Old Registration

[cpurick]

I used to be quite active with FS2002 in 2002-2003. I recently started playing w/ FS9. I have most of my old stuff archived, but I can't find any proof of purchase/registration for FSUIPC, though I'm pretty sure I bought it at one point. Can you check? It would be under last name Koch, first name Frederick or Rick. I made a lot of purchases around Sept., 2002.

[JSkorna]

Hi,

Pete is gone for about 10 days, but you can check your account at SimMarket and see if your order history is there.

Thanks,

[Pete Dowson]

I can't find any proof of purchase/registration for FSUIPC, though I'm pretty sure I bought it at one point. Can you check? It would be under last name Koch, first name Frederick or Rick. I made a lot of purchases around Sept., 2002.

As Jim says, you'd have to go through SimMarket, but considering FSUIPC didn't start selling till August 2003 it is probably outside the time frame you are remembering.

Regards

Pete

[cpurick]

Hmm. Looks like we exchanged email in Jan, 03. Can't find your reply, though I clearly remember receiving it -- must have cleared it from my inbox.

Was the program free at that time?

[Pete Dowson]

Hmm. Looks like we exchanged email in Jan, 03. Can't find your reply, though I clearly remember receiving it -- must have cleared it from my inbox.

Was the program free at that time?

FSUIPC3 didn't exist at that time -- FS2004 hadn't been released and the previous version of FSUIPC, 2.xx, was free, yes. It was, even then, a full-time job -- I supported myself from savings and some dividend income for the five years since FSUIPC 1.00, but that finance was drying up and it became a choice -- either make a charge or try to find a job, in which case FS2004 would never have been supported. Colleagues and FS contacts persuaded me, eventually, to do the former. I did try a voluntary charge initially, but that was hopeless.

It's still full-time, even though for FSX Microsoft have at last managed, with some help I should add, incorporate an interface ("SimConnect") into this latest version. For FSUIPC, since version 2 times, a lot of work has been put into the user facilities to make it worth the purchase price, but there's never been any charge for the application interface except for commercial users, just as in the case of Adam Szofran's FS6IPC for FS98. Whilst a lot of folks cried "foul" on the charge, I think few of them realised this. There were no user facilities at all in FS6IPC to justify a charge in any case.

Note that there are two currently maintained and separately purchasable versions -- FSUIPC3 for FS9 and before, FSUIPC4 for FSX and later. Because of "SimConnect" FSUIPC4 was a complete re-write with only small sections of code transported from 3.xx. Hopefully, though, and because of SimConnect, it should remain compatible, or easily adaptable, to future FS versions -- assuming MS keeps up its end and maintains SimConnect in a compatible manner.

Regards

Pete

[cpurick]

Very interesting. I've never understood -- how did you get in? Was this a matter of complete reverse-engineering? What's exposed, and how did you find it?

[Pete Dowson]

Very interesting. I've never understood -- how did you get in? Was this a matter of complete reverse-engineering? What's exposed, and how did you find it?

It's called "hacking" these days. I've been a programmer since 1963 and always worked at machine level upwards, so the nuts and bolts underneath were more easy for someone like me, together with my own tools and some anyone can purchase (e.g. including Microsoft's own excellent debuggers).

However, it still takes many 1,000's of hours for each new version, and it has been getting more and more difficult as they use more and more convoluted code ("object-oriented", so called. Ugh). Additional multi-threading and multiple core usage make things tougher. I'm nearly 65 now so I'm glad SimConnect is 'taking over'. One day it'll do the whole job. :-)

Pete