VPilot Error - Unable to connect to simulator

[Nehaal Rao]

Hi Vatsim Community!

I have very recently decided to up my Flight Sim Experience through VATSIM. Watched every tutorial video, read reddit threads here, downloaded VATSIM and all required resources Vpilot, Vspy etc. 

 

All my excitement goes to drain because of this error from VPilot. I am scratching my head hard because I know it might be a very easy solution but somehow I dont seem to understand it.

Attached is the error image and evidence that FSX Se is open.

 

Please do help me.

 

[Ross Carlson]

Do you have a flight loaded?

[Nehaal Rao]

Just now, Ross Carlson said:

Do you have a flight loaded?

Yes I do. The default 737 on FSX. 

[Ryan Geckler]

Running as admin?

[Nehaal Rao]

26 minutes ago, Ryan Geckler said:

Running as admin?

Yes. Both FSX Se and VPilot running as admin.

[Nehaal Rao]

Read the Tips & Tricks and also the Trouble Shooting page. Nothing about my issue and that's what is worrying me.

[Ross Carlson]

Have you made any customizations to the simconnect.ini or simconnect.cfg files anywhere on your system?

[Nehaal Rao]

1 hour ago, Ross Carlson said:

Have you made any customizations to the simconnect.ini or simconnect.cfg files anywhere on your system?

So, I had this error first like mentioned in this discussion :

 

 

 

Solved it like this man did 

On 6/29/2017 at 10:13 AM, Henrik Sonstebo said:

 

 

Oh God, I'm the stupidest man on Earth...

 

Everything should've been self-explanatory from when I saw Dependency Walker not finding SimConnect.dll (meaning it needs that DLL either in the vPilot directory or in System32). Inside of WinSxS I found a file called SimConnect.dll, and I just copied that over into the vPilot directory. Shouldn't have any more problems with that.

 

A part of me tells me that this is only a short-sighted solution, but whatever. It works for now, I'm happy

 

And apparrantely it worked for him. For me, it solved the "unhandled" error but now it says can't connect to sim.

[Ross Carlson]

That didn't answer my question. :D

[Nehaal Rao]

2 minutes ago, Ross Carlson said:

That didn't answer my question. 😄

No I didn't make changes to the files you asked about.

I mentioned above because I thought it would be relavant.

Also, I would add that my FSX directory isn't in the default place.

[Ross Carlson]

Do you have a simconnect.ini or simconnect.cfg file on the system? If you're not sure what I'm referring to, then you probably don't. These files are only necessary if you want to run simconnect apps on a different machine on your network.

[Nehaal Rao]

Yes I do have them both. It is in this directory :

 

C:\Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X - Steam Edition\SDK\Core Utilities Kit\SimConnect SDK\config

 

What do I do about this?

 

Sorry for late response.

[Ross Carlson]

Those are just sample files that you would use to build your own, they don't have any effect. In order to have any effect, the simconnect.cfg file would have to be placed in My Documents, or in the same folder as the vPilot.exe.

How about SimConnect.xml ... do you have one of those? It would be in the FSX application data folder, which is normally hidden.

[Nehaal Rao]

11 minutes ago, Ross Carlson said:

Those are just sample files that you would use to build your own, they don't have any effect. In order to have any effect, the simconnect.cfg file would have to be placed in My Documents, or in the same folder as the vPilot.exe.

How about SimConnect.xml ... do you have one of those? It would be in the FSX application data folder, which is normally hidden.

So do i have to place both the files in VPilot? 

 

Also yes, I do have simconnect.xml in the same config folder.

[Ross Carlson]

All of these files are only needed if you want to run SimConnect apps on a different machine from the machine where your sim runs. I am asking about them because if you have copied those files into the actual location where they need to exist, but you have the files configured incorrectly, that can cause vPilot to be unable to connect.

Since you have not copied those files into place, then this is not your issue.

I'm afraid I have no idea why vPilot won't connect to your sim.

[Nehaal Rao]

There's got to be a reason, could it be Model Matching issue? Or any directory issue? Because clearly, VPilot -in laymen terms- is not able to see that FSX is infact running?

[Ross Carlson]

Yes, there is definitely a reason, I just don't know what it is. It is definitely not a model matching issue. And I don't see how it could be a directory issue. vPilot connects to FSX by SimConnect, which happens in memory. My best guess is that something is blocking the connection.

[Nehaal Rao]

29 minutes ago, Ross Carlson said:

Yes, there is definitely a reason, I just don't know what it is. It is definitely not a model matching issue. And I don't see how it could be a directory issue. vPilot connects to FSX by SimConnect, which happens in memory. My best guess is that something is blocking the connection.

Can i reinstall that SimConnect? Or reconfigure it?

 

I see 5 SimConnect.msi files , which can be installed.

[Ross Carlson]

Yeah, that's worth a try. I think you already have the right version installed, otherwise you would likely get a File Not Found or Version Mismatch error. However, I do think it's worth trying a reinstall because maybe it's currently only partially installed, or something like that.

Normally SimConnect is installed along with FSX, and it automatically installs the correct version. What are the filenames or folder names of the 5 SimConnect.msi files that you found? The version that you need is the one that comes with FSX SP2 (also called acceleration) and the version number is 10.0.61259.0.

[Nehaal Rao]

Okay so first off a correction, there's 4 and not 5 SimConnect.msi

3 of them in LegacyInterfaces under folders FSX-RTM, FSX-SP1 & FSX-XPACK 

1 of them in Lib folder.

Edit : For re-installing, do I just click all 4 and install? Is it to be done in any specific order ?

Edited July 7, 2020 at 06:41 PM by Nehaal Rao

[Ross Carlson]

What is the full path to these folders?

Edit: I just checked my FSX:SE installation and found them here:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\FSX\SDK\Core Utilities Kit\SimConnect SDK

I believe the one you want is the one in the lib folder. Notice that the readme file there tells you that it should already be installed when you installed FSX. However, give it a try anyway, can't hurt.

Edit 2: If that one doesn't work, try the XPACK one. The other ones I know are too old.

Edited July 7, 2020 at 07:06 PM by Ross Carlson

[Nehaal Rao]

24 minutes ago, Ross Carlson said:

What is the full path to these folders?

Edit: I just checked my FSX:SE installation and found them here:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\FSX\SDK\Core Utilities Kit\SimConnect SDK

I believe the one you want is the one in the lib folder. Notice that the readme file there tells you that it should already be installed when you installed FSX. However, give it a try anyway, can't hurt.

Edit 2: If that one doesn't work, try the XPACK one. The other ones I know are too old.

Well the version you mentioned was actually the XPACK one and not lib. 

But I installed EVERTHING again. I hope that's okay.

Gonna run FSX and VPilot and update you on the same

[Ross Carlson]

It should be okay to run all of them, the other versions just won't be used. You can uninstall the other versions through the control panel if you want.