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Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:
- Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
- Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
- Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
- Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
- Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
- Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.
Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.
By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.
FSX Spaceflight dynamics module for FSX
- Thread starter Misho
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I can see we're optimistic about MSFS. I'd have to say, after pushing that envelope in both simulators, 2020 has some serious limitations, in the outer limits of the outer reaches. Very impressive FSX effects, if you accomplish that in MSFS, you'll have a winner, despite being Earthbound.
Just a head's up, there's a wicked demon that lives at 250K feet, which is little over 1/10th the way to the Starlink orbit. It will not allow any vehicle to pass, although the view is nice.
If you watch the altimeter needle at 4:30, you will see it slow from it's mad pinwheeling and come to a composed halt at 249000 feet indicated. Before Darkstar, there had been a minor demon at 67k feet. He'd freeze your antimeter needle too, but if you held on, it would start spinning again at about 72k feet. The Darkstar enhancement purged that demon, but the max altitude limit remains 250k feet. I've accelerated from that point for long moments, without ever getting any indication of progress.
Just a head's up, there's a wicked demon that lives at 250K feet, which is little over 1/10th the way to the Starlink orbit. It will not allow any vehicle to pass, although the view is nice.
If you watch the altimeter needle at 4:30, you will see it slow from it's mad pinwheeling and come to a composed halt at 249000 feet indicated. Before Darkstar, there had been a minor demon at 67k feet. He'd freeze your antimeter needle too, but if you held on, it would start spinning again at about 72k feet. The Darkstar enhancement purged that demon, but the max altitude limit remains 250k feet. I've accelerated from that point for long moments, without ever getting any indication of progress.
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Hi! Thanks for the comments!
I think the imposed limit is 275000 ft which is 83.82 km... at least from our observations. We went further and actually wrote code to position aircraft at higher altitudes, above 275K ft, hoping it was a flight model limit, not a hard internal numerical limit, but no dice... aircraft couldn't be placed any higher that 275K ft, using SimConnect code.
With FS2020, the ONLY limitation/showstopper is 275k ft/84km altitude limit. Anything else, like flight dynamics or speed limits, are irrelevant, because we are not using sim's flight model. In fact, we are thinking of developing a demo for FS2020 which would scale down atmospheric parameters from 400km to 84km and impose a full vacuum from, say, 75km upwards, and "pretend" we are in orbit in the 75-84 km range. It would be as if Earth had a thinner atmosphere, and we would lower Von Karman line down by 25 km (from 100km to 75km) - everything else would be the same physics wise. This is certainly possible with what we have right now. This would be done to hopefully give Asobo a bit of a nudge and perhaps them looking into raising 84km limit to something a lot bigger, as in 30,000km, as is the case with FSX/FSXSE:SE/P3D.
We have no idea why Asobo imposed this limit... the code architecture seem to be identical (the SimConnect examples are identical to P3D and FSX ones, for example). But anyway... that's where the things are right now.
I think the imposed limit is 275000 ft which is 83.82 km... at least from our observations. We went further and actually wrote code to position aircraft at higher altitudes, above 275K ft, hoping it was a flight model limit, not a hard internal numerical limit, but no dice... aircraft couldn't be placed any higher that 275K ft, using SimConnect code.
With FS2020, the ONLY limitation/showstopper is 275k ft/84km altitude limit. Anything else, like flight dynamics or speed limits, are irrelevant, because we are not using sim's flight model. In fact, we are thinking of developing a demo for FS2020 which would scale down atmospheric parameters from 400km to 84km and impose a full vacuum from, say, 75km upwards, and "pretend" we are in orbit in the 75-84 km range. It would be as if Earth had a thinner atmosphere, and we would lower Von Karman line down by 25 km (from 100km to 75km) - everything else would be the same physics wise. This is certainly possible with what we have right now. This would be done to hopefully give Asobo a bit of a nudge and perhaps them looking into raising 84km limit to something a lot bigger, as in 30,000km, as is the case with FSX/FSXSE:SE/P3D.
We have no idea why Asobo imposed this limit... the code architecture seem to be identical (the SimConnect examples are identical to P3D and FSX ones, for example). But anyway... that's where the things are right now.
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Just made that, let's see where it will lead, feel free to vote & share 
forums.flightsimulator.com
Please, Rise the Upper limit from 275k to what it used to be on FSX
Hello! I would like to see the Upper limit of 275k feet increased to what it was on FSX (on FSX, it was 100 000 000ft from what I read on internet) Why am I asking that? its because there is a developer working on a Space Addon (ftarted for FSX, not its also for P3D, and he would like to have...
forums.flightsimulator.com
Ronald
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1 - Just thinking out loud here: "Is it (Win64 ASseMbler, C? C++?) coding_technically possible to design, developer and implement your own native and 100% controlled
2 - Or start to inject spacecraft via a future-to-be-developed version of Pete and John Downson's FSUIPC.DLL for MSFS2020? (or any other "dark-art"
cutting-edge coding methods)?Why? After all - at the end of a coding_day - "MSFS2020" is nothing magical. It's just another 64-bit Windows Operating System supported executable!
