Synchronisation between homecockpit HW and sim

[Alpin-Flier]

Hi everybody

I need advice concerning synchronisation between homecockpit HW and P3D. My flap lever controls the P3D / PMDG_737_NGXu via FSUIPC. When I start the sim, its flap lever is not synchronised to the HW lever, until I move the latter. I know, this is due to the fact, that only changes trigger commands.

But this is not really useful and even dangerous. Is there a workaround with FSUIPC to force the synch at simulator start? Thanks for any advice.

Urs

[Thomas Richter]

Hi,

happens with hardware drivers as well, like FDS (interfaceIT boards) software. As most of those hardware as well only capture changes.

Anyway the best way, as we use ourself in the sim, is to switch everything OFF and all levers in OFF/ Idle / Flaps zero ... positions and at that point save the flight for normal start situation. With that you would be normally in sync at startup.

I know it is not the solution you looking for but a workaround, we use since many years.

Thomas

[Pete Dowson]

I have a full 737 cockpit driven by ProSim, and i do exectly what Thomas suggests. Even if you abort a flight part way through, reset all the switches to a known state which has already been saved.

My "known state" is a rather extreme cold and dark, with EVERY switch in its off or neutral state and all axes the same. It has always given me the best and most predictable results and it has become habit. And operating real switches and axes is, after all, part of the joy in using actual flight hardware instead of mouse clicks and key presses! 😉 

Pete

 

[Alpin-Flier]

Hi Thomas and Pete

Thank you very much for answers. Of course, defining a state with all things off and levers at idle does help. But I would really prefer a synch. I am sometimes a lazy pilot leaving the plane in some undefined state 😄. Just think about a long distance flight and then your wife is calling for dinner... at least my sim experience.

All the switches and displays controlled by my scripts (SIOC, SC-Pascal) take over HW states and do a synch after start. But levers drive the sim bypassing the scripts. However I think, with a script snippet I can read the HW lever positions and send lever commands to the sim after start. Only after that lever changes send commands  directly.

What do you think about? Anyway, I will try this and tell you the result.

Urs

[Pete Dowson]

11 minutes ago, Alpin-Flier said:

But levers drive the sim bypassing the scripts. However I think, with a script snippet I can read the HW lever positions and send lever commands to the sim after start.

Yes, possibly. You might even do it with an FSUIPC Lua plug-in. 

If I am interrupted for dinner I would merely pause the sim. There's no way I know of successfully starting a new session part way through a flight with ProSim, ProSimUtils, Pilot2ATC, EFB2, FS-FC, and ActiveSky's realtime weather, all synced to continue where I left off.

Pete

 

[Alpin-Flier]

5 hours ago, Pete Dowson said:

You might even do it with an FSUIPC Lua plug-in. 

I am not familiar with LUA, but I think to have found the solution with SC-Pascal, one of my platforms for HW coupling. I just add the following code in the main routine:

  WriteFSUIPC($3114,4,-1);          // Synchronisation of Flap levers
  case ReadFSUIPC($3414,2) of
           0:begin WriteFSUIPC($3110,4,76773) end;  // set Flaps lever to 0
     2559:begin WriteFSUIPC($3110,4,76774) end;  // 1
     4606:begin WriteFSUIPC($3110,4,76775) end;  // 2
     6653:begin WriteFSUIPC($3110,4,76776) end;  // 5
     8700:begin WriteFSUIPC($3110,4,76777) end;  // 10
    10747:begin WriteFSUIPC($3110,4,76778) end;  // 15
    12794:begin WriteFSUIPC($3110,4,76779) end;  // 25
    14841:begin WriteFSUIPC($3110,4,76780) end;  // 30
    16383:begin WriteFSUIPC($3110,4,76781) end;  // 40
  end;

That is quite compact code and works fine up to now with my NGXu. If you would like additional explanation, let me know.

5 hours ago, Pete Dowson said:

If I am interrupted for dinner I would merely pause the sim.

Well, I think more of doing a completely new flight the next day, not to continue. Otherwise I save the actual situation as scenario and load it again. But this is sometimes quite critical, I agree. Anyway, now my sim follows the HW and that's what I wanted 🙂. Sometimes it is good to describe a problem, then the solution comes by ...

Urs

[jim_in_nh]

Just found your post.  I asked a similar question earlier this week...  

I didn't fully understand Pete's description of the factors which would make a H/W to FS synch not work, but I'm going to try to learn-up on Lua and see if I can get even a partial manually initiated synch to work.  I counted up that my physical panel has 12 analogs, 4 rotary encoders, and 57 discrete's (some momentary and some continuous action), so a quick way to synch-up, even if I have to add a small button over in a corner, that's fine.  I'm sure other folks have many more controls to deal with than I do.  I tend to jump from flight to flight, 10-15 minutes on each one, then on to the next, for procedures practice.  Even I could get half to synch-up with one push, it'll improve the present methods.  But I am also going to try Pete's suggestion of standardizing my beginning-of-flight settings on the physical panel and in the flight files.

Thanks,

Jim

[Alpin-Flier]

Hi Jim

Both platforms I use to connect my HW to the sim use the same procedure after start: They read HW switch states once after start (sim and FSUIPC already running). Then they send commands to the sim accordingly. If I need a synch later on, I must close the cockpit software  (not the sim itself) and start it again. This is e.g. needed after you have loaded a new scenario with different resp. unknown switch settings.

Urs