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WidePSX 2.5.9 : FSX, P3D and MSFS Compatible Scenery Generator Bridge

Started by JP59, Fri, 8 Dec 2017 16:17

JP59

Hello Jim,

I will consider this modification but, to be honest, I am surprised to see some people still using the AloftWx module. I see this module as a legacy of WidePSX 2.0. With PSX NG FMC and its Corridor feature you can have everything you need without ActiveSky.

Added on my « think about » list  ;)

Best regards
Jean-Philippe


brian747

@GodAtum

My apologies for the delay in replying: I had overlooked your question, initially.   

> "...what settings and FPS you getting?"

Having owned MSFS for only a few days I couldn't claim to be any sort of expert on the settings, and anyway the settings that work with my hardware obviously wouldn't work with yours; so a long list of settings is, I feel, unlikely to be helpful. There are several documents floating around the 'net covering MSFS settings, and they discuss the main concepts.

All I can say, as a simmer who has just entered his fifth decade of simming - I began with BAO on an Apple ][ in 1980 - is that I have probably installed more sims than most people, hence I now have the configuration process fairly well optimised. Happily, though, I no longer have to go through it in tedious detail, since it's very similar to the process described by "Squirrel" in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL4q_Tbv0jM&t=36s  (#2 and #3 in his series, on setting up controls and cameras, are also interesting for MSFS newbies).

In summary, my concern about simply using a large and busy airport as Squirrel does is that in more demanding moments my frame rate might dip below the 30 fps which I regard as my personal lower limit (YMMV). I therefore adjust my settings for acceptable results at the more critical moments as well (and then also make sure to quickly check the easy cases, just in case...). So these are the events that I check (in decreasing order of stress on the system, and hence increasing fps):-

1. The moment of touchdown

2. The moment of lift-off

3. In the midst of a large bespoke airport (e.g. Heathrow, as also used for 1 and 2, above)

4. Overhead a large and complex city (e.g. London)

5. Climbing, cruising, descending

As you see, my method is similar to Squirrel's system except that I add take-off and touchdown to the cases considered. I'm running a comparatively elderly i7 6700K (which I've overclocked) so I take care to keep all my simming files on SSDs (exempt from being scanned by anti-virus apps), and provide appropriate mounts of RAM and VRAM. For MSFS I found it beneficial to re-enable hyperthreading (I had had it switched off for P3Dv4) and also to make use of Microsoft's caches. (And full disclosure: it may also help that I'm a  DBA whose speciality is performance tuning....  ).

I hope that helps a little,

Cheers,

Brian
(Author of "The Big Tutorial" for PS1, and "Getting started with PSX" Parts 1, 2, and 3).

JRBarrett

Quote from: JP59 on Sun,  4 Oct 2020 07:59
Hello Jim,

I will consider this modification but, to be honest, I am surprised to see some people still using the AloftWx module. I see this module as a legacy of WidePSX 2.0. With PSX NG FMC and its Corridor feature you can have everything you need without ActiveSky.

Added on my « think about » list  ;)

Best regards
Jean-Philippe


While I do understand that the corridor feature will work in a similar fashion, it requires the NG FMS, which not all PSX users might own, and most importantly, it does not automatically update the winds aloft data while enroute as Active Sky can do if left running in the background. This can be especially important on a long transcontinental flight. On a flight of 12+ hours duration, NOAA might well issue new upper wind data at least three times, and this will immediately and automatically update the activesflightplanwx.txt file as soon as ActiveSky downloads it.

In essence, ActiveSky acts like an ACARS station that can provide updated wind data on demand, when actuating a wind request from the FMS. To do something similar with the corridor function of the NG FMS, would require preparing a new wind download in a flight planner running on an external computer, and then upload it to the running PSX computer, and then go to the instructor station in PSX to paste the updated wind file into the corridor menu, etc. These are a lot of manual processing steps that are unnecessary when using AloftWx and ActiveSky in conjunction.

Even though ActiveSky is no longer relevant as a weather injector for MSFS itself, it is still very relevant as a source of current and immediately updatable upper wind data for PSX via AloftWX.

In fact, even if I did not own P3D or X-Plane at all, I would still purchase and use ActiveSky specifically for its ability to automatically create dynamically-updated upper wind data for PSX.

