russdirks

You're not doing anything wrong. The MS Sidewinder FF2 is probably one of the best FF joysticks out there (based on my testing), in terms of producing the strongest forces, but it will never come close to matching the control resistance you will feel in a real airplane in a steep turn. Russel DirksFS Force

An important consideration is the fact that in FSX the F-18 is loaded to approx 35,000 lbs, whereas the max gross weight for the aircraft is 56,000 lbs, which is definitely going to affect how the aircraft sits. Unfortunately there are no defined payload points whereby you can increase the weight using the UI, so I added my own ... WEIGHT_AND_BALANCE...station_load.1 = 10000, -35.5, 0.0, 0.0station_name.1 = "Stuff"(Note:couldn't figure out how to put square brackets in above) With this change I was able to load the plane up to max gross weight, which causes the struts to compress more, but still not quite as much as the real thing, IMO. The top image is max gross weight.

Hi Phil,I'm not entirely clear on point #1."Any 3rd party who builds code intended for FSX with the VS 2005 SP1 bits installed will take a dependency on the new DLLs in the redist unless they take special care and compile with a special #define. This code will fail to load in FSX RTM." Is this true even if the end user has VS 2005 SP1 redist installed on his machine? Are you referring to DLL's only, or .EXE's as well? Thanks for the info,Russ

>Works great here in the new version!Hi Holger, that's good to hear. Thanks for the kind words.Best regards,Russel Dirks

Hi Alfredo,I would say that's a feature, not a bug. EZ-Landclass will display numbers using the settings found in Control Panel / Regional and Language Settings. So if your computer is setup to use a comma for the decimal separator, that is what EZLC will use. Does the project compile ok?Regards,Russel Dirks

Hi Luis,Thanks for the bug report. Got it fixed now. The formula I was using to determine what LOD5 cell the project was in had a bit of a bug in it. You can download 3.01 [a href=http://www.dirks-software.ca/scripts/download.php?path=/downloads/ezlc301.zip&description=EZ-Landclass%203.00]here[/a].Regards,Russel Dirks

>Why not place the landclass BGL directly into the specified>folder which, in many cases, wiil be a Scenery folder. Saves>moving the BGL.That would be a nice feature that I had thought about doing. One problem is the move operation would fail if the user forgot to disable the scenery area in FS -- the OS would report the file being in use. Plus, it's always a trade-off between the features I want to add to a program, and the time needed to add those features. Besides, this is freeware. I have to make the user do SOME work! ;-) It's easy enough to make a little batch file to copy the bgl to the necessary Scenery folder.

The beta version of EZ-Landclass 3.00 is now available if anyone wants to try it out. It's very similar to previous versions, except it can now be used with FSX. It's only been tested by myself, so if you find any bugs in the program or documentation, let me know via this thread or the email address in the Readme.You can download it here : [a href=http://www.dirks-software.ca/scripts/download.php?path=/downloads/ezlc300.zip&description=EZ-Landclass%203.00]EZ-Landclass 3.00[/a]Once it's stable I'll upload it to the various flight sim libraries.Best regards,Russel DirksDirks Software

Check your Scenery Complexity. If it is too far to the left, you won't get any detailed scenery at airports.

In Exe.xml, set to "False". The sample version of exe.xml included with the SDK (which you may have used like I did) has this set to true, which means every time it loads, it asks your permission.

For FS2004 I just used the standard MessageBox function, passing in the window handle to FS98MAIN. Worked fine for me.

You have to put FSX into "DialogMode" first, then display your dialog. The SimConnect SDK has a sample program that shows you how to do it.

The SimConnect documentation states that you must use C or C++ to access SimConnect, unless you use the managed API, in which case you can use any of the Microsoft .Net language compilers. However I have found, after a bit of experimentation, that you can access the non-managed SimConnect API from VB and VBA, using appropriate DECLARE statements. I've posted some sample code over at the [a href=http://www.fsdeveloper.com/wiki/index.php?title=Accessing_SimConnect_From_VB]FSDeveloper Wiki.[/a]Cheers,Russ Dirks

>Russ Dirks doesn't allow his FSConnect module to be included>in packages... but only downloaded from him or AVSIM. Freeware>usage is fien, but he controls distribution of the module.Hi Dick and others,As of version 3.00, I've changed the license agreement to allow developers to package and distribute FSConnect with their product. The license now reads as follows:You may use FSConnect.dll as an interface between FS and your application. You may use and adapt any source code in this package for use in your application. You may package and distribute FSConnect.dll with your product, with appropriate credits in your documentation, including a reference to my web site, www.dirks-software.ca.Regards,Russ Dirks

Rudi,Yes I would be very interested! Maybe, with your permission, I could include your code with future releases? Send whatever you have to: russdirks "@" yahoo.caRuss

Check out www.fs-force.com.

