JFS & MSFS2020

[Lemeser]

Ah, yes, apparently it's not writing the heading to the correct position in the file. I just need to find out where it is supposed to go. Should be fixed in the next version.

Peter

Thanks a lot for the fast response and for taking the issue into consideration, one more thing if you please could activate the password protected session that would be wonderful

kind Regards

[Dave Torkington]

Hi Peter,

Thank you very much for your analysis and recommendations! No I haven't tried monitoring Network, CPU usage or a process draining resources... I'll certainly investigate tomorrow and report back.

I'm also still considering my internet connection as a potential cause because we are part of a Fibre / Microwave network supplying our village [we're living up in the hills!]. However, I have to say that when using JoinFS for years with FSX, P3Dv4 and P3Dv5 I've never had such an issue.

Best regards,

Dave.

Hi Peter,

Last night I took readings of my CPU load and Wifi with the following results. There's a definite 'spike' in Sending data which, when I compared with my buddies was excessive [On average there's was 1.8Mbps and mine was 3.4Mbs]. I'm not 100% but it seems that a spike in my Sending Data somehow affects my connection so that the data feed is zero. So, JoinFS falls over as does Teamspeak. It then takes between a few seconds and 20 seconds to restart my connection.

Best regards, Dave.

[Peter]

Last night I took readings of my CPU load and Wifi with the following results. There's a definite 'spike' in Sending data which, when I compared with my buddies was excessive [On average there's was 1.8Mbps and mine was 3.4Mbs]. I'm not 100% but it seems that a spike in my Sending Data somehow affects my connection so that the data feed is zero. So, JoinFS falls over as does Teamspeak. It then takes between a few seconds and 20 seconds to restart my connection.

It's definitely worth investigating that further. That's a lot of data to be sending and neither JoinFS or Teamspeak should be sending that amount.

Firstly, Wifi isn't an ideal medium for this kind of thing. Have you considered the powerline adapters that a lot of people use? Myself included. Basically it's a little device that you plug into any power socket in your home. It has standard network cable sockets. Using two or more adapters, you plug one in near your router and others near your computers/devices. Attach your network cables and you have a home network set up.

To investigate what is using that much bandwidth, I would suggest seeing if it happens with JoinFS and Teamspeak both closed to see if another application is doing it.

If the network usage stops when you close JoinFS, then can you have a look at both the aircraft and objects views and see if you have anything, other than your own aircraft, with broadcast enabled. Perhaps you have a lot of objects getting broadcasted?

If the network usage is still high with JoinFS closed, open a DOS prompt and type 'netstat -b'. This will show you which processes currently have open connections.

Finally, to be on the safe side I would also run a virus scanner just to check the system out.

Peter

[canuck21a]

Hello Peter,
I am most pleased that you have managed to get JoinFS to this point.

Today I installed 1.50 on my "Hub".
I also installed 1.50 on a few of my test PC's; FSX, P3D, XP11.50, MSFS (Store) & MSFS Steam.
For the most part things appear to be working quite well.
What I am not seeing is labels associated with planes in MSFS or XP (XP is understood as it did not have them before).

I can manage to use the developer mode with MSFS to switch planes to then have the correct planes show as these do not apparently yet know how to know about each dynamically other or at least that appears to be true in my testing so far.

I was also able to have earlier versions of JoinFS work with their respective sims with no obvious negative impact.

For now if we all decide to fly the same plane model all is good save for not being able to identify each other in MSFS like in FSX/P3D.

As always, my offer for contributions still stands.

[Peter]

Hello Peter,
I am most pleased that you have managed to get JoinFS to this point.

Today I installed 1.50 on my "Hub".
I also installed 1.50 on a few of my test PC's; FSX, P3D, XP11.50, MSFS (Store) & MSFS Steam.
For the most part things appear to be working quite well.
What I am not seeing is labels associated with planes in MSFS or XP (XP is understood as it did not have them before).

I can manage to use the developer mode with MSFS to switch planes to then have the correct planes show as these do not apparently yet know how to know about each dynamically other or at least that appears to be true in my testing so far.

I was also able to have earlier versions of JoinFS work with their respective sims with no obvious negative impact.

For now if we all decide to fly the same plane model all is good save for not being able to identify each other in MSFS like in FSX/P3D.

As always, my offer for contributions still stands.

I should finally be able to get labels in X-Plane, I'm half way through getting some custom rendering going on the aircraft which would mean we'd no longer need to add AI aircraft.

It's annoying that labels don't work in 2020. They ought to, I need to look into it properly. In FSX you could enable labels in the options. Not sure if they've changed the way that works now.

When you mentioned substitutions, do you mean that it's not remembering the models from session to session, causing you to all fly the same aircraft type? I may need to put down 1.5.1 because I did fix something related to that.

Peter

[canuck21a]

Hello Again Peter,
I read you reply and did some more testing today with v1.51

For the matter of models I can say that if I change a model in one MSFS sim the other MSFS sim does not necessarily see that model automatically. It does appear that previous sessions that had models matched remembered those.

I also am completely lost as to how to engage the "other" aircraft" markers using JoinFS with MSFS. I see nothing when using JoinFS. I see all plane markers when using MSFS multiplayer. I do see all MSFS markers in FSX & FSX-SE provided the aircraft are active (engines running).

For model matching it almost seems that I need to go to the other sim 1 and swap the active model with the new one assigned on the other sim 2. I can then swap back on sim 1 and both sims now have the correct models. This seems to be remembered between sessions.

