Complete newbie questions (apologies in advance!)

[Kross]

Before I get to my actual questions, please allow me to explain what I am trying to acheive:

• I am a student pilot in real life and plan on using my Google Nexus 7 tablet, with the Garmin Pilot application (GPS-enabled sectional charts software) in the plane.
  
• At home, I have Microsoft Flight Simulator X Gold Edition (which is basically the Deluxe + Acceleration pack) running on a Windows 7 64-bit machine. My PC does have a bluetooth connection/option.
  
• What I'd like to do is use the Garmin Pilot on my Nexus tablet with FSX on my PC via a Bluetooth connection.
  
• So in other words, as I fly around in a Cessna 172 in FSX, the PC (connected to my Nexus tablet via BT) feeds GPS coordinates to the Garmin Pilot software on the tablet. This would not only allow me to completely familiarize myself with my tablet, but will allow me to test different functions in a simulator instead of wasting precious time in the real cockpit.
  

The issue I am facing is as follows:

1. I have been successfully running FSX on my PC.
   
2. Today I installed FSUIPC 4853 via the installer file run as admin. The log, at the end of the installation, said that all went well.
   
3. I hit "Cancel" on the registration part after the install; wanted to see the features of the add-on first before paying for a license.
   
4. I tried running FSX, message box popped up asking if I trusted the source, I said "Always trust" and moved on.
   
5. The FSX loading screen then just sat there with the cusor going round in circles.
   
6. Killed FSX via taskmgr, restarted. This time no "Trust?" message box but again, the FSX loading screen just sits there.
   
7. Put in the FSUIPC4_Loader.dll in the prescribed folder, re-ran the install.
   
8. Again, same results when I try to start up FSX.
   

My questions for you:

1. Is FSUIPC even the right application for what I want to achieve (as outlined in the beginning of this post)? I'm sorry, I am fairly technical but not much for comunication/ports leading in and out of applications/OS. So while I tried to read through the documentation, most of the acronyms alluded me and I figured "hey, it looks like this FSUIPC is all I need."
   
2. If FSUIPC is indeed what I need to make my Nexus Tablet's Garmin Pilot GPS app work with with FSX on my PC, then is this the base non-registered feature of FSUIPC or is it one of those "extra" features that you have to purchase registration for?
   
3. Why can't I get FSUIPC to work?!
   

Again, my apologies for what are probably newbie questions, but I figured what better way to go about figuring this out than asking the creator of the utility itself! :)

[Pete Dowson]

The FSX loading screen then just sat there with the cusor going round in circles.

Killed FSX via taskmgr, restarted. This time no "Trust?" message box but again, the FSX loading screen just sits there.

I'm afraid it sounds like you are one of the few users suffering from the timing bug in FSX's SimConnect, related to the trust verification process. Please see the thread in the FAQ subforum entitled "FSX fails to run after FSUIPC4 first installed"

As you will read there, it isn't an easy problem to overcome I'm afraid. Unfortunately I've never actually seen the problem occur on any system i've been involved with (I suppose that means I'm lucky, but it does prevent any in depth investigation in the SimConnect code layers). Microsoft did know about this problem and tried to fix it -- it is a lot worse with the base release, and a lot better (ie rarer) with SP1 + SP2 installed (or Acceleration) -- but they only managed to reduce the probability, not fix the cause which they really believed was in Windiws itself not their code but never proved it.

So if you haven't already done so, make sure you install the FSX updates SP1 + SP2 or Acceleration.

Is FSUIPC even the right application for what I want to achieve (as outlined in the beginning of this post)? I'm sorry, I am fairly technical but not much for comunication/ports leading in and out of applications/OS. So while I tried to read through the documentation, most of the acronyms alluded me and I figured "hey, it looks like this FSUIPC is all I need."

That, I'm afraid, I don't know. You'd probably need to write a program to interface your application. FSUIPC4 does include a facility called "GPSout" which does feed NMEA 0183 formatted standard GPS data out to a selected serial (COM) port. Sometimes USB connections emulate standard serial ports for their connection to external devices. Whether your Bluetooth connection can be operated that way I don't know -- it will most likely depend on whatever drivers come with your device or appication.

The first thing to find out, though, is whether your Garmin Pilot can accept the NMEA 0183 type GPS input from whatever connection you might be able to rig up, overriding the internal GPS it would normally use. Most moving map programs for these devices don't provide such options.

If FSUIPC is indeed what I need to make my Nexus Tablet's Garmin Pilot GPS app work with with FSX on my PC, then is this the base non-registered feature of FSUIPC or is it one of those "extra" features that you have to purchase registration for?

If you write your own program to do the interfacing to your device then you can use the FS interface supported by FSUIPC and documented in the FSUIPC SDK without needing to pay for and register FSUIPC. The aplication interface is free for personal and non-commercial use. The GPSout and Lua plug-in programming facilities are part of the benefits of purchasing the license.

Why can't I get FSUIPC to work?!

It would work if SimConnect could load it. See above.

Pete

[Kross]

Read through the trouble-shooting tips and tried everything, to no avail unfortunately.

I do have the laterst version of FSX, with the Acceleration pack.

After some research, it appears that all I would've needed would've been the GPSout facilities of FSUIPC to do what I had set out to do, so would need to purchase the FSUIPC-only license. The Garmin Pilot app running on the Nexus tablet would be able to accept the GPS info via a COM port over Bluetooth (others have apparently done this before, successfully).

Now if I can get FSX to run with FSUIPC, we'd be all set! I'll keep digging around and trying to figure something out on my end to see if I can get it to work. Will report back with findings (if there are any).

Thank you for your help thus far!

[Pete Dowson]

Read through the trouble-shooting tips and tried everything, to no avail unfortunately.

As far as I am aware, persistence eventually wins. I'm afraid I've no other ideas than those presented there, but just in case it is due to something different, please see if there is an FSUIPC4.LOG file produced in the FS Modules folder. If so, paste it in a reply here. If there isn't one, you could try to get a SimConnect log -- there's a thread in the FAQ subfoum which explains how to do that.

Regards

Pete