Strange ipc.ask() Behavior

[Pete Dowson]

4 minutes ago, ark1320 said:

I turned off Pause after Crash in the Miscellaneous tab, so that should end the name.ipcbin problem

Oh dear. That's nothing to do with ipcBin files. That just forces a Pause when an aircraft crash (not a Sim crash) is detected, to stop it auto-reloading the flight!!!

The option controlling the ipcBin file use is "Reload FSUIPC data" which defaults to "Never".

Please don't just enable options without knowing what they do. Leave them to default. I suggest you do have a look at the FSUIPC User Guide some time. All this is described on pages 17-20.

Pete

 

[ark1320]

Pete,

As you thought, the 'failure to display as expected' issue seems related to timing. I ran the following experiment using the same flight in all cases:

If I waited 10 secs after the flight loaded (after the a/c appeared on the runway) to activate the Lua script with the ipc.ask() function, it worked as expected 8 times in a row, restarting FSX each time.

If I waited 5 secs after the flight loaded to activate the Lua script with the ipc.ask() function, it failed to display as expected 8 times in a row, restarting FSX each time. By fail I mean nothing was displayed as a result of the script being activated by a keystroke.

So somewhere between 5 and 10 seconds seems to be a critical delay time for the script with the ipc.ask() function, at least on my machine. This is probably why my script worked as expected only part of the time. I didn't wait long enough to test it.

If I waited a sec or less after the flight loaded, a different Lua script using a single line ipc.writeSTR(0x3380, "string") function worked 8 times in a row, restarting FSX each time. So it seems that on my machine the single line ipc.writeSTR(0x3380, "string") function is not nearly as time sensitive as the ipc.ask() function.

Finally, inline with a comment you made in a post above, when I modified the above ipc.writeSTR(0x3380, "string") function to display two lines, the script behavior time-wise was the same as it was for the script with the ipc.ask() function.

Al

[ark1320]

Well, a friend running the same Lua scripts does not see the delay problem I described above with the ipc.ask() function, so I still have a bug of some type to hunt down.

If I find it I'll report back.

Thx,

Al