westes

Not sure what changed when this broke. My guess is that I installed some add-on aircraft, but I have no idea which one, when, or what it installed. I noticed data size read errors in my widefs client log file, and I am sending this to you by e-mail. I just upgraded to the latest FSUIPC as well, before producing that log file. Regarding WideFS not being registered, maybe I am just inferring something wrong here. In the area where you register WideFS on the FSUIPC About dialog, there is some text that warns about "You must register WideFS...." I'm guessing that this is static text and you simply never bother to change it after registration. If so, my apologies for misunderstanding it. The WideFS client is 6.221 as well, and it says it is "connected". The application on the client machine using FSUIPC is Project Magenta's pmTCAS. Note that what I am typically seeing is the WideFS client claims to connect, no data is passed, and after 5 to 20 minutes out of nowhere the WideFS server gives the modal dialog about how it is not able to start.

Pete, I thought it very worth reporting, but as I told you recently I have been locked out of the SimFlight Forums, and no one would respond to any of many e-mails asking to reset my password. Finally, about 45 days ago, you interceded with them on my behalf and they re-issued the password. I finally got around to doing this, sorry. Yes, I installed WideFS almost as soon as you released the FSUIPC for FS2004, and I have used it successfully since then up until the time I see this weird lockout of WideFS. I am sending the requested files now.

Pete, it would be very useful to be able to bring FS2004 into the cockpit of a real airplane and have it act as a moving map. Of course this isn't to be used for real navigation, but because of the sophistication of some of the terrain add-on products for FS2004, it's still very nice to have the information on other instruments confirmed. Does anyone make such a product? I assume this wouldn't be hard for you to do using FSUIPC?

Pete, I am having a strange registration problem with WideFS. For about six months now, after about 5 to 30 minutes of flight inside FS2004, WideFS pops up a modal dialog that says "unable to start WideFS server" or words to that effect. In the registration dialog in FS2004, it is showing WideFS as not registered, but the registration activation buttons are all locked out!! I did pay the registration fee. I did activate the registration code. For many months, WideFS server started normally and was able to talk to WideFS clients. I have been upgrading the FSUIPC and WideFS components together every month, but now that I am in this weird mode the upgrades seem to do nothing to change the condition. How do I recover?

A hotkey would work, although hotkeys are on occasion forgotten and a menu provides an alternative. Looking forward to that feature.

Peter, I haven't downloaded or tried out FStarRC yet. You should probably update the description of the utility, which today references FS2002 not FS2004.

I don't understand your architecture well enough, but I had thought WideClient talked your own protocol to WideServer running on the FS2004 computer? If you invented the protocol, I assume you could implement WideClient on any computer that supports a programmatic interface to TCP/IP? Having a Linux interface to WideClient would enable people to start selling shrink-wrap avionics to interface to FS2004, without paying Microsoft their OS fee.

Peter, have you given any thought to producing a counterpart to GPSOut named GPSIn? This would allow FS2004 to get its spacial orientation based on an attached GPS. It would be a novelty to take on commercial flights, to compare the FS2004 terrain against the real thing. For real world pilots, this might help in situational awareness, although I'm sure for legal reasons you would need to disclaim such a use to avoid liability.

Is there any chance that you will release an FSUIPC + WideFS module combination for Linux? This would enable a Project Magenta-style discrete instrument on a wireless PDA or tablet that runs Linux.

Will there be an update to FStarRC that allows FliteStar or FliteMap to generate flightplans for use with FS2004?

Can anyone think of a way to get the GPSout utility to feed output to a remote notebook or tablet PC using USB instead of a serial port? What is required to make this work?

Peter, I have a request for your AutoSave utility. Could you please add some menu interface in FS2004 that allows you to turn off the autosaving at some point in the flight? A typical use case would be something like the following: I am entering an approach on a trip and come in to land. I decide to practice the approach again, and I want to be able to rely on the last three autosaves to take me to precise locations. I stop autosave at that point and then select various autosaves from the last 15 minutes until I locate the one of interest. I can then go back to that point repeatedly. Another request: if FSUIPC is installed, do you have any way to inquire to the current aircraft what its settings are and then attempt to save those off and restore them as well? I have several aircraft that are badly misbehaved when you attempt to restart a saved session. Many aircraft settings are wrong and have to be quickly corrected. In addition, Microsoft's Garmin-like GPS does not correctly re-establish its settings when you restore a saved session.

Peter, you were right. :) I finally decided to bite the bullet, completely uninstall every trace of every video driver ever on my system, reboot, and then install the ATI RADEON drivers from scratch. This fixed whatever it was that caused the bizarre symptoms I was experiencing. I have since discovered that after installing enough FS2004 add-ons of various kinds, the video driver somehow corrupts again. I am now able to reliably fix it by completing obliterating all traces of the driver, rebooting, and installing from scratch. Who knows why or how utilities that do not touch the video driver can corrupt it. Just one of those Windows things, unfortunately....

How do you get to the conclusion that it has nothing to do with WideFS? I put WideServer.DLL into the FS2004 Modules directory, and FS2004 blue screens after some period of use. I take out WideServer.DLL and everything works perfectly. How do you get from that to the conclusion that the blue screens have nothing to do with WideFS?!? I'll try to get you the logs next weekend.

I duplicate this result with just WideClient running, although as I posted I get a lesser but equally deadly result with no WideClient running at all. I do NOT need to run pmTCAS at any point in the process to duplicate. How do I turn on the maximum logging levels for WideClient and WideServer? That might help some.

I'm using WideFS 6.10 with the Project Magenta TCAS on a remote computer. I start FS2004 on the server in 2048x1536x32 resolution and all seems well. I can change views and everything redraws relatively quickly. I start up WideClient 6.10 on the client computer and almost immediately the view in FS2004 on the server computer becomes corrupted. I see part of several different perspectives interlayed on the video. As soon as I terminate WideFS Client, FS2004 on the server computer returns to its normal view. If I start WideClient again, then I get the strange view on the server computer again. About 40% of the time when I terminate WideClient, I get the blue screen on the server computer. On the server computer I'm running a RADEON 9500 Pro under Windows 2000 with 2GB of real memory and dual 2.4GHz CPUs. When I run WideServer 6.10 on the server computer by itself, with no client computer, I still have problems. The gauges do not redraw, and I have to resort to hitting the Pause button for long periods to let them catch up. Eventually on the server computer I get the blue screen of death after maybe 5 to 20 minutes of this strange pausing behavior. As soon as I remove WideServer.dll from the modules directory, everything corrects. FS2004 redraws in a timely fashion and there are no blue screens. I get the distinct feeling that WideServer is not releasing control of something in a timely fashion, and this is preventing Flight Simulator from drawing correctly. Is this a known condition and how do you work around it?

Peter, for some reason your forum is not showing up on the Simflight newsgroups at news://news.simflight.com. I would expect to see it listed as support.dowson or support.fsuipc. It would be very convenient to be able to post support questions via a newsreader.

Of the utilities I saw on your homepage, Project Magenta stood out as the most excellent, and most fully developed, set of separate instruments for use with WideFS and Flight Simulator 200x.

I'm debating whether to throw in WideFS into a registration for FSUIPC. What instruments are available that I could put on a separate PC and then use WideFS to connect to FS2004? Is there a good standalone Garmin 500 implementation that would use FSUIPC through WideFS?