Issue with Installation and flight/plan folder locations

[John Dowson 105]

It seems that the location for flights and flight plans has changed since the beta. This is causing issues with autosave, as well as flight loading/saving.

There also seem to be issues in SimConnect in this area (the required functions are not documented as not or partially working).

Also the FS installation location is no longer reported correctly, due to a change in the registry entries/values used, and also the different installation method used by Steam compared to the MS Store.

I will investigate these issue.

John

[jaxx 3]

Is there even a standard location for flight saves? When saving/loading I get a standard file selection dialog and I can save to/load from anywhere.

[IanAbel 1]

3 hours ago, John Dowson said:

Also the FS installation location is no longer reported correctly, due to a change in the registry entries/values used

Slightly off-topic, but do you know of any registry entry that can be used to identify the location (and presence) of MSFS? Was easy with FSX and P3D, but I'm blessed if I can see anything in the way of an entry for MSFS...

Also, since FSUIPC7 now runs as an app, is there any offset that can be used to determine that MSFS is actually running? Never a problem before, of course, if I couldn't connect to FSUIPC I knew it wasn't!

Befuddled in Minnesota 🙂

[Pete Dowson 277]

2 hours ago, jaxx said:

Is there even a standard location for flight saves? When saving/loading I get a standard file selection dialog and I can save to/load from anywhere.

Yes, there's always a default place.

Pete

 

[John Dowson 105]

11 hours ago, IanAbel said:

Slightly off-topic, but do you know of any registry entry that can be used to identify the location (and presence) of MSFS? Was easy with FSX and P3D, but I'm blessed if I can see anything in the way of an entry for MSFS...

There were registry entries in the beta version, which is what FSUIPC7 is currently using. However, it looks like these are no longer present in the released version, which is why FSUIPC7 now cannot determine the default location for flight files and plans.

11 hours ago, IanAbel said:

Also, since FSUIPC7 now runs as an app, is there any offset that can be used to determine that MSFS is actually running?

Many offsets won't be populated until MSFS is running and FSUIPC7 is connected. For example, you could check offset 0x3124 (FS version being used) or 0x3308 (FS version as determined by FSUIPC) which will be the first offsets written to when MSFS is detected. However, these offsets aren't currently cleared if MSFS closes. This is because usually you would have FSUIPC7 to auto-close with the FS, but I could clear these in the case that FSUIPC7 remains open if this helps.

John

[IanAbel 1]

6 hours ago, John Dowson said:

Many offsets won't be populated until MSFS is running and FSUIPC7 is connected. For example, you could check offset 0x3124 (FS version being used) or 0x3308 (FS version as determined by FSUIPC) which will be the first offsets written to when MSFS is detected.

John, thanks for the info/update.

Pity about the path, hopefully/possibly they will set a registry entry in future...

Not sure if it's because I'm using the FSUIPCClient.dll, but the first call to open the connection shows the following data in 0x3124 = 0 and 0x3308 = 13

I'm assuming the latter is because it's hard coded since FSUIPC7 is explicitly for MSFS. The 0x3124 offset does correctly change from 0 to 110 (currently) after the sim is started.

[John Dowson 105]

10 minutes ago, IanAbel said:

Pity about the path, hopefully/possibly they will set a registry entry in future...

There seem to be registry entries when MSFS is installed from the MS Store, but not when installed via Steam. And the different installations have different default paths for various files. Its all a bit confusing at the moment, and different to how things were located in the alpha/beta releases.

12 minutes ago, IanAbel said:

Not sure if it's because I'm using the FSUIPCClient.dll, but the first call to open the connection shows the following data in 0x3124 = 0 and 0x3308 = 13

I'm assuming the latter is because it's hard coded since FSUIPC7 is explicitly for MSFS. The 0x3124 offset does correctly change from 0 to 110 (currently) after the sim is started.

Yes, sorry, that's correct. Offset 0x3308 is set by FSUIPC7 on start-up. Offset 0x3124 is set once connected to the sim.

 

[Garcez 0]

I use the MFS2020 Steam version, and I have no idea where to save flight plans.

It would be very good to solve this mystery.

 

[John Dowson 105]

19 minutes ago, Garcez said:

I use the MFS2020 Steam version, and I have no idea where to save flight plans.

For Steam installations, the default flight plan folder seems to be under <USER>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Flight Simulator\

 

[Garcez 0]

5 minutes ago, John Dowson said:

For Steam installations, the default flight plan folder seems to be under <USER>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Flight Simulator\

 

Yes, but in which folder within Microsoft Flight Simulator?

https://prnt.sc/u2yhxq

[John Dowson 105]

1 hour ago, Garcez said:

Yes, but in which folder within Microsoft Flight Simulator?

