tuomas

SB 2.3 is not very stable. I have noticed that it is best to usually start it first before anything else that uses FSUIPC - it appears to crash less that way. I have seen it crash a lot just before the "click here to get into the action!" -dialog. So what I did is start SB first, then any weather software, FSBUS router software etc.. I dont know any real reasons why it is so, but it appeared to be crash less that way. Been waiting for SB3 while building my home simulator cockpit in the meanwhile .. :) //Tuomas

That's because PIC and PMDG have their completely separate implementation of autopilot. They do not use the FS stuff at all for those things. //Tuomas

I have never heard of any other GPL, although there are several other *PL licences. It would be confusing to refer to any other licence as GPL, although if one wishes to be precise, 'GNU GPL' removes the ambiguity. GPL as in Glider Pilots License, anyone? 8) As for the licensing issues, I bet the flightgear authors are more familiar wiht the stuff and might be able to answer you better. //Tuomas

;-) I think this is a new added feature on FS2004 - carb heat has been there before, but for example the Dreamfleet Archer AFAIK does not have a gauge for carb temperature. But the Robinson R22 does. Yeah. 3828 seems to work (checked with FSInterrogate since we dont have the gauge done yet for the sim) I cannot verify for more than one engine though since I dont have any planes with more than one engine that have carburettors. But the values seem correct and it reacts also to outside air temperature (nice finnish winter of -25C makes a neat cool carb temp and applying carb heat warms to a whopping -12C :)) Looks like it works, we are going to test it once I get back from a 2-week work trip - going to construct a gauge from Simkits parts and hook it to FSBUS with a custom gauge face. I'll show you pics once it is working :) Yes, it gives similar values on FS2002 too. Although carb heat is a LOT more effective in FS2002 (-34C outside temp and carb heat rises carb temp to +22C - whereas on FS2004 rises to something like -12C) But then again, the engine seems better simulated on FS2004 in any case (mixture and other things) so it could just be a difference on the simulator modelling. Thank you very much for the help :-) //Tuomas

Hi Pete! We have an issue on our Cessna simulator. It uses the pretty excellent Real Air C172 flight model. but with a modification to use carburettor-equipped engine instead of the fuel injected version. This is, so that people flying on the sim can use the carb heat lever like on the real planes on our club. Since we dont use FS gauges (but Simkits physical instruments) I have a problem: FSUIPC doesnt seem to know about carburettor air temperature. This is the gauge you check when you apply carb heat on the engine check before takeoff (and you can monitor it during flight of course to notice when there is a likelihood of carb ice) The FS2004 Robinson R22 does have a carb heat gauge on the pedestal panel, but at least the FSUIPC SDK does not mention such a variable. Would this be something that could be added in a future version of FSUIPC? We could then build a custom servo-driven gauge and control it via FSBUS. Best wishes, Tuomas

To set facts straight we have about 5 people on our club plus additional help when there was a need to actually make the sim a reality. Lots of work but it truly is a very nice sim. Yea. The approach over water to Kumlinge is easy since there are no obstacles on that end - and in calm wind takeoff towards water is nice too. There's a small sloping hill on the other end with trees cut off, but given the 600m or so runway it is not very comfortable for a larger plane or even a C172 with full cross weight. Awesome place in any case. Make sure to install Finnterrain and Finnclass from the page too - it basically recreates the whole land / water shoreline of the entire Finland - the archipelago of the Kumlinge area is just incredible with Finnterrain. There's also Mariehamn scenery which is very close, in the main island of Äland. For maps and charts check out http://www.ilmailulaitos.fi/fcaa_ais_en - or http://vacc.fi/downloads/charts/ for other finnish stuff especially for VATSIM pilots. Kumlinge chart doesnt seem to be online :( but Mariehamn has several ifr approaches and also all the charts available on above places. Anyway, sorry for the offtopic stuff :) //Tuomas

But... "more than likely" is different from "yes" :? . The plot thickens. Yea. Waypoint & Route is the "upload stuff from your PC to the GPS, to store/retrieve tracks and waypoints etc. Not the "make the GPS believe our position data". For myself it is a very valuable thing that I can use the same GPS unit on the real plane and on our simulator (we built a C172 sim in a C152 fuselage at our aviation club, see http://www.simkits.com builders section for some pics) The above picture is from today, we had wonderful weather when we visited Kumlinge airport in the very pretty finnish archipelago. See http://www.mik.fi/gallery/efkg040926/ for more pics if you are interested... (oh btw, http://fisd.fsnordic.net has a very good freeware scenery for Kumlinge (and several other airports), should you want to enjoy the scenery virtually) I am not sure if something like AV400 exists for non-aviation units. //Tuomas

The problem with NMEA in is that the GPS wants to listen to its own satellite receiver rather than the serial cable. The NMEA input in the Garmin units seems to be more or less for manipulating waypoints and downloading track data etc.. It does not seem to work for position information. That's the reason I approached Pete in the first place and we got it to work with the AVIATION AV400 protocol. But that is not available in the non-aviation Garmin units. Looks like the marine GPS is programmed so that NMEA position pushed to the unit makes it update. Good. That just doesnt seem to work for my GPS196 though. //Tuomas

