I have a strange issue with Radar Contact in P3D5 HF2.  It works fine and I always fly with it for IFR flights.  I have a triple monitor viewgroup and every 8 seconds or so the two outer monitors flash, as does the Radar Contact window. Strangely the centre window doesn't flash.  After half an hour or so, usually near top of climb the Radar Contact window flickers really fast.  Its unbearable on the eyes so reluctantly I shut down Radar Contact and then there's no flickering at all.  It makes no difference if I run Radar Contact remotely from my second PC as I still get the flashing.

I did a search for this but all the posts were old and related to AdvDisplay window.  I think Radar Contact doesn't use that any more but uses a SimConnect Window now?

Does anyone have any thoughts on how I might start to troubleshoot this? I am desperate to get Radar Contact back, as flying without it is much less immersive.

Rich,

It sounds very much like a SimConnect issue as that’s the window RC uses when run on the same PC.

I don’t have P3Dv5 but if you run RC4 on a separate PC using WideFS and ShowText for the RC menu there should be no problems.

It's a known bug in P3Dv5--pretty much any open transparent text window can do it, but it goes away as soon as the window is off the screen.

I set a hotkey in FSUIPC to hide/unhide the Simconnect window, and before taxi I hide the window.  I can bring it up momentarily during the flight if I need it with the hotkey.

I had forgotten about ShowText, though...may have to give that a try, as I do run RC4 networked on a second PC.

 

ShowText is available here. https://forum.simflight.com/topic/66136-useful-additional-programs/

Far more elegant than SimConnect as you can choose the font and size.

Thanks Ray and Bob for the suggestions.  I will try that and hope it brings Radar Contact back into use.

 

Rich Cooke

Rich, you’ll probably need to check the settings in FSUIPC for configuring how data is displayed via SimConnect.

This pinned topic, whilst old, should help. https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/272752-fsuipc-widefs-showtext-settings-for-rc-43/

 

Hi Ray.  Thanks for the extra tips.  I've made some progress!  I have Show AdvDisplay on my flight PC and it is connected to  Radar Contact on my slave PC via WideFS.  At first I had both the AdvDisplay and the SimConnect windows but the settings in FSUIPC seem to have got rid of the simconnect window.  AdvDisplay is a separate window outside of P3D.  At first if I clicked on P3D it disappeared behind but I solved that when I found the "Stay on Top" option.  Is that how its meant to be?

The main issue I have now is that Radar Contact is not recognising the key presses on my flight PC e.g. option 2 is WX Brf on 12480 but hitting 2 is not doing anything.  I'll check the Radar Contact documentation.  My flight PC is out of action until Friday so I'll have another go then.  Thanks for your help.

Rich Cooke

 

Rich, don’t use AdvDisp. It’s years old. ShowText is much better. You don’t want any SimConnect windows associated with RC on the P3D display. You need to set options in FSUIPC as shown in the link by John Dekker. Given you’ve paid for WideFS use it to keep the RC menu on a separate PC.

Change the Keyboard option to set CTRL+2 for RC commands. You probably have a conflict. Alternatively CTRL+Shift+2 should also work. It depends on what addons you have that also work with keyboard commands.

On 8/9/2020 at 11:39 AM, Ray Proudfoot said:

ShowText is available here. https://forum.simflight.com/topic/66136-useful-additional-programs/

Far more elegant than SimConnect as you can choose the font and size.

Dang, I had somehow gotten the idea from the docs that ShowText was only usable with the old AdvDisp.  Not so, it works great for multiline Simconnect windows with WideFS.  Thanks for kicking those cobwebs loose, Ray!  ShowText is a much, MUCH better way of doing things than that in-sim transparent SimConnect window, which had to be resized and moved every time I started RC4, and which was often hard to read depending what was behind it on the sim display.

 

 

You’re welcome Bob. I’ve been using it for years with FSX, P3Dv3 and now v4.

If and when I move to v5 it will still work. It might even work with MFS as I understand work is ongoing with a version of FSUIPC for that. It will require WideClient to be changed and of course, Make Runways. If those can be successfully adapted we’re good for ever! 😀

Just wanted to say a belated thanks.  I have Radar Contact working perfectly now across 2 PCs.  I didn't have monitor space or speakers for my second PC.  I bought a cheap speaker to connect to my second PC and now have Show Text on my main PC and the sound coming from my second PC -- and no flickering!

Thanks Ray & Bob

Rich Cooke

@rich_cooke, thanks for feeding that info back. Glad you're able to continue enjoying RC4.