iFly 737 MAX8 in MSFS 2024 - Flaps axis calibration using FSUIPC

[WebMaximus]

I just moved to MSFS2024 and do all my flying in the iFly 737 MAX8 using a Honeycomb Bravo TQ where I've added a 737 throttle set from Flight Sim Factory to make it a bit more realistic.

In MSFS2020, I was able to calibrate the flaps axis to match the flaps in the aircraft but now in MSFS2024 where the calibration options changed a bit, I'm struggling to match the hardware flaps lever with the software one (the one seen in virtual cockpit).

Now I'm wondering if maybe FSUIPC could help me achieve what I'm looking for, to calibrate the flaps axis to match the hardware flaps positions with the flaps positions in the aircraft.

Anyone had any success doing this with FSUIPC or maybe you have some other tips how to accomplish this?

Another option might be using SPAD.next which I've played around with in the past but I always found it to be rather complicated and would prefer finding an easier way doing this if possible.

This is what my HC Bravo looks like with the 737 throttle set installed with the predefined flaps positions.

[John Dowson]

You can try FSUIPC to see if is suitable for your needs. Download and install it from https://fsuipc.com/ and then install the trial license, available from a post at the top of this forum.

FSUIPC provides facilities for calibrating flaps with specific detents - see page 44 of the FSUIPC7 User guide (the FSUIPC documentation will be installed in your Documents folder), section CALIBRATING FLAPS WITH SPECIFIC DÉTENTES. i don't have the iFly, but I believe it uses the standard Flaps Set control (K event) so that should work. If not, there are other methods you can try. Also make sure that the flaps lever is not assigned in MSFS.

There is a learning curve with FSUIPC, as there is with all such control software. Read the documentation and try and assigning your flaps (to the Flaps control using Send direct to FSUIPC calibration) and then calibrate on page 6 of the calibration panel as indicated in the documentation. If you have any difficulties, post again and I will try to help.

John

[John Dowson]

I have also moved this post to the FSUIPC7 / MSFS sub-forum. Please use this sub-forum for all questions and issues with FSUIPC7 / MSFS2020 / MSFS2024.

John

[WebMaximus]

Brilliant, many thanks John for your reply. Will try what you suggest.

I have been using FSUIPC in the past (like you, I've been in this FS playground for many, many years now) so I'm not new to FSUIPC but I suppose I will have to invest some time remembering how all is done 🙂

[WebMaximus]

Hey @John Dowson

Thought I would try and play around with this over the weekend but looks like the trial license downloaded from the post you're referring to already expired?

I don't get the assignments menu option and when clicking Help-About it confirms the registration expired.

[John Dowson]

Oops - looks like I forgot to update it this month. Its done now - try downloading again.

John

[WebMaximus]

Thanks John, that was quick and now it looks much better 🙂

One thing though I wanted to mention is how my EXE.xml (for MSFS2024) wasn't updated even when I had that checked during the installation. Which as you know is also the recommended and default value for that setting. To have FSUIPC start automatically with MSFS2024.

Not sure if it could be related to me having both MSFS and MSFS2020 installed? During the installation, I picked only MSFS2024 since that is the one where I need some help from FSUIPC it appears.

No big deal though, I can add it to EXE.xml myself but still wanted to point this out to you.

[John Dowson]

Just now, WebMaximus said:

One thing though I wanted to mention is how my EXE.xml (for MSFS2024) wasn't updated even when I had that checked during the installation.

Look at or show me your InstallFSUIPC7.log file - that should indicate the issue. Usually, if its not updated, it is due to the current EXE.xml being invalid.

2 minutes ago, WebMaximus said:

Not sure if it could be related to me having both MSFS and MSFS2020 installed? During the installation, I picked only MSFS2024 since that is the one where I need some help from FSUIPC it appears.

No - it should always install what is selected.

John

[WebMaximus]

5 minutes ago, John Dowson said:

Look at or show me your InstallFSUIPC7.log file - that should indicate the issue. Usually, if its not updated, it is due to the current EXE.xml being invalid.

No - it should always install what is selected.

