Pete Dowson

Well, I'm glad for you -- but what version of FSUIPC4 is this with? Anything before 4.50 has an expired certificate in my name (Peter L. Dowson), and shouldn't be used. Since 4.50 the certificate has been in the name of my publisher, simFlight (because the certificate issuers now won't issue or renew private certificates, only company ones). The current FSUIPC4 version is 4.53 -- nothing earlier is supported. If you are using that, then it sounds as at some stage you replied "No" to a Windows prompt, asking you for permission to install something with the simFlight certificate attached! Regards Pete

Ok. It means bit 1, in that Byte or Word offset, then (doesn't matter if you refer to Byte or Word, but Byte would be slightly more efficient, being shorter). Bit 1 is worth 2, so you'd use a Togglebits, Setbits or Clearbits parameter of 2 if you are using FSUIPC's Offset Byte controls. For an external program accessing the Byte, you'd OR a value 2 to set it, AND a value 253 (0xfd) to clear it. Regards Pete

I think there's a '.' missing there. And even then, you may need to try 002, 003, ... .. Oh, sorry, I see the little text doc in the FS9 GPSout ZIP has that missing -- it was copied verbatim from a user, and I was unable to check that at the time. The FSUIPC doc has it with both the . and without. I'll fix that too, as it certainly looks like you need the . Pete

Er"USBPD0-7"? I've never seen any USB name like that at all!? It doesn't look anything like a port name!? Right -- honestly, I assumed all USB connections would have port names constructed in the same sort of way. Maybe I'm wrong. It isn't something I can even try here. However, searching on the Microsoft developer site I did find this: so it could (even should?) be one or other of those, depending on how many serial USB devices you have connected. Of course, not wanting to be pessimistic, but, it may well turn out to be impossible that way. I've searched through all the previous threads with folks connecting any sort of Garmin to GPSout, and all of the definite successes used a USB to Serial port adapter. I'm surprised at the price you quoted though. Adapters the other way round -- to connect a serial port device to a USB socket -- are really cheap (from around 7 UKP here, so I suppose $10 US). I suppose that derives from quantity -- more demand now that modern PCs don't have serial ports. Regards Pete

No, it just explaions what the facility does and how to access it. Because you don't. But you can only find the Profile in one of those sections IF a profile for that section has been created. You don't have to have profile sections in all four categories for every profile -- that's the point you seem to be missing. The facility is pretty much EXACTLY the same as the "aircraft specific" facilities, which pretty much everyone understood, but with the specificness collected in new "Profile" sections under new names which you assign. This is why the documentation approaches it from the aircraft-specific point of view, as a start. The latter is explained separately, section by section, in more detail in the relevant chapters. The Profiles part draws on all that. No you don't. Once you have created a Profile for, says Keys, you can do so for Buttons and so on. You are simply not forced to have separate Key assignments just because you want separate Buttons or joysticks or whatever. It is much more flexible and powerful than you seem to think, but still just as easy to use -- and evidently easier to use than you are deciding for yourself, wrongly! No one else to my knowledge has become as confused as you have in virtually every single aspect of FSUIPC. It is certainly as if we speak different languages, and I am sorry for that. I am sorry, but a lot of this is you, approaching things with your own preconceived ideas and simply not reading what is on the page. Furthermore, it is so easy to learn what is meant by trying it out. I don't understand why you've never even tried using a facility before you ask all these questions, which are in fact already answered (just maybe not in a way which pleases YOU), and further, making so many assumptions, which you then state here almost as facts without even checking for yourself!!! It does that in any case, but only if it is able to. The profiles active at any time are dependent upon the Sections (Keys, Axes, Buttons, Calibration) which actually have anything set for them. It is to do with efficiency and flexibility. I am a programmer, and that's the way i think and work. Others seem to appreciate it, I am sorry you don't. But I am not about to rewrite all my code. I assure you, the ones who read and try and succeed far outnumber the dummies. Please do stop making you own mind up about how thingas work and use the software in the way it was written and documented. I really don't understand you at all -- If you had but tried things out once you'd have been clear on this from the start. Take a practical approach, please. Pete

I just saw that you emailed the "PDF" about FSInn. Thank you! It's actually a Word DOC file, but that's okay. I've printed it and will devour it at leisure tomorrow (I'm taking a break now, catch up on some TV stuff before bedtime). Maybe it will entice me to try FSInn, but I'm worried that it needs that CoPilot part embedded in FS. I hope it can all be run satisfactorily from a networked PC, and, as you mentioned earlier, with button, switches (or keypresses produced by such) on the client. We'll see. ;-) Regards Pete

