Majestic Q400 - Utilization of 2D panels

[RALF9636 1,951]

I'd like to bring this up again.

 

I suffered several freezes of P3D (V4) lately when flying the Q400 with MCE. Everytime the sim froze, one or even two 2D-panels were open because the MCE-FO was operating some switch(es). So I am quite sure that MCE using the 2D-panels was causing the freezes. I never had any freezes when flying other aircraft.

Most of the times the MCE-FO was handling a 2D-panel, when a second 2D-panel command was coming up. Several possible reasons for this:

 - the FO dialing in a frequency during a handoff with PF3 with a script running simultaneously or with another given command or

- MCE just caught a sound and took that for a command involving a 2D-panel (happens from time to time depending on the microphone sensitivity)

- I moved the mouse while MCE was handling a 2D-panel command, messing up the whole procedure, sometimes causing a 2D-panel to remain open, leading to a crash when the next 2D panel opens.

 

So, many things that can go wrong and not all are under my control. Now I have to live with the constant fear of a crash which is quite annoying.

 

I would appreciate very much if you would find out what causes this crash or at least find a way to prevent more than one 2D-panel action at a time being handled to avoid it.

Until then, you can possibly add an option to the mce.ini to disable all 2D-panel actions. I'd rather handle these switches myself than live with the crashes.

 

Edited June 13, 2018 by RALF9636

[FS++ 708]

11 hours ago, RALF9636 said:

I'd like to bring this up again.

 

I suffered several freezes of P3D (V4) lately when flying the Q400 with MCE. Everytime the sim froze, one or even two 2D-panels were open because the MCE-FO was operating some switch(es). So I am quite sure that MCE using the 2D-panels was causing the freezes. I never had any freezes when flying other aircraft.

Most of the times the MCE-FO was handling a 2D-panel, when a second 2D-panel command was coming up. Several possible reasons for this:

 - the FO dialing in a frequency during a handoff with PF3 with a script running simultaneously or with another given command or

- MCE just caught a sound and took that for a command involving a 2D-panel (happens from time to time depending on the microphone sensitivity)

- I moved the mouse while MCE was handling a 2D-panel command, messing up the whole procedure, sometimes causing a 2D-panel to remain open, leading to a crash when the next 2D panel opens.

 

So, many things that can go wrong and not all are under my control. Now I have to live with the constant fear of a crash which is quite annoying.

 

I would appreciate very much if you would find out what causes this crash or at least find a way to prevent more than one 2D-panel action at a time being handled to avoid it.

Until then, you can possibly add an option to the mce.ini to disable all 2D-panel actions. I'd rather handle these switches myself than live with the crashes.

 

Thanks for the report.

Will be looked at next week.

[RALF9636 1,951]

I managed to get along without crashes for some weeks by carefully making sure not to overstrain my FO, but today I made a mistake again:

On final approach I advised my FO: "going to Tower".
While he was changing the frequency I added: "autopilot off".

The corresponding two 2d-panels collided - and P3D froze and crashed.

So MCE ruined my flight on final approach - kind of worst case scenario.

Afterwards I succesfully recreated that situation several times: Say "going to Tower" (or any other frequency) and then say "autopilot off" - the sim freezes and crashes.

Any chance you can recreate the problem and look for a solution?

Edited August 22, 2018 by RALF9636

[charlie130 196]

Just my two penneth.

I am using MCE from a while ago....(.4) version. The Mjc Dash 8 works with all my scripted MCE flows and also when/if comanded verbally.

All panels open and close very quickly. The instance of the panel opening, mouse click action and then close panel, all in a matter of less than a second. Apart from the fire and lights test procedure. This speed undoubtably helps the safe execution of actions with the mouse.

I still use RC4, so can not comment on any other ATC program.

My finding is that even when I fiddle with the mouse or ask for another command to be executed, my P3dv4.1 stays up, no CTD. On occasion I have fiddled with the mouse during an MCE panel execution, it's not been critical.

I presume a CTD may be related to another ATC program issue where a mouse action is emulated?

I seem to recall ( may be wrong due to age related memory loss!), something in the past, being mentioned about making the panels transparent? Whether this would help with things I have no idea? Just a thought?

Best regards

David.

 

[FS++ 708]

On ‎6‎/‎13‎/‎2018 at 10:34 PM, RALF9636 said:

I'd like to bring this up again.

