ipcPARAM Bug -- Maybe?

[John Dowson]

As I said, the issue is that simconnect is sending the numpad keys when num lock is off (when it should be sending them when numlock is on), and FSUIPC7 is receiving these as the 'num lock off' keys (End, Down, PgDn, etc).

1 hour ago, John Dowson said:

So, to have these keys working, try with Num-Lock off, and assign in FSUIPC to those keyboard input strings.

Did you try this? This would be a work-around. Doing this, the keys should function when both MSFS and FSUIPC7 have the focus - and numlock is off.

I don't have a numlock light on my keyboard, so I can't tell when its on or off. I'm presuming its MSFS that has this wrong at the moment, not FSUIPC7, but once confirmed I'll raise this with Asobo.

John

[ark1320]

19 minutes ago, John Dowson said:

I don't have a numlock light on my keyboard, so I can't tell when its on or off. I'm presuming its MSFS that has this wrong at the moment, not FSUIPC7, but once confirmed I'll raise this with Asobo.

John

Here is a tiny app I use that puts a very small icon in the right corner of my taskbar (by the speaker icon) that indicates if Num lock, Caps lock or Scroll lock are on or off. In the pic below,  the green 'LED' above the little 1 shows Num lock is on and the other locks off.

https://keyboard-leds.com/

 

Al

[John Dowson]

1 hour ago, John Dowson said:

3 hours ago, John Dowson said:

So, to have these keys working, try with Num-Lock off, and assign in FSUIPC to those keyboard input strings.

Did you try this? This would be a work-around. Doing this, the keys should function when both MSFS and FSUIPC7 have the focus - and numlock is off.

That's not quite true! It should work when MSFS has the focus and the num lock is off and you assign in FSUIPC7 with the num lock on (i.e. assign to the num0-9 keys) .If you want it to work when FSUIPC7 has the focus as well, then you can also assign to the keys with no num lock (End, Down, etc). 

This is because MSFS/SimConnect only sends the numpad keys  when num lock is off, but FSUIPC7 receives them via SimConnect and then sends them to itself as if the num lock was on.

I'll report the issue tomorrow.

[ark1320]

2 hours ago, John Dowson said:

It should work when MSFS has the focus and the num lock is off and you assign in FSUIPC7 with the num lock on (i.e. assign to the num0-9 keys) .

Well, one problem with this approach is MSFS has default assignments for the "Off" Num lock keys like Insert, End, Home, Left, etc.  So all those assignments would have to be changed because MSFS actions those keys as soon as they are pressed.

I really think Asobo needs to make Simconnect work wrt Num Lock as it does in FSX/P3D. I would expect the will be many 3rd party developers that will want to use the Numpad for entering data 'as usual'.

Al

[John Dowson]

8 hours ago, ark1320 said:

Well, one problem with this approach is MSFS has default assignments for the "Off" Num lock keys like Insert, End, Home, Left, etc.  So all those assignments would have to be changed because MSFS actions those keys as soon as they are pressed.

Yes, unfortunately.

An alternative solution would be if I mapped the received numpad 0-9 keys to their num lock off equivalent. This would allow you to assign in FSUIPC7 with the num lock off, but then use those assignments (when MSFS has the focus) with numlock on. This would be a temporary fix that I would revert once the problem has been fixed by Asobo.

8 hours ago, ark1320 said:

I really think Asobo needs to make Simconnect work wrt Num Lock as it does in FSX/P3D. I would expect the will be many 3rd party developers that will want to use the Numpad for entering data 'as usual'.

Yes, of course. I will raise a zendesk bug report.

[John Dowson]

15 hours ago, ark1320 said:

Here is a tiny app I use that puts a very small icon in the right corner of my taskbar (by the speaker icon) that indicates if Num lock, Caps lock or Scroll lock are on or off. In the pic below,  the green 'LED' above the little 1 shows Num lock is on and the other locks off.

https://keyboard-leds.com/

Btw, thanks for this pointer - very useful for me!

2 hours ago, John Dowson said:

I will raise a zendesk bug report.

Done.

[ark1320]

4 hours ago, John Dowson said:

Btw, thanks for this pointer - very useful for me!

