Oswald53 Posted January 31, 2021 Report Posted January 31, 2021 Is there a way to run Radar Contact in MSFS 2020 with a registered version of FSUIPC7? If so a bit of a how-to would be appreciated. Thanks, Harry
Pete Dowson Posted January 31, 2021 Report Posted January 31, 2021 6 hours ago, Oswald53 said: Is there a way to run Radar Contact in MSFS 2020 with a registered version of FSUIPC7? If so a bit of a how-to would be appreciated. 1. You don't need a registered copy to use normal FSUIPC client applications. Registration enables assignments for buttons and axes, calibration, and the use of Lua plug-ins. But the application interface is always available. 2. There's no specific things to do in FSUIPC7 for Radar Contact. Just install FSUIPC7, following the instructions. 3. Radar Contact uses facilities in FSUIPC to display menus on screen in the Sim. Unfortunately these are not working properly yet in MSFS -- the facilities provided by MSFS are faulty and we are awaiting a fix from Asobo. The menus may display okay, but they won't remove and may accumulate (lots on top of each other). You can try it, but be warned. Pete
John Dowson Posted January 31, 2021 Report Posted January 31, 2021 42 minutes ago, Pete Dowson said: The menus may display okay, I don't think they do as the simconnect_text TEXT_TYPE_MENU is broken, so no menu display functionality as of yet.
Pete Dowson Posted January 31, 2021 Report Posted January 31, 2021 4 hours ago, John Dowson said: I don't think they do as the simconnect_text TEXT_TYPE_MENU is broken, so no menu display functionality as of yet. The Radar Contact code uses the FSUIPC multiline text display. There's no direct interface to Simconnect in RC - it uses FSUIPC offsets, and FSUIPC didn't provide a Menu facility as such. Pete
Oswald53 Posted January 31, 2021 Author Report Posted January 31, 2021 8 hours ago, Pete Dowson said: 1. You don't need a registered copy to use normal FSUIPC client applications. Registration enables assignments for buttons and axes, calibration, and the use of Lua plug-ins. But the application interface is always available. 2. There's no specific things to do in FSUIPC7 for Radar Contact. Just install FSUIPC7, following the instructions. 3. Radar Contact uses facilities in FSUIPC to display menus on screen in the Sim. Unfortunately these are not working properly yet in MSFS -- the facilities provided by MSFS are faulty and we are awaiting a fix from Asobo. The menus may display okay, but they won't remove and may accumulate (lots on top of each other). You can try it, but be warned. Pete I've always registered any version of FSUIPC that I use if for no other reason than to support your efforts. Thanks for the explanation re. Radar Contact.
John Dowson Posted January 31, 2021 Report Posted January 31, 2021 1 hour ago, Oswald53 said: I've always registered any version of FSUIPC that I use if for no other reason than to support your efforts. Appreciated, thanks.
Oswald53 Posted June 9, 2021 Author Report Posted June 9, 2021 On 1/31/2021 at 11:07 PM, John Dowson said: I don't think they do as the simconnect_text TEXT_TYPE_MENU is broken, so no menu display functionality as of yet. John do you know if the TEXT_TYPE_MENU has been fixed? Through the RC4 Rebuild Scenery DB function all the files needed seem to be created by makerunways.exe, a total of 16 files. I'll admit I'm short on knowledge on what it would further take, if possible at all, to make RC4 functional within MSFS. The ATC in MSFS is essentially useless. Harry
Pete Dowson Posted June 9, 2021 Report Posted June 9, 2021 6 hours ago, Oswald53 said: John do you know if the TEXT_TYPE_MENU has been fixed? Through the RC4 Rebuild Scenery DB function all the files needed seem to be created by makerunways.exe, a total of 16 files. I'll admit I'm short on knowledge on what it would further take, if possible at all, to make RC4 functional within MSFS. The ATC in MSFS is essentially useless. There is currently no menu system provided in MSFS, and seemingly nothing like it planned at present. Radar Contact is, unfortunately, a menu-driven program. You could look at using something like Pilot2ATC which is voice driven and has no menus. It is being used successfully with MSFS. Pete
John Dowson Posted June 9, 2021 Report Posted June 9, 2021 6 hours ago, Oswald53 said: John do you know if the TEXT_TYPE_MENU has been fixed? It hasn't been fixed yet. There are still issues with basic text display, let alone menus. The SimConnect_Text function is currently documented as: The SimConnect_Text function is not currently available for use. !
John Dowson Posted December 20, 2022 Report Posted December 20, 2022 Note that the SimConnect_Text function is now documented as: The SimConnect_Text function is deprecated and cannot be used in Microsoft Flight Simulator. There also doesn't seem to be any replacement or other method to display text or menus in MSFS. I will at some point (when time permits) look into providing another method to display text, such as that provided by the lua Wnd library, but this would be for text display only and not for interactive menus. John
Gabe_62 Posted December 21, 2022 Report Posted December 21, 2022 So how does ShowText on the client PC work... where RC is installed on the client ? I note that the keypress responses do need to be made on the sim PC... so is ShowText merely reflecting the text box (that is there in FS9/X and P3D ?) Therefore, "no text" on the server in MSFS means there is no info to be passed to ShowText, or RC on the client ?
