixture commands" but then list keypresses, not commands, none of which are either FSX commands or anything to do with the mixture even on default aircraft -- the mixture keypresses are Ctrl+Shift+F1 to F4, not 1-4. Can you expand upon your statement "When I test and assign any other FSX command to the mixture axes, it works.". Do you mean "FSX command" or merely "keypresses"? (I'm not sure why you are mixed up on this). What works? I suspect with most of the 737NGX functions it'll be a matter of detective work to work out how to connect hardware. However, please do check the pinned thread at the top of this Forum, where, in a reply to my post, it is confirmed that the LINDA developers have mapped out several hundred of the 737NGX's functions for assignment. Maybe this solves your problem? Regards Pete

Just try downloading the latest video driver from nVidia or AMD, depending on which card you have. Or simply go to www.guru3d.com and choose from those available there. You don't need to buy anything. Regards Pete

Good catch! The names are wrong in the drop-down. That's been the case for years and years! Evidently no one has used them before you! Or has not bothered to report it! Another FSUIPC3 and FSUIPC4 update coming up ... Assign them reversed, I'll only change the names not the encoding so that existing assignments will still do what they did before. Pete

But since you want a string copy for display in any case it is easy, just use string.format("%04X", value) which will convert the number 0x1200 (or 4608) into the string "1200". As short as the above solution? Pete

FS doesn't simulate those selections in any case. You only really use them if you fly on-line with Squawkbox or FSInn. Then you'd assign whatever keystrokes or controls they need. Regards Pete

Both sound like bad video drivers. Why not sort the video driver issues out instead of staying with a broken version of FSX? No, not on Windows Vista or Windows 7. I also had to reformat my disk and reinstall windows when I deliberately made a similar mess of SimConnect in order to attempt find a way to solve these problems. Pete

It won't be anything to do with the SP2 update to FSX. Maybe the Windows update? Is your Cirrus connected via a USB serial port adapter? Do you mean the driver to see the COM port connection on USB? You'll probably need to get a compatible driver from the Internet. Most USB seria ladapters use the FTDI chip, so you could try their website. Otherwise, sorry, I've no idea. I use genuine serial ports provided by Brainboxes PCI or PCI-E cards. I find them more reliable, and they have drivers for 64-bit Win7 which are otherwise less easy to find. Regards Pete

I already told you that the uninstall doesn't work properly and makes a mess of the SimConnect libraries. You still have a broken system. I advised you to install SP1, run FSX, reboot, and then install SP2. I'm helping but you are not listening! If you don't want any of the improvements and fixes in SP1 and SP2 of FSX, if you want the original bug-ridden version of FSX, you will probably need to reformat your disk and reinstall Windows, then FSX. Pete

Excellent! So you must have had early access to the aircraft? I only just bought it this morning after returning from a long weekend away. I only really got it to have a look at, and maybe learn from. There's no way I can actually use it in my cockpit with Project Magenta etcetera, but it could help me make it more realistic in the nitty gritty details. Regards Pete

"WideTraffic" doesn't even use FSUIPC, so there's no change I can ever make which will change anything. And the FSUIPC option with the dropdown is a selection, not an input field, and you can already select tail numbers. It will be FSInn or FScopilot which will be injecting the aircraft into FSX, so only they can change the data they provide. Pete

The problem is that the FSX uninstaller does an absolutely awful job, and often wrecks the SimConnect side-by-side library linkages in Windows, which appears to be precisely what happened here. Why did you uninstall SP2? That really is not a good idea. Apart from the damage it does trying to uninstall, you are removing a lot of efficiency improvements and bug fixes which SP2 included. Ouch. That's another problem you have. Your FSX installation is not even at SP1 level. Version 10.0.60905.0 of the FSX.EXE is the originally released version, with all its warts and bugs. Yet you have an SP1 version of SimConnect installed! The installation is a mess. You could try installing SP1 only and see if that helps, but I would advise installing SP1, running FSX just once, then re-booting and installing SP2. If neither of these fixes it I think you will have to start from scratch and reinstall it all, maybe even with a windows re-install first to clear the side-by-side library problems. That's not relevant to this, but after installing SP1 and SP2 properly remember to update the SDK too. Regards Pete

