Arno Gerretsen : SimConnect

Managed SimConnect Client SDK

arno — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 06:50:00 GMT

Tim Gregson (or Beatle) has released a beta version of a new managed SimConnect client SDK a few days ago, check out his blog for all the details. He has also posted some details about the usage in another post already. For those that are using SimConnect a lot in their applications I think this is an interesting development to follow. And a big thanks to Tim for releasing this work of course.

FSX and CIGI

arno — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 08:40:00 GMT

Some weeks ago I wrote about some code I wrote to control FSX using the CIGI interface with SimConnect. This week we finally had the time at work to test if the code actually works. So we loaded FSX, started our simulation host and tried it. After some configuration issues it worked very well. FSX proved to be a beautiful visual to be used with our simulation. And using SimConnect I could easily control the eyepoint of the own aircraft and all the other traffic flying around.

Of course there are still other things to add, like control of the weather or the time of day. And now we have to put FSX in slew or pause mode, as else the eyepoint is jumping a bit. But that basic works, so I am sure we can build further upon this.

SimConnect and CIGI

arno — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 21:35:00 GMT

For some while already I wanted to learn a bit more about SimConnect and this week I found a good reason to do so. I wanted to try if I could connect FSX to CIGI. CIGI stands for Common Image Generator Interface and this is a common way in professional simulations to talk between the simulation host and the image generators. At work we also make use of CIGI for this.

What I wanted to do is try to use FSX as an image generator with our simulation host, so for that I needed to connect FSX to CIGI. This is where SimConnect was very useful, after some hours of trying I am now able to control the user aircraft with the CIGI interface and I can also add other traffic (AI) and control them from CIGI as well. This is a nice demonstration that the concept works.

Until now I only tested it with the host emulator that CIGI delivers, so a next step will be to attach it to the real simulation at work. Should be interesting. Of course I am not ready yet, as other things like the weather should still be connected as well.

I guess such a CIGI connection might also be very useful for ESP, it would open a lot more possibilities in the professional flight simulation world. Sounds like great fun to play with that some more at a later time...

Are they listening?

arno — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 07:21:00 GMT

Complaining about the SDKs has been a favourite thing to do among developers for years. With previous versions of FS we always had to wait for ages to get them and of course it never told us what we wanted to know for our project (how could MS forget to include what I needed to know). I am sure you can all remember those good old time.

But that is enough sarcasm for now. With FSX things have improved a lot already, the SDK shipped with the initial release and I think I can say that the quality and usefulness of the documentation has also improved a lot. And things don't stop there, no it gets even better.

The ACES team wants to know your feedback about the FSX SDK. For that purpose we have created a special subforum at the FSDeveloper site. You can use this forum to tell the ACES team about features you would like to see, about bugs in their current tools (not bugs in your files, really bugs in the tools) or about paint points, thing that are possible with the tool but just hard to do or inconvenient.

These forums were made on request of some developers of the ACES team, so you can be sure that they will be looking at your suggestions. Of course nobody can promise that they will also implement them all in future SDKs.

Merry Christmas!

arno — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 13:11:00 GMT

Christmas is almost there, so I would like to take this opertunity to wish you all a Merry Christmas.

Of course I will spend the Christmas days with my family, but for the rest this time of year is a good opportunity to catch up with some of the things I want to do for a long time already. So those two weeks without having to go to work are already quite full with plans for things to do. I guess the best thing I could wish from Santa Claus (apart from the fact we already celebrated Sinterklaas, so no Santa for me) is some more time to spend on all this. Here is just an overview of some of the things I have in mind, don't pin me down on this as I will probably not be able to finish it all:

Finish a new version of ModelConverterX and release it. Over the last week I have been running a test project to convert the objects from a certain airport and that has resulted in a lot of improvements to the SCASM reader functionality of the tool. Once I can convert all objects I want to convert, I will release a new version.
Add OpenFlight funtionality to the ModelConverterX tool. With my MDL Tweaker II tool I could already write out OpenFlight versions of my MDL objects. I want to add the same functionality to ModelConverterX. That would allow me to convert SCASM objects to OpenFlight and later also MDL objects when I can read them in again. And even more interesting I am also thinking about an OpenFlight reader, so that you can put OpenFlight models into FSX MDL objects.
I want to study the SimConnect SDK a bit more, to get a better understanding of what can and cannot be done with it. As part of this I will probably try to write a little tool to drive FSX with external data (that could be useful later at work if we want to use FSX as a visual for our simulations).
I want to look into the conditional display of scenery objects. At the DevCon in November I got some interesting suggestions that might allow (some) conditions to work again. As the MDL format does not allow it directly, most suggestions involve using Missions and/or SimConnect. So that will be two fields I will be diving into a bit.

As you can see the list is quite long, let's see how far I can come. At least it seems I do not have to be bored during my Christmas holidays...

FsDeveloper

arno — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 19:57:00 GMT

The last week Nick and I have been quite busy in getting our idea for a bigger community going. For those of you who missed the previous posts where we talked about this, let me start with a short explanation of the idea. The plan is to create a community for FS addon developers, it should be a place where they can discuss their (technical) issues with other developers. So the main focus is that it is for developers only, no normal users blaming you that you modelled that aircraft nose a few milimeters wrong or that your building is not completely correct. There are already enough forums that offer that kind of "services" to developers.

No, we want to create a community that has the same nice atmosphere as the current SceneryDesign.org community. But then not only for scenery designers, but for all addon developers. So it should become a friendly place, where everybody can be free to discuss his problems or ideas with other designers. No matter if you are a freeware or a commercial developers, a newbie or an expert. In the end such a sharing of ideas and experiences is of great benefit to any designer and will improve the available addons for the end users.

One of the reasons to start this community now, is of course because FsX is just around the horizon. And the new possibilities it offers (for example mission development and SimConnect) will certainly generate a lot of discussion. So therefore we think it is a good idea to provide a place for these discussions. And of course the changes in aircraft or scenery design will also generate enough discussions.

Another benefit of having a community of developers, is also that bringing a lot of them together also allows us to provide better feedback to MS. About wishes for future versions, problems with the SDKs, etc. If we can get a structured feedback about that (and we MVPs should be able to help there), we should be able to get even better addons in the future.

Of course not every developer will be interested in reading all parts of such a (big) community. That is why we will also provide portals for the different areas. So if you are only interested in scenery design, you can visit the scenery design portal. There you can find the news that would interest you and get easy access to the scenery design section of the forum. We will do the same for other areas, like aircraft design, missions, etc.

This sunday we will transform the current SceneryDesign.org forum into the new FsDeveloper.com forum. So stay tuned and expect some more news then.