 

I suffered several freezes of P3D (V4) lately when flying the Q400 with MCE. Everytime the sim froze, one or even two 2D-panels were open because the MCE-FO was operating some switch(es). So I am quite sure that MCE using the 2D-panels was causing the freezes. I never had any freezes when flying other aircraft.

Most of the times the MCE-FO was handling a 2D-panel, when a second 2D-panel command was coming up. Several possible reasons for this:

 - the FO dialing in a frequency during a handoff with PF3 with a script running simultaneously or with another given command or

- MCE just caught a sound and took that for a command involving a 2D-panel (happens from time to time depending on the microphone sensitivity)

- I moved the mouse while MCE was handling a 2D-panel command, messing up the whole procedure, sometimes causing a 2D-panel to remain open, leading to a crash when the next 2D panel opens.

 

So, many things that can go wrong and not all are under my control. Now I have to live with the constant fear of a crash which is quite annoying.

 

I would appreciate very much if you would find out what causes this crash or at least find a way to prevent more than one 2D-panel action at a time being handled to avoid it.

Until then, you can possibly add an option to the mce.ini to disable all 2D-panel actions. I'd rather handle these switches myself than live with the crashes.

 

Sorry about that.

It's possibly a multi-threading issue. Some thread possibly locking and not unlocking resource in a timely manner.

The simulated clicks are queued and ideally should be executed as they come.

Obviously, when Fo needs to dial radio via 2D fmc cdu, while a flow is in progress, there is this possibility of clicks being interleaved.

The root cause might have been identified.

As a result of the changes, some clicks may occasionally be lost . Should prevent the crash though.

Download this patch and replace files as per folder structure.

Changelog.

Addresses issue you reported in this thread.

Adds new features related to FSL A320/A319 support. See this thread

 

[RALF9636 1,951]

11 hours ago, FS++ said:

It's possibly a multi-threading issue. Some thread possibly locking and not unlocking resource in a timely manner.

The simulated clicks are queued and ideally should be executed as they come.

Obviously, when Fo needs to dial radio via 2D fmc cdu, while a flow is in progress, there is this possibility of clicks being interleaved.

The root cause might have been identified.

As a result of the changes, some clicks may occasionally be lost . Should prevent the crash though.

Download this patch and replace files as per folder structure.

 

 

I can confirm that it works so far, both with my scripts that have always resulted in a freeze before and with a combination of spoken commands like a frequency change and "autopilot off".

No crashes anymore, instead some clicks are missed. I guess these are the clicks that would have led to the freeze before.

I can live with these lost clicks very well. Better to remind the FO of some duties than a crashed sim.

 

Thanks a lot!

 

Edited August 24, 2018 by RALF9636

[jfayre 2]

Hello all,

Sorry to revive this old topic, but I have a simple question. Does the MCE support for the q400 require the Professional eddition of the q400? I have the pilot edition and some commands such as starting the engines aren't working. I suspect this is because the pilot edition doesn't include 2d panels. Any thoughts?

[tman41291 4]

On 5/7/2019 at 12:35 AM, jfayre said:

Hello all,

Sorry to revive this old topic, but I have a simple question. Does the MCE support for the q400 require the Professional eddition of the q400? I have the pilot edition and some commands such as starting the engines aren't working. I suspect this is because the pilot edition doesn't include 2d panels. Any thoughts?

I have the pilot edition and MCE wants to make weird views and pop up panels and such lol. It's quite humorous. I just purchased the q400 again (had it in v3) and trying to get it stable. In v3 I had the pilot edition and it worked just fine if I remember correctly.

[FS++ 708]

7 hours ago, tman41291 said:

I have the pilot edition and MCE wants to make weird views and pop up panels and such lol. It's quite humorous. I just purchased the q400 again (had it in v3) and trying to get it stable. In v3 I had the pilot edition and it worked just fine if I remember correctly.

In P3D V4, you need some of the 2D panels. Overhead, Pedestal and front.

[ibomiles 1]

I like recording videos in P3dv4.5 of my flights but Panels 3,4, and 5 popping up kinda kills the mood.  So I undock everything and slide them over to Display 2.  Then I close them all while on display 2.  Performance seems ok for the Q400 & the AVRO Jets.  The Maddog is TBD. 

