TICK18, ELAPSED_SECONDS max value?

[Guest christian]

I'd like to program a blinking string (I searched and found a good post, but I pretty much know how to do this anyway), and I have one small question.If I record a time_start and measure the time elapsed since time_start was set (eg elapsed_seconds - time_start > 0.5 ), I could get a problem when elapsed seconds overflows and restarts at 0. Does anyone know what the maximum value ELAPSED_SECONDS can reach (it's a float in the panel, so the max should be so high that I don't have to worry about it, but that does not mean that it's float in FS itself, it could just be UINT16, which isn't very large at all). I think TICK18 is a UINT16, so one really has to check here, but is this the case with ELASPED_SECONDS also? And does anyone know if ELAPSED_SECONDS is a true float in that it measures second fractions (not hard to find out myself, just asking if anyone knows).Reading the other post on blinking strings, I can get away with just a 'elapsed_time % 0.5' of course, but there are other cases where I actually want to measure a time difference (eg is button pressed for 3 sec), where this is quite important, to avoid a possible buffer overfow when a flight is several hours long...Cheers, Christian

[ddawson 35]

Christian,ELAPSED_SECONDS is indeed a float. It resets to zero at midnight (Z, I believe, although it may be local time - I don't remember for sure.)TICK18 will also reset when it reaches a maximum value.Given the potential goofy results, I always liked to be sure:time_then = time_now;time_now = TICK18;time_increase = time_now - time_then;if (time_increase < 0) {time_increase = 0;)accumulated_time = accumulated_time + time_increase;Also, TICK18 increments even when the sim is paused. ELAPSED_SECONDS does not.Regards,Doug Dawson

[Guest christian]

Brilliant. Thanks, Doug. That's exactly what I was after.Cheers, Christian

[Guest zip]

Or, use a windows timer, it's asynchronous and calls a callback routine in your gauge when you want.You can have several timers, and they will only fire on a set interval specified in miliseconds, and you don't have to worry about overflow, timezones, or whatever.Lookup SetTimer() and KillTimer() in the Win32 API (msdn.microsoft.com).