When I discovered yesterday that the PSX upper weather was coming from MSFS, and realized that the cause of this was the DYNAMIC mode of aloftwx, I was actually able to "trick" aloftwx into switching to STATIC mode while running. I did this by going to the network tab of WidePSX and unchecking the simconnect bridge option. WidePSX displayed a message that it would have to be re-started to make the change effective, (which I did not do), however, this did
cause AloftWx to switch to STATIC mode, and PSX upper winds and temperatures immediately switched to the ActiveSky, but the ability of the scenery generator bridge to control the MSFS aircraft continued unabated.

JP59

Hello Jim,

I understand and think your request is legitimate. I moved your request from my « think about list » to my « to-do list ». Good to see you found a workaround.

Cheers,
Jean-Philippe

JRBarrett


G-CIVA

The advantage of using a flight planner like PFPX to build your PSX wind corridor is that it already contains a weather data set forecast of what your upper winds will be doing in the future. This is not an "instantaneous" snapshot of the upper winds as created by a weather engine. In the case of PFPX it is a dataset of present & forecast upper winds for the duration of your flight.

You could, as you describe re-run your PFPX flight planning process mid flight to extrapolate a new updated wind table to enter into the wind corridor at 6 hourly intervals. This would simulate a wind data request update.

I have made comparisons between PFPX upper wind data sets from PFPX flight plans & identical real world examples run in real time. There is less than 5% difference between the respective wind data. That's good enough for real world use.

Steve Bell
aka The CC

JRBarrett

The NG FMS corridor winds do work well, but  I prefer the convenience of having the winds automatically injected by ActiveSky. The GFS upper winds and temperatures provided by A.S. are updated on the HiFiSim server every three hours, and the entire NOAA GFS model is re-run every 6 hours.

G-CIVA

Quote from: JRBarrett on Mon,  5 Oct 2020 00:01The GFS upper winds and temperatures provided by A.S. are updated on the HiFiSim server every three hours, and the entire NOAA GFS model is re-run every 6 hours.

Yep, I Hear you.

The PFPX download source is also NOAA GFS ... updated at six hourly increments with the WX subscription ... the beauty of PFPX is that the flight plan upper wind data output is also forecasted ... taking into account the entire upper wind plot encountered in the vicinity of your flight plan track ... just like the real world flight planning tools.

So you just need to inject your WX engine into your scenery generator now for visual effect. Using the PFPX Wind Corridor in PSX gives the best of both worlds.

Besides, there is much much more to the PSX NG FMC upgrade than just thw Wind Corridor function.
Steve Bell
aka The CC

pacwest18

Hi J-P.

I'm a big fan of WidePSX; thank you for developing this software. I'm currently using it to link PSX with MSFS 2020. I was wondering if WidePSX is designed to permit the use of either the accelerated time or the "time-jump to" feature in PSX while still keeping MSFS synchronized.

Kind regards,
Stacius

JP59

Hello Stacius,

To be honest I never use this feature but I think I tested them during the initial process (not 100% sure of my memory). Position synchronization is not an issue. It will work even accelerated or jumped. I am not so sure about the time synchronization aspect.

I thing the « jump to » PSX function should work (WidePSX will force MSFS to reload time updated scenery after some seconds). I am not sure about the accelerated time feature. It may work but I think there is a chance to see several MSFS time synchronizations while using accelerated time, when WidePSX will detect a difference between PSX and MSFS times (I have to check the code to see at which value I put the threshold).

I can check the code but I think the fastest way to get an answer is to run a quick test. Maybe could you share your results with the community here ?

Best regards
Jean-Philippe

airlinejets

Quote from: JP59 on Fri,  8 Dec 2017 16:17
Hello,

Edit : The software is only available for purchase via email contact. You can contact me at ptorne78@gmail.com

Free an fully functional trial version can be downloaded here : https://www.dropbox.com/s/f3r7itloqbgwcdb/WidePSX_TRIAL.zip?dl=1

That link no longer works. Where can we purchase WidePSX and what's the price? For use with MSFS.