-https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/debugger/x64-architecture[/url
3 - Have you ever contacted Jorg Neuman directly and asked him officially the why and how behind this newly build-in limit?
4 - If you want to get another viewpoint on this matter, start reading over here @Misho (Warning: long read where I'm sharing my own personal viewpoint on "Microsoft
-https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/t...e-unreal-engine-for-flight-simulation.455273/
5 - To what "level" does the code-architecture seem to be identical?:
- To the so called official "SDK documented example" level identical
- Are they 100% Win-64 .dll .exe_cutable binary identical?
- Option 3? 4? n?
6 - TIP: I think you(r team) should get in touch with Pete & John Dawson on this "compatibility" matter, to see what they have already discovered when designing their world-famous FSUIPC.DLL for MSFS2020 product.
Outside the Asobo developers, I think Pete (& John) is (are) the currently leading expert(s) on the
hidden MSFS2020_internals for many decades now.-http://www.fsuipc.com/
#HackTheSim #HackMSFS2020
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For what purpose? SimConnect has ALMOST everything we need to develop what we did, especially P3D versions. One thing that we are still
with is injecting D3D 3D models into the sim without internal 3D model visibility limitation, which is about 60km. We need that to render cloud cover above earth from orbital heights. Right now, if you leave weather on, clouds are rendered only in a ~100 km circle below spacecraft. Otherwise, the earth is completely without weather/cloud cover. There IS a method of "hooking" to inject 2D textures (someone posted a sample in the dev forum, and suggested there is a way to inject 3D models as well), but we haven't looked at it closely. Incidentally, if there is anyone reading this that can help us with that please PM me.As per above - "injecting objects" is a normal SimConnect functionality, with source code given in SDK, which seems to be extended to MSFS2020 (haven't tried yet but I am fairly confident that it works)... So, no dark-art or "hacking" needed.2 - Or start to inject spacecraft via a future-to-be-developed version of Pete and John Downson's FSUIPC.DLL for MSFS2020? (or any other "dark-art"
Yes it is.
I have not. First time I hear this name. We are busy finalizing the new demo version for P3D and FSX. Actually, installer code is giving us more headache than the actual sim code
, because Dovetail Games did some tricky things when FSX:SE was being installed, depending on if there was a previous FSX:A, or even an existing FSX:A.As for MSFS2020, all we did was try a few things to see how hard would it be to deploy to it, and we found an altitude limit to be a showstopper. That being said, if there is any hope of raising this limit, we'd be considering creating the demo version for FS2020 with the 75-85km vacuum gap, just to see how much interest is there.
To the level that the sample SimConnect code from FSX SDK, P3D SDK and MSFS2020 SDK is verbatim identical. And, we already have 2 dll versions, we compile into 32-bit version for FSX and 64-bit version for P3D. So, of course, P3D and FSX dll are not identical, but we compile identical code (with some minor #define routing).
Thanks - I will take that under advisement. They may have something to inject/build 3D objects which are not clipped at 60 km distance. For now, (almost) everything we need is supported by official SDK, and there is no need for any "hacking", as exciting as that may sound6 - TIP: I think you(r team) should get in touch with Pete & John Dawson on this "compatibility" matter, to see what they have already discovered when designing their world-famous FSUIPC.DLL for MSFS2020 product.
Outside the Asobo developers, I think Pete (& John) is (are) the currently leading expert(s) on the
-http://www.fsuipc.com/
#HackTheSim #HackMSFS2020
.Cheers,
Misho
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Maybe it would be a Good start to contact him, the Popic I opened yesterday might not be enough to catch MS/Asobo's attentionI have not. First time I hear this name. We are busy finalizing the new demo version for P3D and FSX. Actually, installer code is giving us more headache than the actual sim code
As for MSFS2020, all we did was try a few things to see how hard would it be to deploy to it, and we found an altitude limit to be a showstopper. That being said, if there is any hope of raising this limit, we'd be considering creating the demo version for FS2020 with the 75-85km vacuum gap, just to see how much interest is there.
That said, I can't wait for the MSFS SpacePort demo
Ronald
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1 - For the purpose of getting beyond the ALMOST section, which enables YOU 100% what YOU want to achieve.
2 - This revolves all around getting the entire internal MSFS2020 graphics rendering pipeline 100% transparent
.-https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/direct3d12/direct3d-12-graphics
-https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/direct3d12/pipelines-and-shaders-with-directx-12
Once you(r team) know(s) that, then you also know where to hook in / inject your desired objects.
