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FSX What version of simconnect to code with?

D

davehirst

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unitedkingdom
I run a multiplayer community using standard fsx (SP2) multiplayer sessions.

I've written a little addon with simconnect for pilots and I targeted simconnect SP2. I had a few users who were obviously using FSX sp2 but had to get them to run Simconnect.msi (SP2) to get going.

I think I read somewhere on this forum that you should target simconnect RTM as everyone should have this. I couldn't do this with the above software as I'd used the message function to pop info into fsx which didn't exist in the RTM version.

Anyway, I've just released a new piece of software for ATC. (Like FS Commander) but aimed at ATC not pilots. I thought I'd target simconnect RTM but I'm only on day 2 and had to get 3 people to install simconnect.msi RTM to get going. All 3 used my other software with no probs.

Bit of a pain, as I understand it, Micosoft say you can't distribute simconnect.msi and yet it appears we can't rely on any version to work with every client, even if they are all on fsx sp2 like my users are.

I've also used Tim Beatles version which I loved but again hit problems at distribution. (Might have given up too early on this)

My current thinking is to go back to targeting SP2 and give out simconnect.msi to thoose that should have it but don't for whatever reason.


Love to hear what you've done to get round this.

Dave
 
davehirst said:
I run a multiplayer community using standard fsx (SP2) multiplayer sessions.

I've written a little addon with simconnect for pilots and I targeted simconnect SP2. I had a few users who were obviously using FSX sp2 but had to get them to run Simconnect.msi (SP2) to get going.

I think I read somewhere on this forum that you should target simconnect RTM as everyone should have this. I couldn't do this with the above software as I'd used the message function to pop info into fsx which didn't exist in the RTM version.

Anyway, I've just released a new piece of software for ATC. (Like FS Commander) but aimed at ATC not pilots. I thought I'd target simconnect RTM but I'm only on day 2 and had to get 3 people to install simconnect.msi RTM to get going. All 3 used my other software with no probs.

Bit of a pain, as I understand it, Micosoft say you can't distribute simconnect.msi and yet it appears we can't rely on any version to work with every client, even if they are all on fsx sp2 like my users are.

I've also used Tim Beatles version which I loved but again hit problems at distribution. (Might have given up too early on this)

My current thinking is to go back to targeting SP2 and give out simconnect.msi to thoose that should have it but don't for whatever reason.


Love to hear what you've done to get round this.

Dave
Click to expand...

You would not be the 1st to distribute Simconnect with their addon ;)

I know what I'd do, if making a FREE addon for a limited audience, and was facing a massive amount of extra development to eliminate the need to distribute simconnect with my Freeware addon....

You will also find, that a number of people, who have, and should have a given version of simconnect installed by FSX, have issues with a bad Simconnect install, and end up having to re-install it again (or .Net) to get things to work. Its a Minefield ....

ADE9X Environment Checker is one very usefull TOOL, to check that all is well with a FSX/Simconnect/.net/FSUIPC system ... nice tool, well done author.

Geoff
 
I changed the way I load SimConnect to deal with these WinSxS problems. What I do now is to not link to any simconnect.lib in my project and then use Win32 functions to scan for instances of simconnect.dll in the WinSxS filesystem. I then interrorgate the file version numbers and use LoadLibrary() to load the one I want, then GetProcAdress() to set up my function pointers.

This way I can still manage to open SP2 SimConnect.dll even if the whole SxS manifest issue (or whatever it is) is preventing it from opening normally. No need then to get people to try combinations of reinstalling .msi or FSX.

Si
 
Hey Dave,

What sort of problem did you have with my client library? It doesn't rely on anything being installed in the SxS or the GAC (I wrote it that way on purpose :-> ). There is a bug in the current Beta 3 release having to do with named pipe connections on machines without a working network connection (I really need to find the time to fix that and put out a new release :-> ), you can work around it by changing your Open call to sc->Open(".", null);.

Tim
 
Thanks for the replys.

Tim I don't know what I did before but I'd built a distribution with your dll and it worked ok on a vista machine but not on XP.

I had read about your bug on another thread and was waiting for the next release (I seem to remember it was going to be a few days away lol!)

Anyway I tried again yesterday and it worked ok, no idea what I did before, like I said I was waiting for your next version before going back to it.

Having read what Simon says I think yours looks like the best option, also makes it easier to connect from a secondary PC without having to change simconnect.cfg.

I'm using VB so changed your code to sc.open("",".","")

Any chance of Beta 4 coming out soon!!!!
 
Hey Dave,

Not sure when I'm gonna have the time to finish up Beta 4. Since Lockheed signed the license agreement for ESP, I've been busy busy :->. Other than the bug fix for the named pipe with no network connection issue (which the modified Open command takes care of), the only other change I had planned was to add XML comments to the public APIs and data structures so they would have nicer intellisense displays (which is a rather time consuming task to complete :-> ). And I was planning to make a .Net 4.0 version of the library that used default parameters instead of function overloads (which would also allow use of named parameters).
 
Thanks Tim,

I'll go ahead and release with Beta 3. Will be easy to upgrade if and when beta 4 comes out.

Dave.
 
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