You mean Magenta uses different offsets on the RJ than on the other software? In any case you can probably use keyboard shortcuts to make it work. //Tuomas

Boy, you are better off asking at the AVSIM.com "Home Cockpit Builders Forum" - plus of course you should read the FSBUS documentation. Indeed the FSUIPC SDK contains information about all the offsets - you need to add the ones that are possibly missing from FSBUS default set to "myfsif.ini" inside the fsbus installation folder. But prepare to study, experiment and learn since FSBUS is not a commercial product like Simkits or GoFlight that you can buy and just make it work - it is very powerful but there is some learning curve - so I suggest you read through the old entries on the avsim forum (this site also has a home cockpit forum, but I find it hard to recommend that since it seems more and more quiet every day) The avsim forum has lots of knowledgeable people plus fsbus has been discussed a lot in the past, so the search would be fruitful. Best wishes and good luck :) //Tuomas

You can use GPSOut.dll to run any of those moving map programs available for PocketPC though. //Tuomas

Yea, the AV400 is only for connecting a real Garmin Aviation GPS (and probably other brand) to FS. Has anyone actually tried any other than Garmin? The AV400 protocol is also called "King" (would make you think some Bendix/King GPS units might work, or..?) and it was also called "ARNav". I'd be very interested in hearing if the AV400 works for people, Pete added it as per my request for the Garmin, but maybe it works for others too. It makes a great great Garmin training device. Pete btw, if you come to Scandinavia one of these days, you are welcome to test our C172 sim at our aviation club (http://www.malminilmailukerho.net, EFHF) All I can say, FSUIPC and GPSOut and these things.. oh boy what they can do to this $50 game! /Tuomas

Free software is a great thing. But the decision to make something free or even share the sourcecode etc are completely the decision of the author. If you want a free software solution for your simulation needs, please join the FlightGear project (http://www.flightgear.org) and contribute, they have a completely free, open source flight simulator that is progressing pretty nicely. And they are happy to have your help. There is no big budget to pay the people, they do it from the love into aviation and programming. But basically this is an issue with anything that becomes very very popular like FSUIPC, or Squawkbox 3 for example (even before the release ) - the author notices an ever increasing demand for the support and feature requests etc. Which is great of course, I bet most software authors enjoy seeing their code being widely used. But the enthusiastic user group has grown, a lot of "clueless" users joined, needing more spoon-feeding to get their stuff working, more feature requests, more bug reports, more this and more that. It takes *time*, unbelieveable amounts of time. Pete was (and probably still is) doing FSUIPC fulltime. Would you do your job for free? While it is good to have free software I am in no position to tell anyone what they do wiht their code and time. Whatever I write myself is on my control. I think FSUIPC is worth its price - I remember paying for FS2004 as well. The home cockpit stuff is costing a lot more anyway, the 20 euros goes fast when you need a sheet of plywood.. Of course I am hoping there is something to support FS2006 or whatever when time comes for that, but heck. I am building a simulator myself. If needed, I will be running FS2004 on it until there is something that interfaces the hardware to the sofrware. There's always FS2002 + the free FSUIPC to use. For the home cockpit, especially for IFR training and such the scenery is just extra eyecandy anyway. I just wanted to tell Pete that whatever you want to put into FSUIPC we appreciate it a lot. It has been such an incredible piece of software, making stuff like this possible: Tuomas

No, just regular FS gauges - I did a 1024x768 pixel panel with FS Panel Studio. Magenta GA IFR is using openGL so you cannot realistically run that and the FS scenery view from one computer. Tuomas

Hey, just a quick note: Adding a PCI videocard (older Matrox Millenium or such works generally well for this) for instrument panels (2D gauges, not Magenta) does not give you a performance hit. So you can run it all on one computer. Saves you the third machine. ^^^ This works with one computer just great. Put that inside a console, and you get my current setup: IMHO that's the best way to go with one computer. If you want jet stuff, get the Reality XP Jetline gauges, those are nice and smooth and they will release a FMC too. I'm not personally much into those things though, so the GA stuff suits me great. Dreamfleet's Archer is awesome :) Tuomas

On a real plane those sticks are linked together so that they both move together. There is just one set of control surfaces as well. Tuomas

I'm planning something like this for an "instructor panel" for our aviation club sim - basically a few knobs and switches on the back of the simulator. Something like a 4-position rotary knob for cloud setting (SKC, FEW, SCT, BKN, OVC), a rotary knob for setting the cloud height, wind direction and speed etc.. And a small LCD display that shows the current METAR and a button for "load real weather from the net". Maybe date and time too. That would be pretty nice and useful in case someone wants to practice certain conditions etc.. I have the impression all that can be worked form FSUIPC, althouhg I havent looked at it yet in detail. Best, Tuomas

