GPSout And External Weather Applications

[vbeglis]

Hi Peter,

Thank you very much for the GPSout module which provides us with a very useful simulation and training tool. :D

I' m using Garmin GPS 196 with FS9 successfully, but yesterday I noticed a problem when using external to MSFS9 weather applications, such as ActiveSky, FSMeteo and FSMetar.

I was used to practice my GPS offline, by changing weather conditions from the FS9 weather system. But yesterday I decided to make an online flight with real weather using ActiveSky, without using the GPS and guess what: after a minute, my system crashes out and needs to restart. After a lot of tests, I remembered that the last modification I made to FS9 was to add the GPSout.dll. I went and rename the module to make it inactive and all of a sudden, the system worked perfectly.

Making the module active again and adding the GPS unit, everything works fine also. The minute I close the GPS unit, the system crashes.

The same thing happens with all three weather applications using online or offline features.

So, I came to the conclusion that in my system, when using external weather applications, and GPS unit is not active, GPSout.dll causes the computer to crash.

Does anything came into your attention about that? :?:

Thanks again,

Vassilis

[Pete Dowson]

I was used to practice my GPS offline, by changing weather conditions from the FS9 weather system. But yesterday I decided to make an online flight with real weather using ActiveSky, without using the GPS and guess what: after a minute, my system crashes out and needs to restart. After a lot of tests, I remembered that the last modification I made to FS9 was to add the GPSout.dll. I went and rename the module to make it inactive and all of a sudden, the system worked perfectly.

This is a bit mixed up isn't it? You flew WITHOUT GPS and it crashed, but the last thing you did was add GPS? Can you clarify please?

Making the module active again and adding the GPS unit, everything works fine also. The minute I close the GPS unit, the system crashes.

Er .. I'm still confused. What's the "GPS unit" in this context?

There is absolutely no relationship between GPSout.dll and any weather facilities in FSUIPC. In fact GPSout doesn't even use FSUIPC in FS2004, it is completely independent. I'm really not at all clear what you are describing (too many "GPS"?) but if you would like to explain I will try to make some suggestions if I can think of any.

So, I came to the conclusion that in my system, when using external weather applications, and GPS unit is not active, GPSout.dll causes the computer to crash.

GPSout cares not one iota about any "GPS unit" -- what is that? Do you mean hardware attached to the serial port, or something else?

GPSout, when installed, always does the same thing, it simply sends data to the serial port all the time. It doesn't care if anything reads it. It is 100% output, no input involved, and it only stops when you close FS.

If you mean you have your receiving apparatus, whatever it is, connected but not "active" in some way, try unplugging it. Maybe it is that device causing problems?

Regards,

Pete

[vbeglis]

Hi Pete,

Thanks for your reply. It seems that the cause of the problems is the "serial to USB" convertor device I use to emulate a second serial port in my PC. I'm running some tests on this.

Regards

Vassilis