Landing gear problem with new FSUIPC ?

[fred64]

Hello Pete,

I am the author of the helicopter physics library "Helicopter Total Realism" which is freely available at Hovercontrol.

It worked quite well until a few versions away, but with the last version (4.70+ ?) I have a strange thing happening.

I am using a number of offsets in read mode and velocities and angular velocity in read and write mode, In particular i read the landing gear up/down offset

(0x0BE8) in read mode only.

The strange this is that after my program starts (a separate exe calling FSUIPC though the managed wrapper) le landing gear button retract/extend "G" is not responding anymore, Also if I switch of my program it still does not work, the only way to make it work again is to restart the flight.

It seems to me that something is conflicting, I did not change any code on my software from the last release, it seems to be a 4.70+ behavior, I do not have a clue on where to look for a solution...

Thanks in advance for your help

Fred

[Pete Dowson]

The strange this is that after my program starts (a separate exe calling FSUIPC though the managed wrapper) le landing gear button retract/extend "G" is not responding anymore, Also if I switch of my program it still does not work, the only way to make it work again is to restart the flight.

Well, there is only one way FSUIPC provides to stop the gear operating, and that is via bit 2 in offset 32F8, but if you were inadvertently setting that, it wouldn't reset just by restarting a flight. Similarly If you were somehow assigning the "G" key as an application hot key (via the offsets for this), again restarting a flight without reloading FS altogether would not reset it. Note that the "G" key is merely sending the FS control "GEAR TOGGLE", so have you checked whether that is working?

Really there is nothing whatsoever in FSUIPC (and even more certainly nothing different in 4.70) which could do such a thing but have it undone by restarting a flight. The only things which happen on restarting flights are updates of some offsets relfecting flight changes. It wouldn't even re-run any Lua plugins or reload assignments or calibrations unless the aircraft also changed.

Anyway, I think you need to do some more analysis about what is going on. Certainly check whether it is really just the keypress or also the control, then find out why. Also do please recheck with a current version -- 4.745 or later.

Maybe something you are doing is somehow corrupting something elsewhere in memory, which affects part of the aircraft system set up when a flight is loaded. But surely not just a keypress? Obviously, you need to delve below that keypress surface symptom..

Regards

Pete

[fred64]

ok thanks for the reply. I will try to understand what is going on. What is strange is that I did not change a single line of code and it stopped working with new versions.

As far as helicopter go,most of them do not have a retracting landing gear anyway....

thanks as always for your kind help

Fred

[Pete Dowson]

ok thanks for the reply. I will try to understand what is going on. What is strange is that I did not change a single line of code and it stopped working with new versions.

Most of the times this sort of thing has been reported it has turned out to be either the use of a self-discovered but undocumented offset, which has subsequently come into different use, or, much more likely, the addressing of a 1 or 2-byte long offset as a 2 or 4 byte value, where the bytes beyond were not previously assigned but then have become so.

Check the offsets you are using. Use FSUIPC logging.

But please test with the current version, 4,745 or later, as FSUIPC has been developed a lot over these last seven months.

Regards

Pete