John

You were right as seen here from the log file. I'm still surprised since it's working just fine after I added it manually to EXE.xml and I have other things in EXE.xml as well where I had no issues having those added in there automatically during the installation of those addons. Such as Couatl for GSX, some Aerosoft stuff etc. So not sure why FSUIPC doesn't like my EXE.xml file 🤔 Or...it does like it, it just doesn't like to be added automatically 😉

Adding FSUIPC7 auto-start for MSFS2024 via the MSFS EXE.xml.
Updating EXE.XML for MSFS2024 MS Store install
Error loading EXE.xml file: C:\Users\richa\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Limitless_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\EXE.xml
**** Auto-start of FSUIPC7 with MSFS2024 will not be enabled ****
**** To resolve, remove or rename this file and re-install:  C:\Users\richa\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Limitless_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\EXE.xml****

 

[WebMaximus]

Working like a charm 👏

Thanks you so much @John Dowson for your help and your excellent piece of software 👍

So, time to buy my registration code 🙂 I've bought older versions of FSUIPC in the past (version 4 and 5 as I recall it). Is there some form of discount before I go ahead and buy a license for this latest version of FSUIPC?

[John Dowson]

58 minutes ago, WebMaximus said:

You were right as seen here from the log file. I'm still surprised since it's working just fine after I added it manually to EXE.xml and I have other things in EXE.xml as well where I had no issues having those added in there automatically during the installation of those addons. Such as Couatl for GSX, some Aerosoft stuff etc. So not sure why FSUIPC doesn't like my EXE.xml file 🤔 Or...it does like it, it just doesn't like to be added automatically 😉

FSUIPC checks its a properly formatted xml document - if not, it doesn't update. If its not properly formatted, its usually due to another add-on corrupting it. If you can attached the EXE.xml, here, I cab take a look. Other add-ons probably just treat it as a text file - which is also why it gets corrupted!

20 minutes ago, WebMaximus said:

Working like a charm 👏

Great!

20 minutes ago, WebMaximus said:

Thanks you so much @John Dowson for your help and your excellent piece of software 👍

No problem.

20 minutes ago, WebMaximus said:

So, time to buy my registration code 🙂 I've bought older versions of FSUIPC in the past (version 4 and 5 as I recall it). Is there some form of discount before I go ahead and buy a license for this latest version of FSUIPC?

You will automatically get a discount when you purchase/check-out if you have bought previous versions.

Cheers,

John

[WebMaximus]

8 minutes ago, John Dowson said:

FSUIPC checks its a properly formatted xml document - if not, it doesn't update. If its not properly formatted, its usually due to another add-on corrupting it. If you can attached the EXE.xml, here, I cab take a look. Other add-ons probably just treat it as a text file - which is also why it gets corrupted!

Great!

No problem.

You will automatically get a discount when you purchase/check-out if you have bought previous versions.

Cheers,

John

Ah, got it. I've attached the file here but again, no big deal since I already have it working after adding FSUIPC myself.

Brilliant with the discount, will get a new license right now 👍

Enjoy the rest of your weekend John and great to see you're still around in the FS community after all these years 🙂

EXE.xml

[John Dowson]

1 hour ago, WebMaximus said:

I've attached the file here but again, no big deal since I already have it working after adding FSUIPC myself.

Useful for me to see why it failed. Looks ok/valid on a first look, so not sure why its failing. May help me to improve the install process if its failing on a valid xml file. I will look into it further when time permits.

Cheers,

John

 

[WebMaximus]

1 hour ago, John Dowson said:

Useful for me to see why it failed. Looks ok/valid on a first look, so not sure why its failing. May help me to improve the install process if its failing on a valid xml file. I will look into it further when time permits.

Cheers,

John

 

Just let me know if I can be of any help 👍

Might also mention the uninstall ended up in a never ending loop I had to kill via Task Manager.

Maybe related if it tries removing the entry from EXE.xlm it thinks is in there.

[John Dowson]

3 minutes ago, WebMaximus said:

Might also mention the uninstall ended up in a never ending loop I had to kill via Task Manager.

Maybe related if it tried removing the entry from EXE.xlm it thinks is in there.

Yes, most probably. But I can test and hopefully rectify this with the EXE.xml file you kindly shared.

But I am busy at the moment - will take me some time before I can look into this. I will let you know - although I have a suspicion its the long file/path lengths that means the closing xml statement is not being read, hence invalidating the xml, but we'll see....