Thank you
Michel

JP59

Hello Michel,

I apologize for you and people who tried to download the trial version without success. I forgot to update the link after the update from version 2.5 to 2.5.1. The link is now updated : https://www.dropbox.com/s/hvahw3pob42mo5u/WidePSX_TRIAL_2.5.1.zip?dl=1

You can contact me by email at : ptorne78@gmail.com for purchase inquiries.

Best regards
Jean-Philippe

JohnH

Quote from: pacwest18 on Sat, 10 Oct 2020 09:44
Hi J-P.

I'm a big fan of WidePSX; thank you for developing this software. I'm currently using it to link PSX with MSFS 2020. I was wondering if WidePSX is designed to permit the use of either the accelerated time or the "time-jump to" feature in PSX while still keeping MSFS synchronized.

Kind regards,
Stacius

I am just doing a flight from EGLL to CYYZ using PSX with WidePSX. On the PSX instructor page I just tried both 'Time acceleration' and 'Time-jump to' and din't encounter any problems with either function!

John

airlinejets

Quote from: JP59 on Sat, 10 Oct 2020 19:50
Hello Michel,

I apologize for you and people who tried to download the trial version without success. I forgot to update the link after the update from version 2.5 to 2.5.1. The link is now updated : https://www.dropbox.com/s/hvahw3pob42mo5u/WidePSX_TRIAL_2.5.1.zip?dl=1

You can contact me by email at : ptorne78@gmail.com for purchase inquiries.

Best regards
Jean-Philippe

Thank you for the quick reply Jean-Philippe. I have sent you an email.

regards

pacwest18

Quote from: JohnH on Sat, 10 Oct 2020 20:23
Quote from: pacwest18 on Sat, 10 Oct 2020 09:44
Hi J-P.

I'm a big fan of WidePSX; thank you for developing this software. I'm currently using it to link PSX with MSFS 2020. I was wondering if WidePSX is designed to permit the use of either the accelerated time or the "time-jump to" feature in PSX while still keeping MSFS synchronized.

Kind regards,
Stacius

I am just doing a flight from EGLL to CYYZ using PSX with WidePSX. On the PSX instructor page I just tried both 'Time acceleration' and 'Time-jump to' and din't encounter any problems with either function!

John

Thank you J-P and John for the replies! I will give it a try as well and report back.

airlinejets

I'm not having any luck with WidePSX. Everything is connected, bridge is on, PSX main and boost are connected. I get no visuals from MSFS. What am I doing wrong?

Michel

JohnH

Quote from: airlinejets on Sun, 11 Oct 2020 14:26
I'm not having any luck with WidePSX. Everything is connected, bridge is on, PSX main and boost are connected. I get no visuals from MSFS. What am I doing wrong?

Michel

Hi Michel, what is your setup? everythong on 1 PC or are you using 2 PC's?

John

airlinejets

Hi John, thank you for checking this with me. I'm using 1 PC for everything, on a 43" 4k screen. I'm wondering if it's not a path issue, since I have MSFS on my D drive.

JohnH

Quote from: airlinejets on Sun, 11 Oct 2020 16:58
Hi John, thank you for checking this with me. I'm using 1 PC for everything, on a 43" 4k screen. I'm wondering if it's not a path issue, since I have MSFS on my D drive.

give this a try,
Install WidePSX to a location of your choice, I moved mine to C:\

Edit your Simconnect.xml by adding this section, see manual for more info,

<SimConnect.Comm>
        <Descr>Static IP4 port</Descr>
        <Protocol>IPv4</Protocol>
        <Scope>local</Scope>
        <Port>29747</Port>
        <MaxClients>64</MaxClients>
        <MaxRecvSize>41088</MaxRecvSize>
    </SimConnect.Comm>

Run the WidePsx.jar file, you will then see the Network connection screen

Enter the following,

PSX host IP - 127.0.0.1
PSX boost - 127.0.0.1

PSX host port - 10747
PSX boost port - 10749

SimConnect host IP - 127.0.0.1
SimConnect host port - 29747

click - enable SimConnect bridge

click - connect

If all goes well you should get 3 green lights beside PSX main, PSX boost, SimConnect.

At the top tabs select - SceneryGen bridge

click - Enable scenery generated bridge

click - Start scenery genetator bridge,

John

airlinejets

John, it did not work. I get all the green connections, simconnect, PSX main and boost are working but I get no visuals.