Someone is going to search for this stuff on the forum anyway, so I thought I'd write up some stuff so they know this stuff works :) So, as of the last version or so of GPSOut, there's support for AV400 format. This is the "Aviation" format that some Garmin (and other brand) GPS units use to talk to each other. So the panel mounted unit can output the gps location, heading and airspeed etc to the other device. Handy if the other thing has a better antenna etc.. This in real life. For simulator use we have other ideas.. So, I found this document that describes this protocol, and mailed it to Pete. In short, he sent me back a test dll and it worked pretty much "out of the box" - the Garmin was convinced that FS2004 was actually a nice panel mounted GPS device instead of a $50 game. Very handy if you bought a GPS for real-life flying. So the point is: If you have an aviation GPS unit, you can now practice to use it at home with real scenarios. So that when the day comes when you *really* need the thing, you can already use it with your left hand without looking.. Could be useful in a bad day I guess. Those times are not the best time to pull out the manual to learn how the thing works :) Anyway. The config file (gpsout.ini) needs to look like this: Pretty simple. This makes it output the "Aviation" protocol instead of NMEA. Set the port to whatever your serial port is, and the speed apparently needs to be 9600 baud. I dont know if it helps any to set the interval less than 1000ms, the protocol defines 1 second update intervals. Some units might update faster with higher frequency, but I found the 1 "fps" update rate adequate and very useful. From the GPS "Interface" settings you need to set it to use "Aviation In" protocol. You might need to put the GPS in the training "simulator" mode where it doesnt try to look for satellites itself. What this doesnt do? It wont drive your autopilot in the simulator, the data transfer is one-way only. It seems to work great for me, but your mileage may differ. My unit is a Garmin GPSMap 196 aviation GPS. If you get it working with your unit, it would be fun to read about it, so post a followup telling your setup and impressions :) Tuomas (Edit: fixed the photo url since I moved stuff on my site around)

A few pointers only, I dont have first hand information myself. http://www.wideview.it - a networked display for FS, in theory your hifi sim could speak the wideview protocol and act as a "master" FS machine. http://mypage.bluewin.ch/Visual744/ - Visual744, a program that slaves MSFS as a visual system for 747-400 Precision Simulator. Btw, visit the home cockpit forum on this same site (found via the "Simflight Forums Index" link) and on http://www.avsim.com there's another home cokpit forum. We'd be very interested in seeing stuff like this, plus there are many people with good ideas and experience about stuff like this. I hope those are useful! Tuomas

The first issue people noticed with FS2004 was the "9999" problem which FSUIPC corrects. But there is another issue too that shows up during winter: EFRO 021750Z 20006KT 170V240 0200 R21/0325V0500N R03/0400V0700U FZFG VV001 M03/M03 Q1021 21790149 = (nice weather there, eh? :)) Notice the runway braking/friction/runway condition information at the end of the metar - that messes up stuff as well - FS9 seems to interpret it somehow as visibility.. Looks like the FS dev team did most of the testing during summer months... Tuomas

In real life, if the airframe has no de-ice equipment, one needs to increase power *AND* get the heck out of there as soon as possible.. Ice can build up really fast and it is deadly. Unfortunately I am not sure either about icing on airframe parts and performance. :? Tuomas

Yeah. Just because we are quiet doesnt mean we are not happy about FSUIPC and enjoying it 8) So let me count in with the big thanks. It was a tough spot when a freeware thing became non-free, but then again, if something is worth its price it's FSUIPC. And it's not my free time that is going in the development but someone else's. We'd have just a flight simulator game without it. With FSUIPC there's a whole huge culture around it - self-made and commercial add-on hardware, software and aircraft and such. It's such an amazing thing once you take a step back and look around a bit. There's so much stuff going on, and FSUIPC is the glue that sticks all that together. Tuomas

Yea. The ground elevation changes when you slew around, so very often the ground is lower when you end the slew. So FS notices you are in the air. If it just left the airspeed to zero, you'd drop down like a stone, so instead it figures you are in the air so it seems to give you sort of the normal cruise speed of the plane as default, so you wont crash immediately. The suggested trick should indeed work. Tuomas

Pete, the latest one you sent me seems to work beautifully. The track is exactly the same (I can see it because it rotates after the one sec delay compared to the FS GPS, which is the transmit frequency. Very nice. I'd say push it out, it does its job and this definitely is good news for everyone wanting to connect their Garmin aviation GPS to the sim for testing. Also I'd be interested if this works with other brands, since the A400 is said to have other names like "ARNAV" and "KING" - that suggests other brands use the same stuff. Anyway, good night and thanks much for the help. This is truly awesome and very very valuable for me. Tuomas

For FS2002 you can use the 2.9x version that is freeware. For FS2004 you need the new 3.x. ALSO check out the thread about freeware keys on the forum main page, it lists free keys for freeware programs. Freeware can get a free key that makes them work with FSUIPC. Of course registering your FSUIPC is a good way to virtually give a pat on Pete's back for the long and important work he has done all these years.. And it also unlocks the configuration and keymapping features that are very nice. Tuomas