Sgt_Baker

That said, he did recognise that things were going very wrong, so ejected in to the roof of said hangar.

Last time I tried in DCS 1.X, wingman returned to hangar then attempted to take off straight ahead. It didn't end well...

Two separate problems. Coincidentally, I was supposed to update uMFCD's licencing server (soon to be replaced) to allow all the beta copies to keep running. As I fired up Visual Studio with that intent, it immediately threw a major hissy fit and reverted to an "expired trial version". The irony is that a licensing problem is preventing me from fixing THE licensing problem. :D

Skype is back online, yet VS is still very much refusing to cooperate.

All your aircraft grounded, along with my entire ability to work. Waiting for MS to get this sorted out. :) :doh: P.S. Perhaps MS are having catastrophic problems in general today, as Skype has just stopped working too.

Give me a minute to get this fixed. My copy of Visual Studio has suddenly decided to reject its licence for some reason. Attempting to resolve, then will update the uMFCD licensing service. --Baker

This type of functionality is possible with uMFCD, yet not implemented at present. Should appear in UltraMFCD 2.0Weeks™. :)

Thanks for your support, Erik. It's never been a matter of "quitting" in the conventional sense. UltraMFCD is essentially a benign virus. The means by which it achieves what it does involves me, personally, working out how DCS.exe operates without ever having seen a single line of their source code. As you might imagine, this requires an extreme degree of effort, analysis and time. I call it "non-cooperative debugging". Having spent the better part of eighteen months wading through (and incidentally fixing a bunch of bugs along the way) DCS.exe, I know full well that a repeat of this process may be entirely unsuccessful when applied to DCS 2 - what with it too being a similar "black box". Thus, I cannot conscientiously pre-sell an effort I know might fall flat on its face. My frustrations stem from that fact that I'm sitting here under pressure to update and improve uMFCD 1.x when we all know 2.0 is just around the corner, or not, or "at some point in the future". A single individual has carried the burden of the above thus far, and at times that same individual is sometimes utterly exhausted by an act as simple as reading an email in the morning. :)

So the initial assessment is that there's good news and bad news. The good: 1) The lag issue only affects the front end of uMFCD. This is nice, since we have 100% control over that code and everything it does. If the issue affected the bits of uMFCD that run inside DCS, we might be here for an age attempting to sort it out. 2) The problem is now affecting both AMD and Nvidia users. Thus, it is likely the fix will solve the problem for both camps. 3) The fix is probably very simple to implement. The bad: Still unable to reproduce on this end. As it's a driver-level "disagreement" in uMFCD's code, no amount of diagnostics packages etc will help until I can actually see the problem manifesting, in person, on a development box.

FPS hit is unavoidable with DCS 1.x - should disappear with DCS 2.0, assuming 2.0 appears at any point this side of the end of the universe ("November", now). It has always been my intention to charge a small fee (~$9.99) for "full fat" uMFCD on a freemium basis, yet I'm not a money grabbing bastard. Can't charge a penny for something that's going to be rendered obsolete next week/month/year. This very factor complicates justifications regarding time spent on development. Fortunately I can now justify spending £££ on nVidia cards with a view to solving the lag/update bug.

Roger that. Do have an HD7950 to hand. My cohort will have to lay off his addiction to World of Tanks for an afternoon or three. :D Still need specific nVidia details.

Fixing the nVidia driver problem once and for all The issue with nVidia's drivers appears to not be going away. If you have an nVidia card and have also experienced the bug whereby uMFCD's displays update once every ten seconds, could you kindly respond, in this thread, with precisely which nVidia card you're using. Sgt_Baker is going shopping for Green Team™ hardware. (And then selling most of it, so watch eBay). :)

This. :)

UltraMFCD, unmodified, in DCS 1.5 OpenBeta:

You can probably expect it to cease functioning altogether. Then again, there is a rather rational logic behind not having charged anybody for uMFCD releases thus far - what with the long-awaited transition away from DX9. Finally. The problem is that it's rather difficult to fund the amount of work required to create something as smooth and simple as uMFCD with the developers of the target application dicking around as much as they have been. Two Weeks™ syndrome. I've been dealing with a number of health-related issues recently, and am presently uncertain as to whether it is in my best interests to continue to pursue this project. As is the case with so many of these (mod) things. Except UltraMFCD is, was and never will be a "mod" - simply on account of the fact that it doesn't require a complicated and poorly-documented uninstallation and/or reinstallation of DCS process should things go completely awry. Finally, all attempts to communicate with ED regarding the future of UltraMFCD have been met with the least of enthusiasm, or ignored completely. Being British, I find this... very... not cricket. So there you have it. --Baker Edit: To add a single comma.

