How to use aircraft specific settings for other aircraft?

[janswinnen]

Hi Pete,

First off, allow me to compliment you for your great work. I have used FSUIPC to assign and calibrate all axis and buttons of my Go-Flight rudder pedals, my CH yoke and my CH throttle quadrant. Works like a charm (after a week of head banging, cursing and despair :P ).

Here's my question: I've done aircraft specific axis and button assignments and axis calibrations for my PMDG 737-800 Virtual Cockpit aircraft, in Virtual Pilot Association livery. Obviously, I have many other liveries for this same aircraft. When I load this aircraft in my FS9 with any of the other liveries, however, FSUIPC does not recognize that as the same aircraft, hence my aircraft specific assignments do not load. I tried editing the FSIUPC.ini file by copy/pasting the sections that are applicable to my Virtual Pilot Association-livery, and then changing the name of the pasted sections to match the target livery, but that doesn't appear to work either. (in fact, though it's been a few days since I fiddled with it, I seem to remember that it did work for the axis, but not for the buttons.)

Additional info: joystics in FS are disabled. Everything is handled through FSUIPC.

I searched this forum before asking, but to my surprise I couldn't find anything on this issue (I can't imagine that I'm the first one to try and use aircraft specific settings on different liveries of the same aircraft). Maybe my searching was just not good enough though.

Any ideas how this can be overcome? Thanks in advance for any help you may be able to offer.

[Pete Dowson]

I've done aircraft specific axis and button assignments and axis calibrations for my PMDG 737-800 Virtual Cockpit aircraft, in Virtual Pilot Association livery. Obviously, I have many other liveries for this same aircraft. When I load this aircraft in my FS9 with any of the other liveries, however, FSUIPC does not recognize that as the same aircraft, hence my aircraft specific assignments do not load. I tried editing the FSIUPC.ini file by copy/pasting the sections that are applicable to my Virtual Pilot Association-livery, and then changing the name of the pasted sections to match the target livery, but that doesn't appear to work either.

Well, it should certainly work, but the title must match exactly -- there's probably some slight difference you made.

In any case, there is a much better way. Check this part of the Advanced User's document:

ShortAircraftNameOk: This is normally set “no” to make sure all aircraft-specific Keys, Buttons and Joystick Calibration settings only apply to the specific aircraft which was loaded at the time they were assigned. However, if you have several “paints” and which the settings to apply to all, you need to set this parameter to “yes” then shorten the aircraft name in the [Axes.], [buttons.], [Keys.] and [JoystickCalibration.] section headings in the INI as needed. The same facility could, for example, give all aircraft starting “Boeing” one set of assignments and all those starting “Airbus” another.

Further, you can set ShortAircraftNameOk=Substring to make FSUIPC4 match the shortened in the INI section headings in any part of the full aircraft name, not just at the beginning.

If I were you, I'd delete all the extra copies you made, change the name in the originals to, say "737" (or maybe "PMDG 737" is that will cover them all), and set ShortAircraftNameOk=Substring.

I searched this forum before asking, but to my surprise I couldn't find anything on this issue

Try searching on the supplied documents. I'm sure you'd have found it then! ;-).

Regards

Pete

[janswinnen]

Thanks a lot for your swift answer. I'll give that a try as soon as I'm done figuring out why Ultimate Terrain Europe is giving me memory leaks. :?

And you're right, I should have searched the advanced user guide first. For some reason, I got such a pointy head getting my CH throttle quadrant configured properly, that I guess that didn't even occur to me any more.

Thanks for your help.

[janswinnen]

If I were you, I'd delete all the extra copies you made, change the name in the originals to, say "737" (or maybe "PMDG 737" is that will cover them all), and set ShortAircraftNameOk=Substring.

Pete

I did that, and I had the desired result. It would appear now that my aircraft specific settings which I made for one of my B737's work for all of them, and same for my Aeroworx B200. Thanks again for your help.

[janswinnen]

Pete, I have a follow up question.

I have tried to help out a friend in making his B737 aircraft specific settings available for all his B737 subtypes and liveries.

I did set ShortAircraftNameOk=Substring, but the problem I encounter there is that every time FS is restarted the ini file is being overwritten and this line of the ini file is being changed back to ShortAircraftNameOk=No. As a result, the various axis and button settings are not being recognized for any aircraft any more (not for the specific one, and not for the other members of the same aircraft family).

Do you have any idea how it can be that on my pc, this line in the FSUIPC.ini is not reset when starting FS9, while it is being reset on my friends pc. How can this be prevented?

Any help his much appreciated.

[Pete Dowson]

Do you have any idea how it can be that on my pc, this line in the FSUIPC.ini is not reset when starting FS9, while it is being reset on my friends pc. How can this be prevented?

It sounds like your friend is using an older version of FSUIPC. The substring facility was not added till version 3.70.

Pete

[janswinnen]

Thanks Pete, that was indeed the cause of the problem. My friend was running version 3.60. I've upgraded him to 3.71, and now everything functions as it is supposed to.