Cheers,

John

 

[WebMaximus]

16 minutes ago, John Dowson said:

Yes, most probably. But I can test and hopefully rectify this with the EXE.xml file you kindly shared.

But I am busy at the moment - will take me some time before I can look into this. I will let you know - although I have a suspicion its the long file/path lengths that means the closing xml statement is not being read, hence invalidating the xml, but we'll see....

Cheers,

John

 

Certainly no rush over here having it fixed since it's easy enough to do it manually 👍

[John Dowson]

@WebMaximus I have taken a look at this and it is nothing todo with the contents of the file, its the encoding. Your EXE.xml file is in UTF-8 BOM encoding for some reason. and not standard UTF-8. The BOM encoding (Byte Order Mark) adds 3 bytes to the start of the text stream, and is NOT recommended by the Unicode standard. This is confusing the xml parser which will not load such an encoded file.

I suggest you change the file encoding to standard UTF-8. You can do this in Notepad++ if you have this - just load the file, change the encoding vie the Encoding menu, and then save it.

Not sure why your file is UTF-8 BOM encoded though. I will ad this information to the Installation and Registration guide.

John

[WebMaximus]

That's interesting indeed why the encoding was set to UTF-8 BOM. Since I certainly never went into the Encoding menu in Notepad++ for this file before, it must be one of the other programs who modified the file.

Either way, I've now changed the encoding as you suggested and even when I already had it working fine as you know, I of course wanted to try it out 🙂

So, I started removing the manually added FSUIPC entry to make sure my EXE.xml was clean from FSUIPC related entries. I then ran the setup file which told me the existing version needed to be uninstalled. As expected. This time, the uninstallation went fine without ending up in that loop I had before. A good sign! I then ran through the installation with all default options which went fine.

However...when checking EXE.xml after the installation where I of course thought I would now find an entry to FSUIPC, I didn't. Checking the log file (attached), it this time tells me EXE.xml indeed was updated. Which I can also see looking at the time stamp of the file. Which makes it very confusing why I didn't see an entry for FSUIPC in there or what am I missing here 🤔

Opening EXE.xml in Notepad++ again and checking under the Encoding menu, I now see how it's no longer set to UTF-8 which I earlier converted it to and saved the file. Instead, it's showing me this:

InstallFSUIPC7.log

[John Dowson]

1 hour ago, WebMaximus said:

I of course thought I would now find an entry to FSUIPC, I didn't.

But it looks to be there -- this line:

Quote

    <Launch.Addon><Disabled>False</Disabled><ManualLoad>False</ManualLoad><Name>FSUIPC7</Name><Path>C:\FSUIPC7\FSUIPC7.exe</Path><CommandLine>-auto</CommandLine><NewConsole>False</NewConsole></Launch.Addon></SimBase.Document>

No line feeds are added by FSUIPC, so its all on one line.

1 hour ago, WebMaximus said:

Opening EXE.xml in Notepad++ again and checking under the Encoding menu, I now see how it's no longer set to UTF-8 which I earlier converted it to and saved the file. Instead, it's showing me this

Thats fine -  its Windows-1252, as that is what is defined in the xml file header.

John

[WebMaximus]

Ah, I clearly need to open my eyes. Didn't spot that last line with no line feeds but everything on a single line.

Is there a particular reason why you put it in there like that? Rather than using the "normal" format used by other add-ons.

Good to know the encoding is OK 👍

[John Dowson]

8 minutes ago, WebMaximus said:

Is there a particular reason why you put it in there like that? Rather than using the "normal" format used by other add-ons.

Its the xml plugin I am using in the installer - it doesn't add new lines for some reason. Not much I can do about it without removing this plugin and doing it another way, which I just don't have time for.- there is always something more important to be done!

John

 

[WebMaximus]

3 minutes ago, John Dowson said:

Its the xml plugin I am using in the installer - it doesn't add new lines for some reason. Not much I can do about it without removing this plugin and doing it another way, which I just don't have time for.- there is always something more important to be done!

John

 

I hear you, seems there is never enough of time is it 🙂

Speaking of it, time to enjoy some flying using your brilliant software where I now have a perfectly working flaps lever rather than messing around with boring xml files 😅

Thanks again for all your help John, really appreciated!