Hmm, uMFCD takes a good hard look at the DCS-relevant files in Saved Games searching for export.lua and the like. Could it be that you launched DCS and uMFCD prior to Saved Games being recreated? --Baker

Hey Icemaker, Essentially one of these, right? --Baker

Hey Rivvern, The first issue is 99% likely to be the ongoing problem we're having with nVidia drivers and certain cards. Unfortunately to get this one resolved means my purchasing a few examples of the affected cards in order to determine exactly where the issue is occurring within the front-end rendering code. Lots of £££, in other words. Until such time, the problem can be resolved by rolling back to driver set 347.52. Secondly, yes, there is a known incompatibility between Kneeboard Builder and UltraMFCD, which relates to the fact that I never got around to fixing compatibility with the built in kneeboard. As it so happens, we have already incorporated a uMFCD-style kneeboard in to UltraMFCD, and I'm more than happy to develop its functionality and/or work with the developer of Kneeboard Builder to resolve any conflict occurring. --Baker

Sorted. Again. Essentially what's going on here is that I keep having to tell the licensing server to allow these beta copies to live longer and longer than their initially-intended lifespan. -Baker

Hi folks, Been away for a while, as you all know. Apologise for the week-long interruption to service back there - obviously fixed now. Good news in terms of UltraMFCD progress: 1) Moving towards commercial release at a good pace. This is the first time I've sold software to the general public, and it transpires there are many expenses beyond time and effort. The majority (and hopefully all) of these problems are resolved. 2) The people who keep dragging me off in the direction of woods/trees/mangroves/swamps/mosquitoes are also rather interested... to the point of asking "Can this be applied to Train Sims?!" Bad news: 1) Still no closer to knowing why nVidia's drivers hate UltraMFCD. Principally on account of owning none of the affected cards. When the product launches, will use immediate proceeds to purchase "green team" cards for the sakes of solving this driver issue once and for all. And then potentially writing a snotty email to nVidia regarding driver design. :P In any case: UltraMFCD is approximately a signature and a payment away from transitioning from "speculative R&D effort" to "product".

Short story long: Over a decade ago now (starting to feel old), I was working extensively in the field of holography-based autostereoscopic displays. (An article about my two cohorts can be seen here: http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1138595). I used to do the demos for TV, being more believable as a "computer geek". Owing to the fact that NATO is seemingly not in the habit of renewing its NDAs, I can state that in ~2002 we created a number of display prototypes for a NATO R&D lab based out of Sweden - both for command & control use on the ground (think 3D table) and standard MFD use in aircraft. This is where I cut my teeth as a software/hardware developer; my crowning achievement being the building of a solid-state (no moving parts whatsoever), fully head-tracked system for real-time, parallax-updated 3D viewing. Except with our stuff you didn't have to wear a clunky headset or glasses. In any case, despite OR being a revival of the age-old VR headset idea, I think it's a brilliant thing and that it will change the outlook for stereoscopy in general. Lucky for me the maths required to port uMFCD to OR (or any other 3D device, for that matter) haven't changed at all, despite the altogether different ideas my hairline exhibits. --------------------------------------------------------- TL;DR: There's a reason I keep stating elsewhere on these forums that "UltraMFCD is coded as 100% Direct3D". :)

Preview: So we all want a moving map. How about a hyper-accurate 3D moving map? The following is a sample rendering of the elevation model we'll be using (not to scale in this instance). The end result will see any map we can come up with overlaid on the baseline 3D globe. You will, of course, still be able to have plain ol' 2D. Looking SE along the path of the Çoruh River, Bantumi (not rendered) bottom-left.

But working now?

Hi Dan, I can implement the HUD export relatively quickly (including mirroring so it displays the correct way up in a reflector). LAN export is something that's being worked on in parallel, so there should be some initial results in the not too distant future. -B

Would you both kindly generate a Diagnostics Package as per the instructions in my sig, please? Many thanks, Baker Any monitorsetup.lua will work. UltraMFCD will either override whatever you've got in there, or generate it automagically. Same goes for export.lua, with the exception that it preserves whatever functionality it finds in an existing version, generating one on the fly otherwise.