PMDG SDK debugging

[Luke Kolin]

Pete, I appreciate the integration work you've done with the PMDG 737, 747 and 777 aircraft. We can extract a lot of useful data from them via the custom offsets.

I'm running into a few cases where the SDK integration is turned on in the Options.ini file but I'm not getting data from the PMDG SDK. I check the "aircraft model" offset that comes from PMDG since that should never be zero if the SDK is passing data correctly to FSUIPC, but it appears to be.

I'm curious how the integration works on your end. Do you make the SimConnect calls no matter what and just copy over any data that comes over, or are you searching for specific AIR files or other triggers to pull the data?

Cheers!

Luke

[Pete Dowson]

2 hours ago, Luke Kolin said:

I'm curious how the integration works on your end. Do you make the SimConnect calls no matter what and just copy over any data that comes over, or are you searching for specific AIR files or other triggers to pull the data?

As you can see from the .h document and others in the PMDG SDK folder, the data is mapped in SimConnect as "Client Data". FSUIPC simply asks SimConnect to be told of any changes to the data for the three PMDG aircraft. Client Data is identified by a uniquely registered name.

Once registered to receive such notifications, the whole data area is accessible. FSUIPC just copies whatever has changed into the FSUIPC assigned offsets. Data isn't polled or requested separately. It just arrives when it is there because FSUIPC asked for it, once, during initialisation..

I don't have any PMDG aircraft so I've never used it. The facilities and mapping for all three aircraft have been checked for me by users.

Pete

 

[forstmeier]

22 hours ago, Luke Kolin said:

Pete, I appreciate the integration work you've done with the PMDG 737, 747 and 777 aircraft. We can extract a lot of useful data from them via the custom offsets.

I'm running into a few cases where the SDK integration is turned on in the Options.ini file but I'm not getting data from the PMDG SDK. I check the "aircraft model" offset that comes from PMDG since that should never be zero if the SDK is passing data correctly to FSUIPC, but it appears to be.

I'm curious how the integration works on your end. Do you make the SimConnect calls no matter what and just copy over any data that comes over, or are you searching for specific AIR files or other triggers to pull the data?

Cheers!

Luke

Maybe it can be of help. My post is here and explaning in details how read and set data with the PMDG 737 + 777 using Simconnect and a transformed .h file x VB.net.

Raimund

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[Luke Kolin]

On 3/15/2017 at 1:31 PM, Pete Dowson said:

As you can see from the .h document and others in the PMDG SDK folder, the data is mapped in SimConnect as "Client Data". FSUIPC simply asks SimConnect to be told of any changes to the data for the three PMDG aircraft. Client Data is identified by a uniquely registered name.\

Ah, so it requests data for all 3, and since you can never have more than one running nothing gets stepped on. I wonder if the data is actually being sent.

Pete, how difficult would it be for you to log a message when the data actually comes in for the first time? I assume you could track the aircraft loaded counter to reset the flag so that each time the aircraft is reloaded we can get another message.

Cheers!

Luke

[Pete Dowson]

1 hour ago, Luke Kolin said:

Pete, how difficult would it be for you to log a message when the data actually comes in for the first time? I assume you could track the aircraft loaded counter to reset the flag so that each time the aircraft is reloaded we can get another message.

Not hard to do, but how urgently do you need it? I'm pretty well completely tied up till next week.

Are you getting the problem with all three PMDG aircraft, or one in particular? Are you reading CDU data too?  The CDU data for the 747 involves 3 more clients, and the 737 has 2 more. The 777 has no CDU data clients (at least, none in the SDK file I was sent).

Pete

 

[Luke Kolin]

There's no big rush on this - it would be helpful for me (and perhaps others) when debugging issues with PMDG aircraft. Right now I can check whether FSUIPC is providing the data to end clients, but if the offsets I check for don't have data I don't have good tools to help narrow down the cause.

I've had reports from both the 737 and 747, and perhaps the 777 - it's relatively rare but also difficult to track down. As best I can tell, the CDU data isn't being read. I wonder if that might make a difference.

Cheers!

Luke

[Pete Dowson]

11 minutes ago, Luke Kolin said:

As best I can tell, the CDU data isn't being read. I wonder if that might make a difference.

FSUIPC reads the original data, 737NGX data, within the main FSUIPC SimConnect Client. It creates separate clients for 737CDU data, 747 data, 747CDU data and 777 data.

Separate clients are, as far as SimConnect is concerned, separate programs. I make them separate to avoid clogging up the main channels. If, for instance, the main problem was with the 737NGX then maybe I should separate that to its own client too. It's only part of the main part because of the historical development -- the 737NGX implementation goes back quite a while.

Incidentally, but possibly related, there have been reports of AI Traffic data from SimConnect ceasing, and sometimes not even restarting when FSUIPC detects this and restarts its traffic client. And this seems to be with PMDG aircraft, so far. 

Pete