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lobrichi

Throwing in the towel

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I have to say I have been a devout follower and FSX flight simmer since the late 90's. But, after hours, days, and even weeks trying to network a simulator PC to a secondary PC, I'm throwing in the towel. Sure, I have some unplanned moments of guessing brilliance that have made the connection work in the past and I have enjoyed a few hours of the most realistic flying I could possibly have sitting in the comfort of my home office. But, who in God's name can call this fun when you spend 3/4 of the time "working the bugs out" of this stupid thing called Simconnect, as you spend flying? There is always something whether it's miss-matched MSI's (simconnect clients), a ISP change in IP addresses that aren't static, a firewall port that is duplicated or not open. And all this crap of having multiple Simconnect clients on your machines so the odds are increased that 2 pc's will actually talk to each other? Oh, and then make sure you put this .ini file here, and .cfg file there, blah, blah, blah.. I fly a Cessna 172 in real life and I can tell you it would be easier for anyone to get a full-on type rating in a B767 than it is to network FSX SDK clients on an alternate PC to allow the primary PC to do the primary job of giving you a most realistic aircraft flying experience with FSX. The whole thing in my mind is designed to be a test of how much one will endure to make the process enjoyable -or- just give it up. I'm sure if someone out there could design some fail-safe uncomplicated networking application, there would be many more virtual pilots in this world. Sad, but true. This is a joke and I hope I never have to look at another SimConnect Client version again. I just bought a Phantom 4 drone ($1400) and am sure to experience my pleasure of flight in a much easier way and have beautiful pictures and videos to prove it. Goodbye FSX. Microsoft probably saved millions of dollars in support by letting this application go. Nothing but nonsense for anyone who is really into this hobby seriously.

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Real flight is not less expensive nor less time consuming, especially if you plan to keep your PPL active.

 

BUT, with that said I do agree with you ... flight simuation is not for the timid, even more so if one attempts to push the envelope (i.e. networked PCs).

 

The sad reality is there just aren't enough programming resources (on any platform) to make this process seamless and end user friendly.  Many in the past have thrown in the towel for a multitude of reasons.  Ironically, that throwing in of the towel just makes the end user base that much smaller which only makes the issues you've run into that much worse.

 

BUT, that's why resources like AVSIM exists ... to help people work thru those problems.  Since this is your first post, if you are seeking help and not just venting, then your answers are likely to live in this forum.  But first you must ask for assistance ... or just walk away, but I think you'd be missing out on a lot.

 

Cheers, Rob.

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Rob, I appreciate your reply and I am sure there a countless individuals who had the excitement and devotion to this hobby as I have and they simply just became frustrated for the final time and never touched a flight yoke again. I don't know how many times I have "lit up" the VATSIM ARTCC maps in genuine excitement of filing a flight plan only to find a dot of of virtual pilots and and even fewer manned virtual ATC controllers "open for business" making not even worth it for me to file a flight plan. In this day and age, there are so many more venues of virtual entertainment for which you can be "in play" with seconds of logging on to their PC and enjoy the most realistic of action scenarios with so much less hassle and manual time required to correctly set up FSX. Even Frooglesim admits in one of his videos (he admits he didn't even want to make) what a serious "bear of a challenge" Simconnect presents for those who love this "hobby" enough to desire elevating to the next level. The manual networking setup of FSX is just too laborious and prone to error for today's typical PC user which quickly divides those who endeavor to learn the true feeling, science and rules of flight and those who are just looking for the excitement and immediate "self-gratification" of just playing any 3-D game. Virtual pilots and even ATC controllers are a very small group of those who have a sincere dedication. Unfortunately, it is STILL a very difficult and archaeic manual process required to get the most realistic experience of all FSX and associated virtual communities and application developers have to offer. Surprisingly, no one has stepped up to the plate to make the real FSX experience worth time and effort for those that are seriously intrigued both with the science and thrill of this experience. I have spend literally into the thousands of dollars for hardware (2 full computer builds, TItanX Graphics card, I-7 CPU's, 7 flat panel monitors), endless applications (primocache, FSC, ASNext, REX4 weather, FSBuild,  etc.) and a multitude of payware aircraft (LVLD, Super 80 professional, Quality Wings 757, etc.). And when it is made obvious I cannot get more enjoyment out of it by running it simultaneously on 2 separate computers because I missed capitalizing the "P" in "IPV4" in my simconnect.cfg code, it makes me a little bit crazy when I realize the hours I put into figuring out that very minor error. I've done this enough times and STILL average at least a minimum of a dozen exports of the the ASNext error reports trying to get my weather vented in from a second PC. Always some little "bug" and like the gamer who these days I know won't have the patience, I as a mature adult just don't have the energy or stamina to waste the time trying to figure it out anymore. Until such time someone make this easier, the virtual flightsim community I fear will just be a slowly dying breed.

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I can completely understand your frustration and you are not the only one that has expressed such frustration and will not be the last one.  From my perspective as a software engineer/designer I can see how to "fix it", BUT, I can't see the necessary revenue to support the "fix" ... it's somewhat of a Catch-22.