John Dowson Posted December 21, 2022 Report Posted December 21, 2022 21 minutes ago, Gabe_62 said: So how does ShowText on the client PC work... where RC is installed on the client ? I note that the keypress responses do need to be made on the sim PC... so is ShowText merely reflecting the text box (that is there in FS9/X and P3D ?) Therefore, "no text" on the server in MSFS means there is no info to be passed to ShowText, or RC on the client ? I am not familiar with ShowText and so cannot advise on this. I can look into this when time permits, but maybe you can just try it and report back.... John
John Dowson Posted December 21, 2022 Report Posted December 21, 2022 I was not aware of ShowText (before my time!), but it does look interesting and a possible to solution to the problems with message display in MSFS / FSUIPC7....if it does indeed function correctly with FSUIPC7. I will look into this further when I get time over the festive period, but please report back if you try it. Note, however, that the FSUIPC Display Options, available in previous versions of FSUIPC, are no longer available in FSUIPC7. John
Gabe_62 Posted December 21, 2022 Report Posted December 21, 2022 I'll give it a quick try... but I have no clue really. I'm struggling with the new Honeycomb stuff in P3D ... don't know whether to use Axis and Ohs (as it also does Streamdeck profiles and Saitek panels) or FSUIPC with Vjoy/Authentikit for an analogue Honeycomb trim wheel. Seriously... who makes a trim wheel that's digital ?!? Gives me an absolute headache !
John Dowson Posted December 22, 2022 Report Posted December 22, 2022 The Honeycomb Bravo (including trim wheel) should be relatively straightforward to set-up. See the following post which has details on the trim wheel configuration using a lua script to implement fast/slow trim: John 1
Gabe_62 Posted January 4, 2023 Report Posted January 4, 2023 So it appears that PF3 does work in MSFS and text is shown in sim. It needs FSUIPC and it can be used networked although it's reliance in WideFS is somewhat uncertain. They have developed their own version of Show Text apparently. This suggests it should be possible to get Radar Contact wworking i.e. a text box requiring keypresses is needed. If it was... maybe someone (you ?) could take over / delegate it's further development. Seems such a waste to leave it floundering.
John Dowson Posted January 4, 2023 Report Posted January 4, 2023 49 minutes ago, Gabe_62 said: So it appears that PF3 does work in MSFS and text is shown in sim. It needs FSUIPC and it can be used networked although it's reliance in WideFS is somewhat uncertain. They have developed their own version of Show Text apparently. Who is "they"? Where is this version? Have you tried that with FSUIPC7? 50 minutes ago, Gabe_62 said: This suggests it should be possible to get Radar Contact wworking i.e. a text box requiring keypresses is needed. Have you tried this? What was the result? 51 minutes ago, Gabe_62 said: If it was... maybe someone (you ?) could take over / delegate it's further development. Seems such a waste to leave it floundering. Development of what - ShowText? As I said, I currently know nothing about this - it is new to me. I took a break over Christmas/New Year, and now have quite a few support requests to look into, as well as a new version of FSUIPC7 to release. I will look into this further when time permits, but any additional information (links to new version for example?) would be useful. John
Gabe_62 Posted January 4, 2023 Report Posted January 4, 2023 What I'm saying is PF3 has a similar system to WideFS and Show Text, working in MSFS. ERGO... it should be possible.. with some knowledge... which I don't possess ... to get Radar Contact working. A text box appears and keypresses can be made that talk to the PF3 ATC program. Moreover... it can be sent to a networked version of PF3. Sounds spookily close to the principle of Radar Contact, WideFS and Show Text... even though this 'principle' is meant to be "deprecated." Given RC4 is basically, abandonware, if it can be made to work in MSFS... maybe someone: ie: YOU... could get permission to continue its development. Do you have any idea how many people are sticking with P3D... purely because they want to use RC4 ? Hell, if you make another million, you could just donate it to local foodbanks. I don't need it... I'm as rich as Cresus !
John Dowson Posted January 5, 2023 Report Posted January 5, 2023 What is PF3? 13 hours ago, Gabe_62 said: Given RC4 is basically, abandonware, if it can be made to work in MSFS... maybe someone: ie: YOU... could get permission to continue its development. I do not have the time or knowledge required for this. 13 hours ago, Gabe_62 said: Hell, if you make another million, you could just donate it to local foodbanks. Another million? No where near making the first one....! I will look into using RC4 with MSFS at some point, but I am afraid that this is low priority. I am currently spending most of my time on support issues, and find it difficult finding time to add new functionality to the existing products I support.... John
Gabe_62 Posted January 13, 2023 Report Posted January 13, 2023 For anyone interested I've tried Oncourse PF3 and it's not bad at all. A bit more complex than RC4 but it works almost identically. It also supports SIDS and STARS, and VFR. If you're pining for RC4, try it. I've finally managed to tear myself away from P3D. Of course I would still like to see RC4. But heh ... for now it ain't happening.
John Dowson Posted October 10 Report Posted October 10 Note that someone has RC4 working (more-or-less!) with MSFS, using ShowText for the menus. See the following post: An issue has also been reported when using PF3 with both FSUIPC7 and FSUIPC6 - see This is corrected in the latest beta release of FSUIPC7 (see Announcements sub-forum) and there is also a patched version of the FSUIPC6.dll available with a fix for this in that post referenced above. John John
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