My test log:

Multiplayer = off ; Show Traffic Nameplates=on ;
JoinFS settings unique Nickname & unique Tail # (ATC for aircraft)

Connect to hub:
a) #1 aircraft C172 is visible on JoinFS Map (my map)
b) #2 aircraft C172 is joined and is on JoinFS map
Both sims see the aircraft but even when moving I see no markers (ID's)
[Testing concurrently with FSX & FSX-SE on two other systems. They both see all aircraft and markers]

Disconnect JoinFS, reconfigure sims to use Multiplayer and create a group.
Now both aircraft have markers along with all of the other multiplayer aircraft nearby.

Now turn on JoinFS to see if anything changes.
I now see duplicate aircraft and the marker follows the doubled up planes.
Disconnect from group:
Duplicates seem to remain along with the markers. May die by itself after some time?
Disable multiplayer:
Duplicates and markers disappear.

Now disconnect one sim from JoinFS (click on network)
See if previous model changes (C152 & C208) were retained from previous sessions:
Change model using developer option to C152
Rejoin JoinFS session.
Other sim now sees the C152
Repeat with C208
Other sim now sees C208
Repeat with model not tried before [Icon]
Other sim sees C172
On other sim use dev mode to swap C172 with Icon and then swap back to C172
Both sims now see Icon and C172 correctly.

Shut down MSFS sessions and restart clean to see if model matching is retained.
Confirm that switching models to Icon now shows the expected change automatically.

[Peter]

For model matching it almost seems that I need to go to the other sim 1 and swap the active model with the new one assigned on the other sim 2. I can then swap back on sim 1 and both sims now have the correct models. This seems to be remembered between sessions.

Yes, that's exactly how it is intended to work connecting to MSFS 2020. The reason is that it's no longer possible to scan for the models in the file system because a lot of them are protected by DRM and therefore inaccessible. So the only way I know of, at the moment, is to detect the aircraft name whenever they appear in the simulator and add them to the existing list.

This means that after a relatively short period of time the model list will become more complete. It's just something to be aware of. The good news is that once an aircraft model is in the list, it will be remembered from then on and can be used for substitution. Over time the list will become complete.

If I do find an alternative way to get the complete list in the future then I'll implement it, otherwise for now that's how it works.

Peter

[Dave Torkington]

It's definitely worth investigating that further. That's a lot of data to be sending and neither JoinFS or Teamspeak should be sending that amount.

Firstly, Wifi isn't an ideal medium for this kind of thing. Have you considered the powerline adapters that a lot of people use? Myself included. Basically it's a little device that you plug into any power socket in your home. It has standard network cable sockets. Using two or more adapters, you plug one in near your router and others near your computers/devices. Attach your network cables and you have a home network set up.

To investigate what is using that much bandwidth, I would suggest seeing if it happens with JoinFS and Teamspeak both closed to see if another application is doing it.

If the network usage stops when you close JoinFS, then can you have a look at both the aircraft and objects views and see if you have anything, other than your own aircraft, with broadcast enabled. Perhaps you have a lot of objects getting broadcasted?

If the network usage is still high with JoinFS closed, open a DOS prompt and type 'netstat -b'. This will show you which processes currently have open connections.

Finally, to be on the safe side I would also run a virus scanner just to check the system out.

Peter

Hi Peter, Thank you again for your consideration!

Good call re. Powerline Adaptors. I had these in the UK a while back and they did improve my data connection. I'll get a set once I've eliminated a few other possiblities.

Thanks to your suggestion about broadcasting objects, I discovered that I all Objects with my ID were being broadcast. This could very well be causing my problem! I'll test tomorrow evening with my buddies and report back.

Network usage is Zero or very close to Zero with JoinFS when my PC is 'dorment'. I'll run 'netstat-b' in any case.

I use Avast Free edition and my system is apparently clean.

Regards, Dave.

[Peter]

Hi Peter, Thank you again for your consideration!

Regards, Dave.

There's a chance this is related to a bug I have just discovered, which can potentially cause a large amount of data to be sent every couple of minutes. It will be fixed in 1.5.3. Worth bearing in mind after you install that version.

Peter

[EasternHops]

Maybe somebody has managed to get into the Alpha testing and can let us know?

A friend of mine is on the Alpha and we tested JoinFS with me on FSX. The only problem we saw was that I could see his aircraft but he couldn't see mine

Edit: his sim is listed as KittyHawk on the Users page

Hey Roo,
Robert aka Pizza from EasternHops, We have been testing JFS as well and are getting the same issue we see other pilots but they are not seeing us. We are looking forward being able to have our FSX pilots join FS2020 pilots on Cessna Sundays, We would love to help out in any way. Join our discord https://discord.gg/fNBQtCNV take care all, be safe

[ATC Roo]

Maybe somebody has managed to get into the Alpha testing and can let us know?

A friend of mine is on the Alpha and we tested JoinFS with me on FSX. The only problem we saw was that I could see his aircraft but he couldn't see mine

Edit: his sim is listed as KittyHawk on the Users page

Hey Roo,
Robert aka Pizza from EasternHops, We have been testing JFS as well and are getting the same issue we see other pilots but they are not seeing us. We are looking forward being able to have our FSX pilots join FS2020 pilots on Cessna Sundays, We would love to help out in any way. Join our discord https://discord.gg/fNBQtCNV take care all, be safe

Hi Robert, Hope you're well in these strange times.

As far as I'm aware (I don't own FS2020) JoinFS is now mainly fully working with JoinFS.

I'd check that you have the current latest version of JoinFS that Peter has written.

I'd also have a quick look over Peters forum here to see if there are any insights as to why you can't see the others.

Stay safe,
Roo