 

If you look at 2 week wonder games like Crysis, they'll sell 8 Million copies in just 2 weeks ($60 per copy) ... heck even Goat Simulator sold 1 Million plus copies in just a month (not kidding).  Look at DTG FSX-SE who have claimed different sales numbers pending who you talk to anywhere from 380,000 to 500,000 at $7.  As you can see there is a VAST difference in revenue between the two (FSX-SE and Crysis).  I believe at one point Crysis development had almost 1000 developers, designers, artists, sound engineers, etc. working on the project.  Keep in mind Crysis doesn't really have a robust SDK like P3D/FSX ... just a very different type of project and product aimed at a very different market but Crysis has the funding to provide a high level of "fit and finish" and doesn't have to worry about supporting a 3rd party SDK.

 

I'll disagree with you on the flight sim is slowly dying, maybe FSX is, but P3D has grown considerably and where it has grown is in the most significant aspect ... the 3rd party sector.

 

When I see posts like this, I do want to "fix it" and I know I could "fix it" adding:

1.  Automated SimConnect installs and configuration of network setup

2.  Virtual shop, pick any aircraft, airport, scenery you want to fly either to "buy" or "rent", it locates vendor, downloads, installs, end user just waits for progress bar to finish.

3.  Automatic conflict resolution (DLLs, AFCAD, etc. etc.)

4.  Automatic updates (of base sim and installed add-ons)

5.  Automatic setup of controllers (including registry hacks to get some controllers to work correctly)

6.  Etc. etc.

 

But unfortunately it would require two key elements:

1.  3rd party "buy in" and adhering to some minimal level of standards atleast for download/access

2.  Considerable development resources that MUST be on-going resources as new products release

 

Flight sim is not going away any time soon, it will have a limited prospective scope unless that scope changes and more resources come to the table.  The only way I can see major growth (i.e. in the Millions of active users) with a larger end user base is to transform flight simulation into global simulation ... combine Train Sim, Flight Sim, Combat Sim, Bus Sim, Truck Sim into one single MMO.  It is doable, it's the ONLY global platform that is capable to be honest ... every single other MMO platform is limited and has NO where near the SDK that FSX/P3D have today.

 

When 3rd party can start selling 200,000 copies rather than say 4,000 ... then we'll see more resources and a much more polished end user experience.

 

It could happen, but it's going to take A LOT of cooperation across some diverse sets of developers and publishers.

 

Cheers, Rob.

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I share your pain and suffering with the dreaded Simconnect. I also spent hours, which transformed to days, and then weeks before giving up. The goal was to run ASNext and the FS Economy client on client PC's with FSX on the server. While there are step by step instructions on HiFi's (ASN) website, success was not an option. 

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Sounds like I need to do a SimConnect networked PC tutorial video.

 

Cheers, Rob.

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Sounds like I need to do a SimConnect networked PC tutorial video.

 

Cheers, Rob.

Rob oh yes please, I have been struggling only for a short time, only recently moved over from REX to ASN due to almost everyone using it these days, and yes it's the bee's knees to be sure, it's very nice. Using it on my FSX Machine, brilliant, on my Client despite three whole days of effort, ASN just sits there waiting forever to connect to the simulator. Rex worked fine over simconnect when I eventually got it going (that was fun (Not) too, I thought just replacing REX with ASN should not be a hassle, wrong again, anyway I live in hope, not giving up yet, but please, please do a comprehensive video on the subject. Thanks.

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Hi There,

 

This is my first post.

 

I need help with SimConnect.  (Did I spell that correctly? :wink:)

I want to run my ACARS client and ActiveSkyNext on my slave (client) computer while I run FSX SE on my main computer (server).  I have downloaded and registered a legitimate copy of FSUIPC and WideFS and it works well with the ACARS client.  However, ASN requires SimConnect, which, after reading about setting it up on the internet and watching a video by FroogleSim (he's a great youtube guy) who had a tutorial about how to setup "The bear called SimConnect" I though it wouldn't be too challenging, however I was WRONG!  (I am a Mac user and a X-Plane native and my experiences with Windows and FSX have not been good with countless problems... I am not starting a sim or OS war)  FSUIPC and WideFS were easy but Oh My GOSH! SimConnect is EVIL!!! :excl:

 

Ok, now I'll explain my problem...

 

I have installed all the versions of SimConnect  (RTM - SP1 - XPACK) in my FSX SE root folder: SDK>  ​core utilities kit> lib   and SDK>  ​core utilities kit> legacy interfaces on my client and my server computer.  And I have all the IPv4 Addresses on my computers correctly listed and I have the required files, copied perfectly.  However, when I start up FSX SE, I cannot load PMDG Aircraft. (The very reason I bought FSX ironically :smile: along with Concorde)  When I attempt to load a PMDG airplane (I only have the 737-800/900 NGX and 777-200LRF/300ER Expansion) it gets stuck on loading the plane and FSX SE freezes but doesn't crash or anything. Also, ASN says waiting for simulator although the sim is open on my main computer.  I have consulted the ASN manual ( a rare occasion for me :wink:) and have found that this problem is related to not correctly installing SimConnect.

 

Again, my hope is to only have FSX SE on my main machine running while everything else is on my client machine.

 

If someone can help than this is much appreciated.  (I have contacted ASN support but they cannot help with SimConnect)

 

Thanks,

 

Boeing777300.

 

Ironically, I do not know how to start a new topic so I am replying to this forum for help.

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I've been using simconnect network since 2007, 2 or 3 years just learning it. The biggest issue I have found is the Computer network setup being correct. I understand the frustration.

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