Well, that folder itself seems to be the 'default' location  - this is where FSUIPC's auto-save files are saved. The ones from MSFS seem to go into different places under this folder, depending upon where you save from. Check under MISSIONS\Custom or MISSIONS\Custom\CustomFlight maybe.

[737-SimGuy 3]

5 hours ago, IanAbel said:

Not sure if it's because I'm using the FSUIPCClient.dll, but the first call to open the connection shows the following data in 0x3124 = 0 and 0x3308 = 13

I'm assuming the latter is because it's hard coded since FSUIPC7 is explicitly for MSFS. The 0x3124 offset does correctly change from 0 to 110 (currently) after the sim is started.

This has been updated to reflect the correct data in the latest FSUIPC Client DLL available via Nuget...

James

[John Dowson 105]

This issue has been addressed, and hopefully fixed, in the latest release. The locations are different depending upon steam vs ms store install. For details, see 

Note that I will be posting there when  I update the FSUIPC7-beta release.

 

[Jer029 0]

Some of my users have also noted an issue with the Flight Plan File location with FSUIPC 7 and MSFS.  I only use it at startup to get flight plan file location from sim.  It appears that the memory location where this data is contained is either randomly populated or randomly blocked for reading.  I don't think my pilots are trying to get the flight plan from the simulator without the simulator being running, as that would never have worked with FSX/P3D etc.  Perhaps the MSFS development folks could shed some light on what's happening.  I can always work around this by providing a menu option to load flight plan directly from a file location I suppose.

[John Dowson 105]

On 10/9/2020 at 3:48 PM, Jer029 said:

Some of my users have also noted an issue with the Flight Plan File location with FSUIPC 7 and MSFS

Do you mean from offset 0x0130? If so, could you please add offset logging to for that offset (with type AsciiZ) and show me a FSUIPC7.log file when this is 'randomly populated'.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'blocked for reading'. How are you reading this data - via the SDK? If so, which one? 

Later: I have noticed that FSUIPC quite often receives a message from MSFS with an empty plan name, e.g ".PLN". However, this is usually followed by the actual plan file name, e.g.

Quote

   ...
   200937 SimConnect_Open succeeded
   200937 Running in "KittyHawk", Version: 11.0.282174.999 (SimConnect: 11.0.62651.3)
   200937 MSFS version = 11.0.282174.999
   200937 Initialising SimConnect data requests now
   207297 Aircraft loaded: running normally now ...
   226859 User Aircraft ID not supplied -- trying default
   242218 D:\MSFS2020\Official\Steam\asobo-aircraft-tbm930\SimObjects\Airplanes\Asobo_TBM930\aircraft.CFG
   242547 flights\other\MainMenu.FLT
   242609 Monitor IPC:0024 (AsciiZ) = [26]"flights\other\MainMenu.FLT"
   246187 System time = 11/10/2020 13:52:50, Simulator time = 10:52:00 (11:52Z)
   246234 Aircraft="TBM 930 Asobo"
   315093 Monitor IPC:0130 (AsciiZ) = [4]".PLN"
   317797 D:\MSFS2020\Official\Steam\asobo-aircraft-c172sp-classic\SimObjects\Airplanes\Asobo_C172sp_classic\aircraft.CFG
   318906 Aircraft="Cessna Skyhawk Asobo"
   326250 Planned flight from LEVX to LEBB
   326250 C:\USERS\JLDOW\APPDATA\ROAMING\MICROSOFT FLIGHT SIMULATOR\MISSIONS\CUSTOM\CUSTOMFLIGHT\CUSTOMFLIGHT.PLN
   326265 Monitor IPC:0130 (AsciiZ) = [103]"C:\USERS\JLDOW\APPDATA\ROAMING\M"
   326781 C:\Users\jldow\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Flight Simulator\MISSIONS\Custom\CustomFlight\CustomFlight.FLT
   403265 -------------------- Starting everything now ----------------------
   ...

I guess I should ignore these and not update offset 0x0130 for plans with no actual name or path.

Edited October 11 by John Dowson
Further info added

[bahnzo 0]

On 8/20/2020 at 9:52 AM, John Dowson said:

For Steam installations, the default flight plan folder seems to be under <USER>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Flight Simulator\

 

I have the Steam version, and you are correct. Let me know if you need the location of any folders, I'd be happy to help.