How does FSUIPC communicate with MSFS2002/04

[_Jens_]

Hello Pete,

I have some questions about how FSUIPC communicates with MSFS2002/04. I read the following in the document "FSUIPC for Programmers":

FSUIPC isn't a DLL you can use directly: it is an FS DLL—i.e. it is part of the FS process, not part of yours. It provides data through a complicated process called "Inter-Process Communication", hence the name (IPC)

Well, I don't realy understand what it means. Does it mean that when I'm using FSUIPC I don't communicate with the Flight Simulator directly? If so, is there any way to communicate with the Flight Simulatot directly, perhaps by using the Panels and Gauges SDK offered by Microsoft?

I hope you can help me, thanks.

[scruffyduck]

It depends what you want to do. If you plan to create a program to interface with the flight simulator then you use FSUIPC. If you just want to use the functions that FSUIPC itself provides then you just go to FSUIPC's dialog window in FS.

FSUIPC acts as a gateway so that you can read and write information to affect the way that FS operates. The gateway is in the form ofd a series of memory offsets which are listed in the SDK.

You need to create you own interface to connect to FSUIPC but these are already done for most common programming languages and are included in the SDK. These allow you to make or break a connection to FS and read or write the data. To develop such a program you will need a registered version of FSUIPC otherwise you will not have access to most of the data offsets. If you create a program which you then want to make available to others you may want to get an access code for it so that you users do not need a registered version themselves. This is also explained in the SDK.

When Pete says that FSUIPC is part of the FS process - technically it runs inside FS and is in the same meory space as FS. Thus when you access it you are accessing something that runs as part of FS. You do not actually need to understand how this works - I don't. just how to get to FS through FSUIPC which is all in the SDK.

Hope that helps