3 - These are the 3 official main-development-leads inside the entire MSFS2020 ecosystem:
Just go straight to the //root(s) and contact them directly for any reply you like to have from them.
Why? Since I've seen many questions on the MSFS2020 forum simply being ignored by the "community" teams without any official response given to "the why" behind it...
4 - TIP: Have you ever tried to run the "DTG-installer" with some great free SysInternals tools (like Regmon, FileMon, ProcMon) underneath it?Actually, installer code is giving us more headache than the actual sim code
depending on if there was a previous FSX:A, or even an existing FSX:A.
That way you can almost literally (from and Operating! System! / io_driver_level!) "track-and-trace" :
- Logical disk I/O , file open/close and read/write requests.
- Registry key query, i/o, read/write request.
and dump their output into .csv formatted files for later processing.
Why? This information helps you(r team) to get that (yet) mystical DTG-installation process 100% clear and transparent again,
And if you know what is truly happening and why, only then the guess-work is over and you can act accordingly.
5 - Direct links to SysInternal Suite tools:
-https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ - SysInternals tools homepage
-https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/diskmon - DiskMon
-https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/regmon - RegMon
-https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autoruns - AutoRuns
-https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon - ProcMon
I'm looking forward to what you(r team) might encounter using them...
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So - let me get this straight: You are advocating for us developing a FSUIPC-like SDK (which has been 20 years in development) so that we can have ONE thing that we need, which is not even a showstopper? Sorry, but no. HARD no
. There are SO many other solutions to this. IF FSUIPC supported D3D 3D object insertion without internal visibility limitations, we would simply make a tiny DLL that does that, and works alongside SpacePort. If not - we'd contact authors and ask them. And if that was negative, we'd look into it ourselves, since, as I mentioned, someone in the SimConnect forum posted code that does "hooking", but for 2D maps (so, custom menus and stuff)... Here is the forum topic:Hooking into FSX's Direct3D and overlaying bitmaps, or inserting 3D objects
Once again, We have neither the resources, nor inclination, motivation or will to "hack" MSFS2020. Nor do we think this would be legal.2 - This revolves all around getting the entire internal MSFS2020 graphics rendering pipeline 100% transparent
Gladly. Please provide me with their personal work emails.
Why? As I mentioned before, it is NOT an installer problem. Installer we use is doing everything we need. The problem is with the convoluted way Dovetail Games installed FSX:SE if FSX was already present. ANY installer will have a problem with this.
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I agree with Ronald, so many features requests on the forums, some are highly voted since more than a year but nothing yet in the Sim....Gladly. Please provide me with their personal work emails.
I guess if you can contact them, its the way to go to have answers
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Like I said: please provide me with their personal work emails.I agree with Ronald, so many features requests on the forums, some are highly voted since more than a year but nothing yet in the Sim....
I guess if you can contact them, its the way to go to have answers
Ronald
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1 - I'm sure that - if you really want to - you can find their personal contact data on any modern-day business-2-business-network like "LinkedIn" for example
- https://www.linkedin.com/
2 - BUT... I did find the next best thing: A physical building location and a plain old paper postal box ;-)
So all you have to do is print-out your email on paper, address it to the right person and post it the old-skool way:
-https://www.dnb.com/business-direct..._studio.9af1d2912459bf1ced3b9f4fac0704ea.html
Ronald
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1 - Nope. I'm advocating ANY (Win64 bit executable) WAY to get to job done, as in the original 100% pure spirit of hacking.
2 - Thanks for sharing the link to the article, this stuff looks very educational and interesting...
3 - Roger that sir ;-)
4 - See my previous posting above; There are many other (analogue, old-skool) ways "to get in contact".
5 - Thanks for the clarification on this matter Misho. If I may ask, what type of convolution does DTG exactly then?
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Dovetail Games (DTG) had to make some hard decisions on how exactly to install FSX:SE, as in, whether to allow existing, "old" FSX to exist side by side or not. They did that because there are a lot of add-ons that would get "confused" as to what version to install for. So, basically,
if FSX was present, FSX:SE would install itself alongside FSX, and rename its FSX.CFG into FSX_SE.CFG, insert registry entries to that effect.
if no FSX present, FSX:SE would use FSX.CFG name, and insert slightly different registry entries.
and if both the FSX and FSX:SE were installed and if FSX was removed... well, weird things were happening in the registry.
Anyway, we've done our best to cover all the cases, but some users reported installation failure nonetheless.
Ronald
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1- Thanks for the clarification Misho in this complex parallel installer matter. This indeed can be a nie challenge to counteract when you want to install your products on such a machine
-http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/358h3i
2 - And that is all one can do, your best, since... sometimes one simply encounter serious cases of "pebcak" ;-)
-http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/358h3i