In general, there is very little force feedback in FS2004, no matter what type of joystick you're using. I'm about 3-4 weeks away from releasing FS Force, an addon module that will provide much improved force feedback effects. You can check out the web site at [a href=http://www.fs-force.com]www.fs-force.com[/a]Russ

John,Good job with LCA! For awhile there I was wondering if you were ever going to release your new version. :-) I think it is good you did. For me the whole reason for developing my landclass program was to give people the power to make their little corner of the MSFS world more realistic, and I'm sure you feel the same. The more quality tools out there the better!Cheers,Russ Dirks

What's changed on your system recently? Installed any new scenery? Try disabling it and see if the problem goes away.Russ

What do you guys think about the name he chose, which is only 1 letter away from my FSConnect? That is too close in my opinion. I think he should re-release it with a different name. I'm all for diversity and even competition -- after all, its just freeware, but there needs to more distinction between differing products.Russ Dirks

Thank you a thousand times! :-)Works like a charm. Russ

Hi,I'm trying to convert my FSConnect module from C to C++ so I can take advantage of the object oriented features of the language, but when I change the file extension to cpp, I get compile errors: error C2086: 'Linkage' : redefinition error C2086: 'ImportTable' : redefinitionIn a way, it makes sense, because those structures are declared twice. Makes me wonder how it worked in straight C.So I combined the declarations like this:__declspec(dllexport) GAUGES Linkage = { 0x0000520F, module_init, module_deinit, 0, 0, 0x0900, 0, 0 }; I did something similar for ImportTable.This compiles, but FS crashes on startup.Anybody tried this and got it to work?Thanks,Russ Dirks

Hi,>>Problem 1: when I reload the scenery in FS2002 with my>landclass activated it corrupts and has to restart.>What kind of error message do you get? Does FS2002 restart successfully the next time?>Problem 2: i can only change the lc-scenery once, the next>times i modify and restarts fs2002 the scenery does not>change. Only way out of that is to change the filename of the>BGL. Cache for the LC-layer is deactivated.What kind of procedure do you use to install each new changed .bgl file? I would recommend that the scenery area you specify in FS be a different folder than the folder you specify in EZ-Landclass.The steps I usually follow are:1. Make some change to the LC file, and recompile.2. De-activate the scenery area in FS3. Copy the .bgl file from the working folder to the "scenery area" folder.4. Re-activate the scenery area in FSTry this and see if it works.Russ Dirks

Hi All.I'm working on a little utility to modify the way trim forces are felt in FS with a FF Joystick. I think trim forces are modeled wrong, but I've only had 12 hours dual instruction in a C150, about 2 years ago, (What a blast! Hope to be doing more soon) and I need some current pilots to confirm or deny my theories.So here goes : In FS, when you are out-of-trim, but flying a constant attitude (say, straight and level), and you then change the trim setting to remove the control forces, you have to make substantial changes to the yoke (joystick) position, in proportion to how much you change the trim, in order to maintain your present attitude. It's like you're chasing this imaginary "neutral" position, which usually results in a lot of unplanned pitch excursions.My recollections of the C150 are that no such "chasing" is necessary. You just change the trim until you can no longer feel any forces, but at no time do you have to make significant changes in yoke position to compensate for trim changes.How does this sound to the rest of you?Russ Dirks

Hi Eric,Here's some code I developed for FSConnect:int GetFSInfo(PUINT VerHi, PUINT VerLo, char *pExeName) { char filename[255]; DWORD dummy, InfoSize; PVOID lpInfo; VS_FIXEDFILEINFO *lpBuff; UINT BuffLen; int res; GetModuleFileName(NULL, filename, 254); InfoSize = GetFileVersionInfoSize(filename, &dummy); if (InfoSize < 1) return errNoFSVersion; lpInfo = VirtualAlloc(NULL, InfoSize, MEM_COMMIT, PAGE_READWRITE); if (lpInfo == NULL) return errNoFSVersion; res = GetFileVersionInfo(filename, 0, InfoSize, lpInfo); if (res == 0) return errNoFSVersion; res = VerQueryValue(lpInfo, "", (void **)&lpBuff, &BuffLen); if (res == 0) return errNoFSVersion; *VerHi = lpBuff->dwProductVersionMS; *VerLo = lpBuff->dwProductVersionLS; VirtualFree(lpInfo, 0, MEM_RELEASE); strcpy(pExeName, strrchr(filename, '') + 1); return 0;}Cheers,Russ Dirks