Simconnect Troubleshooting

[Bman.]

Pete-

This is sort of off topic but you might be able to shed some light on what might be going on. This is long winded but here is what is happening with our shared cockpit experience.

For years we haven't had much trouble with shared cockpit and everything seemed to be working par given the compatibility of various planes. We could transfer back a fourth 100 times and it always worked great. Now, all of a sudden we are encountering a problem when I transfer controls to the pilot not flying. If I host a session (via gamespy), we can depart just fine.. if I transfer the controls o the pilot not flying the plane hits a "ceiling" sort to speak. There is no longer vertical movement of the plane. Lateral movement is just fine. Even vertical speed shows a 1000 FPM climb but the plane will not ascend / not decend. As soon as the controls are transferred to me, away we go.

We have about 5 guys that are in the group and they all have the same problem when they fly with me. Between other pilots, no problems.

We have checked the usual suspects:

1) Hard reset of the router

2) Open up the stack of route ports

3) Verified windows firewall

4) Check and verified all A/P is shut off etc.

5) Hard reset of modem

6) FSPortTest has been checked

7) Removed MS FSX from Firewall then re-added

8) FSX run as administrator - verified

9) Check hard set IP gateway

10) Turn of DMZ

11) Blue line direct to modem with A/V off and firewall off

Same results. Now the reason I come to FSUIPC forum (outside of your obvious expertise). This week we have been working with FSUIPC (John Szatmary has been doing all the work - thanks for that). While messing around with the throttle calibration I managed to wreck something to where my throttle quad wouldn't recognize correctly through fsx. Other applications started heading south as well. Long story short, I ended up doing a checkpoint restore from about 2 hours prior and I was back up and running. The check point worked fine and all seems well.

The LUA coding that John put together works fine. All controls are fine.

Fast forward about 2 hours and we are kicking off some shared cockpit flight and we encounter this problem with some of the data not being pushed through between the two pilots (namely the vertical climb/descent). As noted, the pilot flying hits a "ceiling" and the plane will not elevate nor descend. If I get the controls back, there is no problem.

A few things I have noticed about my simconnect.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="Windows-1252"?>

<SimBase.Document Type="SimConnect" version="1,0">

<Descr>SimConnect</Descr>

<Filename>SimConnect.xml</Filename>

<Disabled>False</Disabled>

<SimConnect.Comm>

<Disabled>False</Disabled>

<Protocol>IPv4</Protocol>

<Scope>Global</Scope>

<Address>192.168.1.50</Address>

<Port>4507</Port>

<MaxClients>10</MaxClients>

<MaxRecvSize>8192</MaxRecvSize>

<DisableNagle>True</DisableNagle>

</SimConnect.Comm>

MaxClients - Is it possible I am maxing out in some form? I don't know the part this plays relative to shared cockpit.

DisableNagle - should this be false?

I am going to temporarily rename exe.xml and dll.xml and see what happens when nothing is loaded initially.

Any way, I am just seeing what your thoughts may be since you are an expert. Before I do a rebuild, repair or install of simconnect (still don't know about how to specifically repair the other two sxs simconnect folders - that's a different chore) and I am grasping for last minute suggestions.

Your thoughts and suggestions are welcome. Thanks.

Win7 64b

FSX + Acceleration

FSUIPC v4.725b

7 Saitek USB modules (yoke / quads / boxes etc)

Benjamin.

[Pete Dowson]

MaxClients - Is it possible I am maxing out in some form? I don't know the part this plays relative to shared cockpit.

I think that's the number of separate applications allowed to connect with this connection. I've no idea how shared cockpit works -- I've never used it and was not even aware it had anything to do with SimConnect. I thought it was a multiplayer type interface as in previous FS versions.

The usual default MaxClients is 64 I think, so you could try bumping it up.

DisableNagle - should this be false?

Sorry, I don't know what "Nagles" are!

I am going to temporarily rename exe.xml and dll.xml and see what happens when nothing is loaded initially.

Those only load local applications or DLLs, which may then become SimConnect clients or may not. They won't use up any of the "max clients" in your XML file -- there are two other connections, local and pipe, both of which have another 64 limit (default) each.

Any way, I am just seeing what your thoughts may be since you are an expert.

Not in anything like this. I'm an extensive user of SimConnect as a normal client, that's all.

Before I do a rebuild, repair or install of simconnect (still don't know about how to specifically repair the other two sxs simconnect folders - that's a different chore) and I am grasping for last minute suggestions.

On Windows 7 or Vista don't even think about messing with WinSxS folders. I ended up having to reformat the disks and reinstalling Windows in order to get SimConnect working again, just because I was trying to work out a way for folks to do repairs themselves, or even writing a program to do it! I gave up. It is far too convoluted.

You could enable SimConnect logging and see if there's any sign in there about what is going wrong.

Regards

Pete

[Bman.]

Thanks for the time to respond, Pete.

Sage advice there on the SxS - noted.

In the end, we got it sorted it out. You were correct in thinking that it's not a simconnect issue. I did change back to maxclients=64 and it all works. For testing, we also changed back to 10....err... it still worked. I did a few other minor changes like removing conflicting SaiPanel drivers etc. Could have been one of those. We don't really now. After 3 days... enough persistence and it now works.

Thanks again-

Benjamin.