rickalty

That would be great - my little project has sort of bogged down under the weight of all those individually rotated images :-( Richard

Hi there. I'd just like to say that I also agree with Pete's decision to start charging for FSUIPC & WideFS. Given the choice between paying for it, or having it go away because Pete can no longer afford to devote the necessary time to it without compensation, I'd rather pay. I'd also like to comment on CountGQ's whine that it's "not fair" that we have to start paying for something that's 'always been free'. I'd like to point out to him that it wasn't "Free" - it was supported by donations. What wasn't fair was the large percentage of freeloaders who took advantage of Pete's good nature and used FSUIPC & WideFS without making a donation. Count's parallel with MS deciding to start charging for weather is totally invalid. We already paid - a lot - for FS2002, and the weather was included in the price. It would be interesting to see what the split for / against charging for FSUIPC is compared with the split of those who did / did not contribute. I suspect that those whose belief in their entitlement to what they want for free kept them from donating are the same ones who'll be bent out of shape by the decision to start chaging, even though it was their own failure to contribute that made the step necessary. Even worse, of course, are those commercial software developers who made their payware dependent on FSUIPC without cutting Pete in for a share of their revenues. As for free licences for people who did donate, that would indeed be nice - but if the price you decide to charge is more than I already donated, I'd have no problem with paying the difference. Richard

Thanks very much guys. I must have looked at that -3.09 a dozen times without it 'clicking' that it was the difference between the displayed heading and 360 !! Now for the embarrassing confession...... I am by training a Merchant Navy navigating officer, so all that compass stuff is supposed to be second nature ! Richard

Hello, I've got a problem getting a value out of FS2002 via FSUIPC. According to the list, 0580 contains the heading, but as hdg * 360 / (65536 * 65536). Looking at FS Interrogate though, I see a value of -36869590 and a heading of 356.9 Well, I've played and played with that formula and those numbers, and I just can't see any way to make that formula convert one to t'other :-( Just for starters, with no addition or subtraction in it, how does it even go from negative to positive?? Can someone help me please?? Richard

I'm using WideFS. The code that generates the gauge is Chris' "hello" example from the SDK, except that I've :- 1) Modified it to display the heading instead of the clock, and 2) Added an image box. I've then done a "select case" after the code that displays the heading as a number. The code just sets the imgHeading.Picture property to 1.bmp, 2.bmp, 3.bmp, or whatever the value of the heaing value is. Each bitmap is a small monochrome bitmap image of a needle, rotated to the relevant angle. Richard

Well, it didn't really work out :-( Using 1' different bitmaps of the needle, with the timer running at 500ms, actually gave a fairly nice smooth movement to the heading indicator (The only one I tried it with) The problem was that the heading gauge as displayed on the client was about 3 - 4 seconds behind the same gauge on the panel displyed on the server. Except in a sharp turn that might not matter too much - but three or four seconds delay on the artificial horizon would be totally unaccptable.

Thanks, Chris. I'll give it a shot and let the board know how it works out.

I'm trying to think of a easy way to display a 'virtual gauge', and had an idea. Before I do a bunch of making image files, though, will it even work? My idea is to use a bitmap of a whole panel as the background image to a form, then to load 360 very simple single color bitmaps of a needle, with a transparent background, each showing the needle pointing at a one degree different angle. I'd then use a "Select Case" routine to display the needle picture that corresponded to the angle I wanted to show. My question, to those who are familiar with Visual Basic, is whether or not the bitmaps of the needle could refresh fast enough to 'keep up' with the 500ms rate of the timer control? I realise that that would be hardware dependant, but I'm trying to make something that can run with a very basic hardware setup - the laptop I want to use is a P233 with a 4mb video card. Thanks for any suggestions / advice, Richard

Just another quick note Chris.... thanks again for the help, I was not only able to get the speed to display, but was able to get two other instrument readings in the same form :-) Now comes trying to derive the code to display those numbers graphically :-( Richard

Thanks a lot Chris..... no, not too simple at all - in fact I had to read it more than once and refer to my VB textbook to figure out what the 'dwResult' was for / was doing ! :-) However, one of the main reasons I'm doing this myself is to learn more advanced programming than the "Hello World" stuff I've tried so far, and I always find that stuff 'sticks' better if I have to work a bit at understanding it. Thanks again, Richard

Hi everyone. I have downloaded the FSUIPC SDK and read the notes, but it's a bit too advanced for me :-( I have done some very simple programming in VisualBasic, but never anything that either reads from, or writes to, another application or a memory location. Can someone help me with the way to approcah reading a value from FSUIPC to use in a VB application? Let's say I just wanted to read the Airspeed and display it as a number - just like FSlook does, only with the number changing as it changes in FS..... how would I go about this? Are there any tutorials out there that can be recomended? Anyone got a well commented chunk of cide from their very early days I can see? :-) Thanks, Richard

Hi, I installed FSUIPC and WidevieW with the intention of allowing my main computer, a desktop unit with multiple monitors, to handle the "out the window" views while I flew on it, and the client computers - a couple of old laptops - to display just the instrument panels. Well, all worked well except that the instruments on the client displayed panels don't work (Well, a couple of them - Altimeter, ASI, and Artificial Horizon - do, but most don't) If I use WideFS instead of WidevieW would I be able to do this? The old laptops I have don't have 3D acceleration so they're no good for scenery, but their screens make good "glass cockpit" displays. Thanks, Richard

Hi, I installed FSUIPC and WidevieW with the intention of allowing my main computer, a desktop unit with multiple monitors, to handle the "out the window" views while I flew on it, and the client computers - a couple of old laptops - to display just the instrument panels. Well, all worked well except that the instruments on the client displayed panels don't work (Well, a couple of them - Altimeter, ASI, and Artificial Horizon - do, but most don't) If I use WideFS instead of WidevieW would I be able to do this? The old laptops I have don't have 3D acceleration so they're no good for scenery, but their screens make good "glass cockpit" displays. Thanks, Richard