GPSOUT post SP2

[GHD]

Hi Pete,

I'm sorry to spring this on you immediately following your holiday, but I am having dreadful problems with GPSOUT post SP2

I use Fugawi Maps interfaced via GPSOUT using virtual com ports 5&6. With FS9 I have no problems at all, but in FSX, post SP2, each time I run FSX I get different ports set for GPSOUT and even after re-setting them, it doesn't always connect to Fugawi Maps.

Here is a typical sequence:

Started FSX and set Com5/RMC etc

Ran Fugawi Maps and GPS is connected:

Re-ran FSX and opened FSUIPC, port has been changed to COM1:

Opened FSUIPC.INI and port is still COM5:

Re-ran FSX and opened FSUIPC.INI, port is

Changed back to Port5 but no connection to Fugawi:

Re-ran FSX, FSUIPC.INI has Port COM5 but FSUIPC dialog has COM1:

Re-started FSX and FSUIPC.INI has port

At no time did I set the port to other than COM5, I may have clicked "Cancel" on finding that it was set correctly in the FSUIPC dialog.

I am using FSUIPC V4.205.

If I can resolve this problem, I will purchase virtual com ports for my Vista64 machine, but it doesn't seem worth it if GPSOUT refuses to work.

Regards,

George

PS. I hope you had a relaxing break.

[Pete Dowson]

I'm sorry to spring this on you immediately following your holiday, but I am having dreadful problems with GPSOUT post SP2

I use Fugawi Maps interfaced via GPSOUT using virtual com ports 5&6. With FS9 I have no problems at all, but in FSX, post SP2, each time I run FSX I get different ports set for GPSOUT and even after re-setting them, it doesn't always connect to Fugawi Maps.

Can you clarify this please? Are you saying you never used it with FSX before SP2, or that you had no problems before SP2? (Is SP2 out now, BTW, or do you mean Acceleration?).

The dialogue lists the port you specify only if it can find it in Windows list of available assignable ports. Otherwise it lists those it does find. When it shows COM1, what else is in the drop-down? Could the virtual port driver for your device be, er, "fluctuating" in its mapping somehow? Maybe FSX is somehow interfering? Maybe the list is okay later, with FSX paused, but not with it running.

I'm using GPSout continuously with FSX + Acceleration, with no problems. But I run the MixW virtual ports program on a separate PC, using WideFS for GPSout. I'd need to either be able to reproduce this problem, or possibly work out some method of diagnosing what is going on there (a lot more logging!). I'll see if I can set it up on the same PC as FSX. It may be a shortcoming of MixW needing something it can't get when FSX is running (IRQs perhaps?). If so then there's not going to be a lot I can do -- by not populating and selecting from the list in the dialogue until after some short delay I could problably make it look consistent (i.e. COM5 all the time), but if MixW is messing things up subsequently, as it seems, there's nothing I can do -- it isn't easy to complain to them as it is usupported freeware.

If I can resolve this problem, I will purchase virtual com ports for my Vista64 machine, but it doesn't seem worth it if GPSOUT refuses to work.

I don't think it is GPSout "refusing to work" -- the code internally is identical in both cases. It seems more like an incompatibility between MixW and FSX. But is this only since SP2 or before as well?

If you are thinking of using a separate PC then via WideFS there's no virtual ports uses on the FSX PC in any case, so I don't think the decision is dependent upon that.

Anyway, I'll get to try it later in the week, maybe the weekend.

Regards

Pete

[GHD]

Thanks for the response Pete, I am sure you are very busy at the present.

Can you clarify this please? Are you saying you never used it with FSX before SP2, or that you had no problems before SP2? (Is SP2 out now, BTW, or do you mean Acceleration?).

On this machine using XP, I can still run FS9 with GPSout V2.57 with no problems whatsoever.

Again, on this machine, with FSX SP1 I had no problems with GPSout.

I installed Acceleration (SP2) and since then, the connection is flaky, sometimes Fugawi shows a GPS connection, but more often it doesn't.

As I said, if I look at FSUIPC.INI, the [GPSOUT] section frequently changes to either Com1 or without me changing anything in FSX.

The FSUIPC drop-down shows Com1, Com2 and the two MixW ports:

Fugawi is using Com6:

The only difference is that FSX now has Acceletation installed.

If you are thinking of using a separate PC then via WideFS there's no virtual ports uses on the FSX PC in any case, so I don't think the decision is dependent upon that.

The other machine is stand-alone running Vista64, a separate installation of FSX/Acceleration is installed so I would still need to use virtual ports, unfortunately, there are no free versions. I think some vendors provide a trial version so I could try that.

Regards,

George

[Pete Dowson]

Again, on this machine, with FSX SP1 I had no problems with GPSout.

Okaythere's no changes in FSUIPC4 specific to SP2/Acceleration in any case, only recognising the updated SimConnect so it gets used. This makes me think there is something related to either the multiple processor usage new to FSX+SP2 -- effectively squeezing the MixW program out of processor access more effectively -- or to do with all the graphics driver changes they made (to include some DX10 support), which may affect MixW by its extra IRQ usage.

Do you have FSX frame rate limited at all? If not could you try limiting it way down, to possibly 10 fps (just as an experiment of course). If the problem alleviates or goes away I'm betting it's that the MixW is starved of sufficient processor time to properly present the consistent "fooling" needed to generate virtual ports. Maybe running it at a higher processor priority would help, or restricting FSX+SP2 to using one less of your cores (there's a mask parameter in the FSX.CFG for that).

I installed Acceleration (SP2) and since then, the connection is flaky, sometimes Fugawi shows a GPS connection, but more often it doesn't.

Yes, I gathered that. The symptoms in the FSUIPC dialogue are just another symptom of MixW not successfully maintaining the virtual ports.

If MixW cannot be made to share the PC with FSX then I'm going to have to mention this in my Dox at some stage. There's no way I'm going to try to debug someone else's program.

Regards

Pete

[GHD]

It seems totally screwed Pete.

I have only a single core, 3.06GHz hyperthreading Xeon with 3GB ram and a 512MB 7900GS so I limited FSX to 12FPS, set its affinity to CPU1 and reduced its priority to Low. Started Fugawi, set its affinity to CPU0 and its priority to Realtime and still no connection:

I guess I shall have to forego GPSout.

George

[Pete Dowson]

It seems totally screwed Pete.

I have only a single core, 3.06GHz hyperthreading Xeon with 3GB ram and a 512MB 7900GS so I limited FSX to 12FPS, set its affinity to CPU1 and reduced its priority to Low. Started Fugawi, set its affinity to CPU0 and its priority to Realtime and still no connection:

No, not totally screwed. I'm amazed you can even run FSX plus a moving map program on such a configuration in the first place! my test PC is a 3.2GHz hyperthreading PC and it's unflyable with anything else running at all. I'd never dream of slowing things down with moving maps. You really do want to consider any old cheap PC for the mapping.

I guess I shall have to forego GPSout.

If you like, but what was that about a Vista64 beast? Surely that's not also so underpowered?

Regards

Pete

[GHD]

It's a Xeon Pete and it FSX works very well on it. I use it for development and usually have at least one of VC++, ADE, Fugawi etc. open on my second monitor.

... but what was that about a Vista64 beast?

It is quite a beast, a Q6600 at 2.87GHz, but it has only one monitor so is not suited to development. Why don't I switch the monitors you may ask? It is running under Vista64 and I cannot install all of my legacy software.

George