Why is FSX is better at this because only the mini panels for the FMC and the ARDU need to be undocked?  PF Mouse control is better also.  Under P3Dv4 the FO grabs the rodent and runs off with it to Display2 and drops it there..  

 

[Abcdeflijus 1]

Hello,

 

Well this topic is quite old, but that's exactly what I was looking for.

Recently I've just added another great airplane to my fleet and that's Majestic Q400.

I was immediately impressed about this plane and performance. And obviously, could not imagine flying it without MCE first officer. I've got a pro version, that comes with 2D panels and experiencing more or less same issues and was wondering what is the current situation with this airplane and MCE?

If to be specific, two biggest issues for me is those popping up panels and COM1 that FO controls.

While panels can be set to 100% transparent, that only reduces half of the problem. Not being able to control anything else with the mouse while FO is doing his flows, is a little bit annoying. It's not that critical lets say for example to switch something on or off while taxing, but sometimes it's needed to activate free look with mouse and that just doesn't work well, when FO is messing around with invisible panels.

Another thing that I can't figure out, is why FO is dialing frequencies via FMS and not on ARCDU?

It doesn't matter which mode I select on ARCDU FO still uses FMS to dial frequency. But the thing is that he is not doing it right all the time and I need to double check him. 

So just wondering if there has been any bigger changes since last post,  that would make piloting Q400 more smoother together with MCE?

I am on P3D V4.5 HF3 and also using PF3 together.

I really loved that plane, but no plane is as good to fly without MCE FO, so hope to hear some good news or advices on this case 😌

 

Regards, 

Viktor.

[FS++ 708]

18 hours ago, Abcdeflijus said:

Hello,

 

Well this topic is quite old, but that's exactly what I was looking for.

Recently I've just added another great airplane to my fleet and that's Majestic Q400.

I was immediately impressed about this plane and performance. And obviously, could not imagine flying it without MCE first officer. I've got a pro version, that comes with 2D panels and experiencing more or less same issues and was wondering what is the current situation with this airplane and MCE?

If to be specific, two biggest issues for me is those popping up panels and COM1 that FO controls.

While panels can be set to 100% transparent, that only reduces half of the problem. Not being able to control anything else with the mouse while FO is doing his flows, is a little bit annoying. It's not that critical lets say for example to switch something on or off while taxing, but sometimes it's needed to activate free look with mouse and that just doesn't work well, when FO is messing around with invisible panels.

Another thing that I can't figure out, is why FO is dialing frequencies via FMS and not on ARCDU?

It doesn't matter which mode I select on ARCDU FO still uses FMS to dial frequency. But the thing is that he is not doing it right all the time and I need to double check him. 

So just wondering if there has been any bigger changes since last post,  that would make piloting Q400 more smoother together with MCE?

I am on P3D V4.5 HF3 and also using PF3 together.

I really loved that plane, but no plane is as good to fly without MCE FO, so hope to hear some good news or advices on this case 😌

 

Regards, 

Viktor.

Glad to hear you like th crew experience.

If MSFS wasn't around there would have been plenty of time to do research on P3D to vercome that limitation. FO does click everythings in VC with Q400 in FSX.

With so many airplanes coming out for MSFS, hardly any time to revisit the stuff done many years ago.

The alternative to transparencly, is to open the 2D panels, position them anywhere you like, resize them to stamp like size (5 cm x 5 cm. Don't need exact size anything will do) then close them.

When FO needs to click something, he'll automatically pop-up the relevant panel, compute the ad-hoc coordinates taking into account panel position and size, make the click and automatically close the panel.

 

[Abcdeflijus 1]

Gerald,

 

One of the reason why everyone likes MCE, is that you provide superb and very fast feedback on any case on this forum! 

Apart from that, I simply could not imagine anymore flying complex aircraft, without MCE interference.

I understand, that now many software developers are concentrated on making stuff for MSFS and that's normal, you need to keep moving forward with the rest of the world.

I also have MSFS and many addons already for it, but still holding it back. Things just don't work well for me there as it works in good old time trusted simulator and addons. 

In any case, thanks for quick response. I think I just need to fly and learn Majestix Q400 a little bit more and find some tricks, that will make it work more smoother with MCE regarding those panels.

I don't want them to appear at all, as I prefer VC. So it's ok to keep them 100% transparent. 

And regarding radio, I think I figured it out and it works properly now. 

 

Regards,

Viktor.