The new PMDG 737NGX aircraft seems to do some interesting things which can make working with FSUIPC's logging to find out how to assign things more difficult. One of these is it's incessant transmission of Events to FSX, which tend to make others you want to observe in the FSUIPC4 log files. Another is the sheer number of Local panel variables it features. -- several hundred. And, again, some of those seem to be changing all the time making the logging (by the Log lvars.lua plug-in) a bitless useful when trying to determine which of those hundreds does what. For the former problem I offer a new facility in version 4.719a, now available in the Download Links subforum. This facility is described here: To deal the the Lvar logging, I noted that these log entries were appearing regularly from the Log lvars.lua plug-in: 264657 LUA: L:ngx_switch_197_a=144 265079 LUA: L:ngx_switch_198_a=156 1237203 LUA: L:ngx_left_engine_blurred=239 1237266 LUA: L:ngx_right_engine_blurred=228 1237266 LUA: L:PilotAnimationVar=805 where the numbers were changing all the time. So, try this modified Log lvars plug in (call it something different to avoid confusion): -- "NGXLvars" example LUA plug-in, by Pete Dowson, August 2011 displaymax = 15 local vals = {} local names = {} local lines = {} local omit = { "ngx_left_engine_blurred", "ngx_right_engine_blurred", "PilotAnimationVar", "ngx_switch_197_a", "ngx_switch_198_a"} local function notomitted(name) x = 1 while omit[x] ~= nil do if omit[x] == name then return false end x = x + 1 end return true end for i = 0, displaymax, 1 do lines[i] = "" end line = 0 scan = true postscan = false while 1 do i = 0 while i < 65536 do if scan then name = ipc.getLvarName(i) if name == nil then scan = false postscan = true break end if name ~= names[i] then vals[i] = nil names[i] = name end elseif names[i] == nil then break end n = ipc.readLvar(names[i]) if n == nil then scan = true break end dodisp = false if n ~= vals[i] and notomitted(names[i]) then lines[line] = "L:" .. names[i] .. "=" .. n ipc.log(lines[line]) vals[i] = n line = line + 1 if line > displaymax then line = 0 end dodisp = true end if postscan or (dodisp and not scan) then j = line disp = "" repeat disp = disp .. "\n" .. lines[j] j = j + 1 if j > displaymax then j = 0 end until j == line ipc.display(disp) postscan = false end i = i + 1 end ipc.sleep(5) end I've made a list of all of the PMDG 737-800WL L:Vars. Download it via this link: List of PMDG 737NGX LVars. However, with the few I've so far tried writing to, although you can certainly move the switches, it only seems to be changing the graphic -- the innards still act as if the switch hadn't been moved. [EDITED] Mouse macros seem to work well. You need to be sure to update to version FSUIPC 4.721 or later. There was a serious bug affecting mouse macro creation in earlier 4.7 versions, only just discovered and fixed. Version 4.721 (or later) is available in the Download Links subforum. [END EDIT] Good hunting! [LATER] Please also see This Thread in User Contibutions subforum. Regards Pete

Just add assignments in the INI which are conditional on Button 6. What is it about conditionals you don't understand? I'm afraid I cannot relate what you are doing there to what your first question or requirement was. How are these sequences anything to do with using Button 6 to do different things? Er, what is this bit for? If you mean a list of Key codes, there's one in the Advanced User's guide. If you mean FS controls, those are in the "List of FS... Controls" installed in your FSUIPC documents folder. Going back to your first 'request', to make actions from buttons depend on whether there are other buttons pressed, then: yes, of course. That's what the conditionals are mostly about. you can have conditions based on one or more buttons, oron button flags, or on offset values. There are examples in the documentation. Unfortunately I cannot relate that request to the rest of your message though, which seems to have wandered elsewhere? Pete

I assume you need a keypress because the applciation you are sending it to doesn't respond to controls? Pretty much all FS's own keys translate into FS controls. If ou want to send keypresses from that part of FSUIPC you have to use one of the FSUIPC added command for sending keypresses. Please check the User Guide section on Axis assignments again. scroll down to the part beginning with this paragraph: Yes, using button flags that is easy. In fact for all standard joystick buttons there's a button flag which toggles each time you press the button, so you simply make the action conditional on that flag. This sort of button programming does mean editing the INI file. You'll find examples in the Documentation, Check the Advanced User's guide. Regards Pete