Previous    Contents     Next

7. X-Plane Data Export Items

The X-Plane version of the 3 DOF motion driver runs with most recent versions up to X-Plane v10.

The driver uses flight data exported by X-Plane using its UDP data export facility. The correct data items must be defined in X-Plane for export, together with the IP Address and receiving port number of the target PC (ie the PC the motion driver is to run on).

To set the data items for export start X-Plane v9.6 then go to Settings - Net Connections - Inet 3 and set the "IP for Data Output" to the IP Address of the motion driver PC. If the driver and X-Plane are running on the same PC then set the IP Address to 127.0.0.1

Under the same settings set the port number of the data receiver to 48001, this is the default used in the .bff config file, you change this if required.

Tick the IP of data receiver check box, then close the Net Connections window.

Now open the Settings - Data Input & Output window and tick the first check box on the following X-Plane v9.5/6 data items: 1, 3, 4, 13, 14, 17, 18, 21, 37, 66 and 127. This adds the selected data items to the UDP data packet.

On other versions of X-Plane the network connection windows in which the IP address is set may be different.

For X-Plane v10.0 the data items needed are: 1, 3, 4, 13, 14, 16, 17, 21, 37, 66, 127

For X-Plane v9.0 the data items needed are: 1, 2, 4, 13, 14, 18, 37, 66, 124, 17, 21

For X-Plane v8.6 the data items needed are: 1, 2, 3, 11, 12, 16, 34, 63, 119, 15, 19

Set the UDP data rate at the bottom right of the window. This defines the frequency of the data export. Ideally it should be marginally faster than the loop rate of the motion driver. I suggest something like 40 sets/sec. If the motion driver is routinely indicating that it is waiting for data this data rate can be increased or the motion driver loop speed can be decreased by increasing the length of the inserted pause using the MD_Delay parameter in the motion driver .bff config file.

The data rates might need some experimenting on your system. More powerful PC's will be better able to support good X-Plane frame rates and motion driver loop speeds simultaneously. If you can't achieve satisfactory rates on an older PC then it may be best to run the motion driver on a LAN PC so that it and the flight sim are not fighting for system resources.

Previous    Contents     Next