2 Things

[fturner]

First off (may not be FSUIPC related), I have a chproducts USB ProThrottle so I am trying to map the throttle on my joystick to the spoilers. When I do, the spoilers are bouncing up and down then finally settling down at full, even though I only want say 1/4 spoilers. I can't find anything interfering with it and when the joystick is mapped to flaps or throttle, everything is fine. Any ideas on this? I do have the registered version and have tried the joystick control to set the range but to no affect.

Second, anytime I run a weather program (either FSMeteo or AS2004), after about 10 seconds of setting the weather my system drops down by 10 FPS or more. Then every second I get a hesitation, even at cruise altitude. Yet, when I use the built in weather download, I may lose a max of 2 fps in really bad weather conditions.

I have the latest version of FSUIPC, a fresh install of winxp and fs2004 with no other addons installed. To give you an idea how much I lose, if I run the barebones FS2004, ie NO addons, with all settings to max, I can get around 48FPS on average at KSEA with the default 737.

Then I add FSUIPC, and fire up either the FSMETEO or AS2004 and I am down around 15 fps in 2d panel mode and I get around 18 in the VC or spot views; and thats with turning AI, autogen and display sliders off/down. I've even limited cloud layers in AS2004 to 2 layers.

I do not have a slouch of a system either. A P4 3 Ghz, 1 Gig ram, ATI 9700Pro 128Meg card blah blah blah.

I think there may be a problem somewhere as it appears weather is being pushed into FS on a regular bases, instead of just when the external weather program is scheduled to push it in, but just my own observation.

best regards

Fraser

[Pete Dowson]

First off (may not be FSUIPC related), I have a chproducts USB ProThrottle so I am trying to map the throttle on my joystick to the spoilers. When I do, the spoilers are bouncing up and down then finally settling down at full, even though I only want say 1/4 spoilers. I can't find anything interfering with it and when the joystick is mapped to flaps or throttle, everything is fine. Any ideas on this? I do have the registered version and have tried the joystick control to set the range but to no affect.

I can't really picture what you are talking about, but I think it may simply be the way FS automatically activates the ground spoilers if you arm them on the ground. Try testing them in the air. Setting your "1/4" is probably close the the "arm" detente (see FS's own graphic to see). In the air things should work fine, and you should be able to arm them and have them auto-deploy on touchdown. Do not test your calibration whilst sat on the ground.

Second, anytime I run a weather program (either FSMeteo or AS2004), after about 10 seconds of setting the weather my system drops down by 10 FPS or more. Then every second I get a hesitation, even at cruise altitude. Yet, when I use the built in weather download, I may lose a max of 2 fps in really bad weather conditions.

Certainly both FSMeteo and AS2004 are capable of setting much more complex weather than FS downloads. If your system cannot handle it you may need to change some of the options in the programs themselves, and possibly apply more filters and restrictions in the FSUIPC options as well. You'll need to experiment. Everyone's system is different.

I think there may be a problem somewhere as it appears weather is being pushed into FS on a regular bases, instead of just when the external weather program is scheduled to push it in, but just my own observation.

This is possible of course, but it is a question for the weather program folks. I really am not in a position to answer. Sorry.

One of the factors may be the sharing of the processor between FS and the weather program. You say you get 48 fps without weather programs, which suggests to me you are not using the FS frame rate limiter (Options-Settings-Display-Hardware). If this is the case there might be problems when you run other programs in parallel. Try setting the limiter to, say, 20 or 25 fps. (I have a 3.2G P4 and set mine to 20 fps).

I run weather programs on a separate PC, using WideFS. I think this gives much better results. Perhaps the weather programs are doing too much processing, I don't really know. As you have a P4 3.0 I assume it has "Hyper-Threading"? You might like to see if that is working properly. In WinXP you can actually make FS run in one of the two "virtual processors" and any other programs in the other. That may help.

Regards,

Pete