COM Monitoring in MSFS

[Les OReilly]

As new Vars are being used and more than 2 coms are supported MSFS planes are not setting the "Com Receive All" variable.

Instead the planes are setting the individual Com Listens Vars that were added with MSFS extensions.  Here is an example of what the Vars look like when the HJet or the C510 have Transmit on 1 and Receive on for 1 and 2.

 

However if I Turn on Receive for COM 3 As well ... then you get the SIM to set the ALL Variable to a 1 and vPilot starts to work again

 

Hope this can help!

 

Les

 

 

[Ross Carlson]

Yup, I'm aware of this. In my opinion, aircraft developers should set COM RECEIVE ALL to 1 if both com 1 and com 2 are receiving, in order to retain backward compatibility in simconnect apps like vPilot, since that's what that var has always meant. (If you ask me, the var should have been named COM RECEIVE BOTH to match the labeling you typically see on aircraft radio control panels.) I would feel differently if older simconnect sims had individual vars for each radio, but they don't.

At some point I may update vPilot to handle the COM RECEIVE ALL var differently depending on if its connected to FSX, P3D, or MSFS. For now, you'll just need to turn on all the radios if you want to receive on COM1 and COM2 simultaneously on VATSIM.

Edited October 2, 2022 at 04:38 AM by Ross Carlson

[Les OReilly]

MSFS supports 3 Radios ..  Seems weird that you would expect New planes in a New Sim to implement incorrect behaviour for the purpose of supporting older applications.

integration software has to update with SDKs and APIs..

Things move forward and with the updates in MSFS you can't just set that Variable.  You have to set all to receive which means enabling a Radio that user is not enabling on their audio panel at that time...

Some Planes in MSFS don't have the buttons to enable COM3 so they won't have that workaround available to them.  I can always work around it with hardware or scripts that will turn it on for me if Both 1 and 2 are on..  Not everyone has that option...

[Ross Carlson]

1 hour ago, Les OReilly said:

Seems weird that you would expect New planes in a New Sim to implement incorrect behaviour for the purpose of supporting older applications.

In my opinion, it wouldn't be incorrect behavior. As I mentioned before, I think the variable was poorly-named. It should have been named "COM RECEIVE BOTH". That's how it was actually implemented in older sims, because older sims only supported two radios in terms of the available simconnect variables. In older sims, even if an aircraft developer supported three radios in the aircraft panel, simconnect would only support two, so the developer had no choice but to set COM RECEIVE ALL to 1 when only COM1 and COM2 were enabled. That scenario demonstrates that the variable is poorly named and the actual meaning of the variable is "both COM1 and COM2 are enabled for receive". That's why I think MSFS devs should maintain that behavior and it should be documented that the is is poorly named.

I realize that this is a matter of opinion, and my opinion is colored by the fact that I write software that works across all simconnect sims. New developers on the scene who have no experience with older sims will obviously have a different opinion and won't be concerned with backward compatibility. I'd like to see the COM RECEIVE ALL variable documented as legacy and deprecated, since MSFS has separate vars for the receive state of each radio. There is no ambiguity in using those vars.

Anyway, like I said, at some point I'll update vPilot to ignore the COM RECEIVE ALL var when the sim is MSFS, and just read the COM RECEIVE:1 and COM RECEIVE:2 vars.