Great, glad I could help you for a change!   🙂

 

6 hours ago, John Dowson said:

An alternative solution would be if I mapped the received numpad 0-9 keys to their num lock off equivalent. This would allow you to assign in FSUIPC7 with the num lock off, but then use those assignments (when MSFS has the focus) with numlock on. This would be a temporary fix that I would revert once the problem has been fixed by Asobo.

If that is not time consuming to do, that might be useful to allow further testing of FSUIPC7 with MSFS. I currently find MSFS almost unusable at this point due to all the bugs, but am very interested in identifying bugs that impact FSUIPC7 so FSUIPC7 works well with MSFS in the future when Asobo hopefully gets things figured out.

Al

[John Dowson]

25 minutes ago, ark1320 said:

If that is not time consuming to do

Should be pretty straightforward. I may add a new ini option to enable this, so you have a choice and can disable once Asobo fix the issue.

I'll do this tomorrow now - had enough for today!

 

[John Dowson]

@ark1320 Please try the attached build. In this version, you can add the following ini parameter to the [General] section of your FSUIPC7.ini:
        UseAlternativeNumpadKeyMapping=Yes

Once this is added, FSUIPC7 will receive the numpad keys (but only with numlock off due to MSFS bug) via SimConnect, but then send them to itself as the un-numlocked keypad keys.

So, as discussed, using this you would assign to the non-numlocked numpad keys, and when using MSFS you need numlockk off for FSUIPC to react to these keys. They will also work when FSUIPC7 has the focus (with numlock off).

FSUIPC7.exe

 

[ark1320]

1 hour ago, John Dowson said:

@ark1320 Please try the attached build. In this version, you can add the following ini parameter to the [General] section of your FSUIPC7.ini:
        UseAlternativeNumpadKeyMapping=Yes

Once this is added, FSUIPC7 will receive the numpad keys (but only with numlock off due to MSFS bug) via SimConnect, but then send them to itself as the un-numlocked keypad keys.

So, as discussed, using this you would assign to the non-numlocked numpad keys, and when using MSFS you need numlockk off for FSUIPC to react to these keys. They will also work when FSUIPC7 has the focus (with numlock off).

FSUIPC7.exe 586 kB · 0 downloads

 

Thanks John, I will give this a try.

Al

 

[John Dowson]

12 minutes ago, ark1320 said:

Thanks John, I will give this a try.

Ok, thanks. But the issue of the default key bindings in MSFS still arises. As you have to have numlock off for MSFS to send the numlock-on keys via simconnect, when you do this, the MSFS defaults for those keys will be actioned on  before it is received by FSUIPC7, which may then also act on this if there is an available assignment. So, to work as expected, you will still need to delete the defaults assigned to the non num-locked numpad keys in MSFS.

We need to wait for this to be fixed in MSFS really to be able to use both the MSFS non-numlocked assignments and also any numlocked assignments in FSUIPC.

[ark1320]

6 minutes ago, John Dowson said:

Ok, thanks. But the issue of the default key bindings in MSFS still arises. As you have to have numlock off for MSFS to send the numlock-on keys via simconnect, when you do this, the MSFS defaults for those keys will be actioned on  before it is received by FSUIPC7, which may then also act on this if there is an available assignment. So, to work as expected, you will still need to delete the defaults assigned to the non num-locked numpad keys in MSFS.

We need to wait for this to be fixed in MSFS really to be able to use both the MSFS non-numlocked assignments and also any numlocked assignments in FSUIPC.

OK, that's what I thought. I will wait - hopefully Asobo will take note of your inputs.  If I want to fly now, I just use P3Dv5. My interest here is to help debug FSUIPC7 if that is needed.

Al

[ark1320]

Hi John,

Since a couple of months have passed now, I wondering if you have ever received any acknowledgement from Asobo that they are aware of the Simconnect/Numpad keys problem, and maybe some indication of when it might be fixed?

Thanks,

Al

[John Dowson]

@ark1320 This was resolved in the 0.8.0.0.SDK release and the subsequent FSUIPC7 v7.0.2 release. Have you tried the latest release?

[ark1320]

13 hours ago, John Dowson said:

@ark1320 This was resolved in the 0.8.0.0.SDK release and the subsequent FSUIPC7 v7.0.2 release. Have you tried the latest release?

I check regularly but somehow missed the update to FSUIPC7 v7.02  -- just tried it, WORKS!! 😀

Thanks very much,

Al