wdseith

Ed, I wouldn't expect, nor would I ask, that you do any work on a 64-bit version without charging users for it. LM charges both their commercial and consumer users full price for their major version upgrades to Prepar3D, and I gladly pay it. MS charges a subscription fee for their Office 365 package, and I pay it with glee because all updates and feature improvements are included. When Ford puts new features on their trucks, no one expects to get them for free--everyone knows if you want them, you have to buy a whole new truck. Your software takes development time and money and you are absolutely entitled to profit from that. If you thought I or anyone else was asking you to do any of this for free, that is absolutely not the case. I appreciate your continuing explanation of your business priorities, and I'm sorry you're disappointed by my request. I'm disappointed that you find my request so aggravating. The 64-bit version of Prepar3D provides a substantial improvement in graphics quality and performance over the 32-bit version on my system. As a consequence, I have no intention of rolling back to V.3.x. Commercial users are constrained by the FAA certification process so the upgrade process is not nearly as easy for them as it is for consumers. And yet the number of consumer flight sim users is likely several orders of magnitude higher than commercial users. The iTunes store sells apps for a buck. Why? Volume. Sure, flight sim consumer users aren't as voluminous as iTunes users are, but there are certainly many more of them than there are RedBirds out there.

Welp, it wasn't obvious before, but now it is--the consumer market that supports your pro market, is no longer a priority. Got it. Thanks for clearing that up.

I've been a huge supporter of your P3D add-ons for quite awhile. But I have to say, your timeframe for updating them to 64-bit compatibility is very disappointing. It was May 30, 2017, when v4 was released. 13 months ago. That's an eternity in the tech world for updates. 64-bit desktop processors and OS's have been around since 2001. Since 2009, the default configuration for new desktop computers sold has been 64-bit processors with a 64-bit OS. I'm sure I'm missing something obvious here, but this doesn't strike me as anything close to a new challenge at this point.

Many thanks, Ed, for putting me in touch with your development team. They reached out to me today and they were able to solve the problem I was having with the database. Apparently when the database attempted to make certain entries in my Windows 10 registry, it was unable to do because of a lack of permission. I had to manually modify the ownership of the HKEY that your software tries to modify. Upon changing it from the "system" to me as the owner of the HKEY, the appropriate registry entries were allowed. According to your team, this is not a problem they routinely see, but it is something that has cropped up before. Since I'm running a 64-bit operating system, the relevant HKEY is [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{00000100-0000-0010-8000-00AA006D2EA4}]. Anyway, just wanted to let you know that your team went above and beyond this morning to help me solve the issue. Thanks again. Bill Seith Certified Flight Instructor

Understood, Ed. I wasn't complaining, just stating the facts. As I noted in my post here, I have sent a series of e-mails to your support team already. JJ was kind enough to respond within the last hour (on a Sunday, during the holidays--impressive). He suggested a fix that unfortunately has not worked. I will continue to work with him and the rest of your support team. With your permission, I will report the ultimate resolution on this forum so others who encounter this error will have the benefit of knowing how to fix the issue. Bill Seith Certified Flight Instructor

Ed, First of all, thank you for an excellent product. The GNS430 emulation you have come up with is the perfect compliment to P3D for flight training with my students. I am a member of the Naperville Flying Club in Naperville, IL and teach other members in our four single engine aircraft. Three out of the four are equipped with the Garmin 430, so understanding the basics of how to use and fly approaches with the 430 is a key part of the training I provide. I have the Academic version of P3D, and together with your GNS430 emulator, it provides a tremendously safe training environment for our club members to become familiar with the 430. So, to my issue. After installing the GNS430 with your latest installer (GNS_Setup_1.8.0009.exe), I confirmed that it is working perfectly in all four of our club aircraft models, namely, a C172, PA28, PA32, and BE33. I also confirmed that it is driving the VOR heads perfectly in all four aircraft. The PA28, PA32, and BE33 are Carenado models. The C172 is a Microsoft model copied over from FSX. I have both FSX and P3D ver. 3.1 installed on my machine. I am running Windows 10 Pro 64-bit. My system specs are below my signature block. After confirming that the 430 was properly installed and working in both FSX and P3D, I purchased the database update using the Mindstar RealNav database tool included with your GNS430 software. After the data is downloaded to my system via your installer, the installer attempts to load the data. Before the installation completes, however, I receive the following error message, "Cannot bind database to this system." This message appears in a pop-up window where the only option is to click "ok" to make it go away. Upon doing so, the primary installation status window reveals the following message, "RealNav installer failed during execution." Thinking that perhaps this error was caused by a bad data download, I tried it again using the RealNav data update tool. This time, I received the following message, "Checking subscription...Your RealNav Home data cycle 1510 is current. Cycle 1601 will be avaialble [sic] on 01/07/2016." Thinking that perhaps the error message received the first time around was itself an error, I exited the RealNav installer and launched P3D to see if the data was now present on your GNS430. It was not. I then exited P3D and relaunched the RealNav updater. I received the same message about my data being current, so I clicked on the "Re-install 1510" button. The updater connected to your server and downloaded the data again, and again I received the same, "Cannot bind database to this system," error message. Thinking that perhaps the GNS430 had not installed properly, despite the fact that it appears to be working perfectly otherwise, I uninstalled it. During the uninstall of the GNS430, I received another error message, "Unable to unregister c:\windows\sysWOW64\oc30.dll." I checked the referenced directory and found no such file. I checked the system registry and found a reference to the same file, which I then deleted. I rebooted the computer and then reinstalled the GNS430. I then again tried the RealNav updater and received the same error message as before. I uninstalled the GNS430 again, and then reinstalled it a second time, this time using the GNS_Setup_1.8.0005.exe installer I downloaded from your website. I then again used the RealNav updater, and again, received the same error message. I have confirmed that the reinstall of the GNS430 did place a file named "oc30.dll" back in the c:\Windows\SysWOW64\ directory. The file has a date of 5/22/1995 (yes, 1995, not 2005 or 2015) and is 656 KB in size. I also confirmed that there is again a reference to that file in that location in the system registry. Finally, I have confirmed that after each attempted install of the data, the installer placed a file named "REALNAV.RNV" that is dated 9/28/2015 and is 402,309 KB in size in the c:\ProgramData\RealNav\ directory. After each attempted install, I launched P3D and FSX (separately, not at the same time) to confirm that the GNS430 was working and to also see that the new data had not been installed. During each attempted install, I used the "Run as Administrator" option both for the installation of the GNS430 as well as the RealNav data set. I have sent a series of e-mails on this subject to your support team. I have not yet received a response, so I would appreciate any assistance you can provide. I also note from reading through the other posts here, that others have had these same error messages appear that I am seeing. In each of those instances, however, you did not publish the ultimate fix online here. You instead relegated the conversation to a private discussion with your tech support team. You may want to consider publishing the fixes online here so that others having these issues can fix them on their own without having to trouble you and wait for your tech team to respond. Thanks in advance for your help and support and for developing a great product. Bill Seith Certified Flight Instructor System specs: A pair of MSI GTX 970s in SLI (Factory Overclocked) | ASRock Z77 Extreme 4 mobo, Bios Ver. 2.90 | Intel Core i7 3770K (4.4 Ghz) | 32 GB G.Skill TridentX PC3-19200 (2400 Mhz) | Thermaltake 1050W PSU | Acer XB270HA Monitor via DP | 2 AOC G2770PQU Monitors via DVI | Windows 10 Pro 64-bit | Realtek Sound Card