If the trust lever is jittering, giving varied values, then the A/T would cut out -- but you say it is staying engaged? That's a bit strange. Have you made sure there is a good null zone around the idle position, so that it is guaranteed to present no changes when left there? Incidentally, I assume the Elite hardware using some driver provided by Elite? If so I think you need their support on this. I don't know how they've written it. it is their responsibility to support their hardware and its driver. Regards Pete

Hmm. I assume it's something to do with that ActiveRadar option. i never used that. I always had ASV6.5 on a client PC without any problem. Strange. Regards Pete

where did yiu read that? not here, for sure. It is very rare indeed! Show me the Install log. That is why it is produced. It will be in the FS Modules folder. Pete

What have you tried so far? Did you try the one mentioned in the doc, the one which worked for most people? Pete

Select any of the controls for which you've created the profile you want to assign (Axes, joysticks, Buttons or Keys), go to that tab, click on the profile drop down and select it. The documentation shows a picture of the drop down menu for some default generated profiles. You most certainly have NOT read it at all else you wouldn't be asking these questions. Here. I'll reproduce part of the manual here so you'll have no excuses at all. Search for this part: and see the picture just below it. Pete

I think you are not reading things correctly. There's no "programming" involved, just getting the letters right! "D" means "Digital display", as shown in the examples for displaying radio frequencies and so on. LEDs are "L", for LEDs, strangely enough. Why not just refer to the examples? There are plenty of them. Pete

Yes, and to make it a lot easier. When you get a new aircraft which fits an existing profile you simply assign that profile to it. Yes, exactly soand precisely why it is designed to do that. That is EXACTLY what you do. Oh dear. you don't seem to read things, do you? We've run up against this blindness before, where you said the documentation didn't tell you something which was plain to see for all. There's a chapter in the FSUIPC User Guide called "User Profiles for all Control Settings". It is only two or three pages long, surely not too much to read? It is listed in the contents at the front. It does explain things, and all you need to do is read it! There's even a picture of the typical drop-down selection menu, where you select the profile from the list of those available for your added aircraft. Why don't you try it? Why do I bother to write documentation, even insert pictures, if no one reads it? It is very sad, and not a little upsetting. :-( Pete

The latest version is always the "right version" as I do not support old versions. ;-) Regards Pete

No, please don't try to change it. The registration email is never actually used as an address, it is only used, along with your name, as a way of ensuring the Key is tied to you uniquely. We found that the name on its own often isn't unique enough. No. Only the seller has that -- SimMarket presumably (though there are two others). Yopu can simply install it as is. You don't need anything else. No. Regards Pete

Ah, I hadn't realised you'd not done the other things AS might need -- in fact I don't even recall it needing access to any FS folders. That's only if you want it to change the cloud graphics or something, isn't it? WideFS isn't involved in any file access for programs, of course. They do that using the normal explorer links and sharing permissions. So, was it the continual repeated attempts by AS to access folders on the FS PC that snarled things up? I think everyone has a hard time trying to sort out Vista's access permission system, myself included! There's too many places you can forget to set something. I don't think Win7 is much better, UNLESS you use their new HomeGroup system, which is intended to take the pain away. Trouble is all the PCs need to be running Win7 for that to be of any use. :-( Regards Pete

I've now examined the Client log in some detail. There are no errors being reported, and in fact there appears, on the face of it, to be no problem -- except the dismal throughput. I think Active Sky is just giving up on its timeouts, or just not getting very far at 2 frames per second (it needs to shift hundreds or thousands). The first 3 minutes of the log aren't relevant as client was awaiting the Server for that time. In the 3 minutes left in the log there were just 252 data blocks received from the Server (probably okay, because it was simply not being asked for any data which changed more often -- most of the blocks were simply the regular "stay in touch" transmissions). The problem lies in the ability, or rather near inability, of the Client to send stuff to the Server. Only 31 blocks in the three minutes! Something is really clobbering communications somewhere, but whether that's in the Client or the Server I've no idea. You could try the UDP protocol just in case it is only the TCP protocol which is affected, but I really doubt that it'll be any different. Regards Pete

Just disabling the joysticks in the menu should stick, but that disables all of them. If you want to only disable one connected joystick the only sure way I know is to find out where it is defined in the "devices.cfg" (or maybe "devices2.cfg"), in the FS folder, and change the defaults there so they don't get assigned automatically. Regards Pete

Very strange. If FSUIPC sees then correctly but they change in FS then it does sound like some other device or program is interfering. Does this happen with default aircraft? You say you disabled the yoke completely in FS, but what about other devices? If you haven't actually disabled joysticks completely (the option in the main menu), then try that. If it fixes it when either you still have something else also assigned to the throttles, or your disabling in FS isn't taking full effect. Regards Pete

I don't have any such offset. Are you perhaps talking about some other product, not one of mine? I know, for instance, that Project Magenta offset documentation tends to use a ".n" method to denote bit 1 in the offset, but I'm sure they document that some place. I wouldn't be so sure about other programs. And I know some authors count bits from 1 instead of 0, and maybe even count them from the high end instead of the low end. But PM has it 'normal', with bit 0 = 2^0, worth 1, etc. Please always state what program you are asking about when coming here -- it would help me direct you appropriately. Regards Pete

For toe brakes? I don't recall -- I think I have mine linear, but I always have a decent null zone (by calibrating the "off" end short) so that I don't accidentally get any braking which using or checking the rudder. action. They are automatically loaded when an aircraft which has been assigned to them is loaded. That's the whole point, which somehow you missed? You never have to load any profiles explicitly, it is all absolutely automatic for you! Why should it be otherwise? To make life more complex for you? I think you are misunderstanding something. I don't understand why. The profile system was implemented according top a user suggestion, to SIMPLIFY aircraft-specific control arrangements, not to make things more complicated, so why are you finding it so? Yes, I had a look. It was interesting, but I found it difficult and tiring to read, being all in capital letters throughout. Is there a reason for that? Regards Pete

Well, you know a Garmin 296 will work with GPS because others have done it. So when you have it and have connected it to your PC, we can try and find out then. I suspect it's a matter of trial and error, but it shouldn't be too hard -- I think others have used the device name I suggested and it works directly. If not it can't be many numbers off that. One thing, you need to stop the device's own software grabbing the port as soon as the device is connected. They usually use an "ActiveSync" program which runs when you load Windows and waits for the connection. It will probably show in the Windows system tray (bottom right), and you should be able to open it and tell it not to connect automatically, but if that doesn't work you might need to kill it. Regards Pete

You mean you made a Macro but now you no longer want to use it? You don't actually have to assign anything to it just because it is there -- you can ignore it. But FSUIPC will automatically always list all Macros it finds in the FS Modules folder. If you don't want them then you can either delete the whole Macro file they are in (the one with the prefix part of the name and file type ".mcro"), or, if you want to keep other macros in the same file and just delete that one, edit the .mcro file and remove the one you don't want. Note that any buttons or keys you have assigned to it will then effectively be assigned to nothing, or will become assigned to the next macro you create in the same file if it fills the space left. So you should really delete or change the assignments first. Regards Pete

I'm pretty sure others have done that. You'd need to search some threads, but I also put some details from one user in the documentation. I've no idea because I've never been lucky enough to have a GPS which I can interface to FS. But it is mainly just a name structre -- there's an example in the documentation. Sorry. if the documents don't help and you cannot find the other threads for help, I hope someone else will see this thread and answer you. When GPSout was written it was with the intention of linking FS to moving map type software on a separate PC. In that role, FS was effectively simulating a GPS as for as the mapping software was concerned. Linking a GPS simulator to a real GPS has always seemed a little odd to me, but I do see the point. Good luck! Regards Pete

Yes. Unfortunately that doesn't give WideClient the chance to finish entries in the log and close it properly, which is what we were after. So I don't think i'm going to learn anything extra from the ones you sent. I'll take a look though -- tomorrow -- just in case. [LATER] I just peeked at the server log, which is ended properly, and what that shows doesn't bode well: Throughput maximum achieved: 2 frames/sec, 127 bytes/sec Throughput average achieved for complete session: 0 frames/sec, 8 bytes/sec TWO frames per second? For the MAXIMUM? The average should be up close to your FS frame rate! Something is certainly very wrong somewhere! no wonder Active Sky is timing out. The fact that you have such difficulty terminating WideClient, or getting it to obey Windows messages, strongly suggests that most of the time it is running is actually spent in some sort of deadlock in the Network drivers on your client PC. There's no way the WideClient code itself can spend time doing effectively nothing. One suggestion, in case of network driver corruption: go to the Windows Control Panel, select System then Device Manager, and find the network device you are using (whether a card or on-board). Then uninstall it and its driver, from that utility. Reboot and get it re-installed. You might need your Windows disk for that. Then get Windows to check for updates. Regards Pete