SPA ACARS Version 1.4 Released

For those annoying FSX system crashes (or FSUIPC Disconnects) that sometimes happen, this release should mitigate some of those problems by allowing you to resume your flight.

V 1.4
• Added Resume Flight button for restarting your flight after an unexpected Flight Simulator program crash. (Please see the Instruction Manual for step-by-step procedure for having the most success in resuming a flight).

• SPAACARS will recognize most menu actions and should stop FSUIPC communication until completed. This might prevent “FSUIPC Disconnect” messages during temporary interruption of FSUIPC.

As always - to update, just download the SPAACARS.zip file again and copy over the top of your current SPAACARS files. The manual should show 1.4 as will the "About" menu option if the update was successful.

John

Larry M. discovered an error in the latest release that prevents it from starting.

I discovered that I left my personal cfg file in there. Please re-download the current zip and it should fix things.

If you're more computer-savoy, just go to your SPAACARS folder and find the file called SPAACARS.cfg. Open with text editor and find the only line in there:

inifile=[my settings]

just remove all of my settings so that it looks like:

inifile=

and resave the file. Now when you start SPAACARS, it will prompt you again for your spa.ini file your first use and then it will automatically put your own ini file location in there.


Sorry bout that!

John



<br /><br /><!-- editby --><br /><br /><em>edited by: jer029, Sep 22, 2015 - 07:54 PM</em><!-- end editby -->

Sorry this didn't help you Steve, but I'm not sure I would classify it as "unstable' at this point just because it doesn't work for your sim setup. I can look further into WideFS compatibility, which adds some complexity to things, but I think this might salvage flights for some pilots using a more conventional setup. If there is an alternative that restores a flight after an FSX crash, feel free to use it.

I've been able to resume flights on my test system without problem, and I hope to hear from other pilots too regarding the usefulness of this latest resume function.

As for being "unstable", based on the number of flights being posted using this software, I'm relatively satisfied that it works satisfactorily for most pilots. The resume feature is the only new addition and should not have much affect on the rest of the program that has performed satisfactorily on past releases for most pilots. Further - I believe this option might (in its current form) be of benefit to those pilots in the event of an unexpected FSX crash. I also intend to do further testing while using it myself .

Also - I suspect that the programmers behind those other programs have a lot more programming background than I do.


That doesn't mean I'm not interested in solving whatever issues you're having.

John






<br /><br /><!-- editby --><br /><br /><em>edited by: jer029, Sep 23, 2015 - 07:04 PM</em><!-- end editby -->

...and remember, I promise a full refund of the purchase price of SPAACARS for all dissatisfied customers.

Might try for a flight tomorrow am. Busy with broken ceiling fan and electricians today.

That's unfortunate for sure Steve, but again I think it probably has to do with your WideFS and/or your disconnects with that - although likely exacerbated by SPAACARS and your other addons not properly handshaking to catch and deal with these error problems in a more graceful way.

My desire is to inform other pilots reading these posts that the SPAACARS program has proven to be relatively stable as these things go, even though it's been in a constant state of chance since the first release, and they need not fear they are using an "unstable" program, as thus far you've been the only user who has had significant problems.

While the "Resume Flight" option may have caused you trouble, that doesn't mean the program is unstable until we can do further testing. Certainly there's some issues with your setup that are unstable if it's having FSUIPC disconnects that another ACARS program also detected. It would be nice to know what your logs in fsuipc and widefs show.

I've adjusted (once again) SPAACARS and have it out there in the same zip file for download. Not officially announced yet as I wanted to run it a few times on my own game system.

This is V 1.5 and it changes how it handles the resume flight process. I fear it won't solve your problems though at this point. Basically it now continually polls the FSUIPC connection and will not enable the "REsume Flight" button until it has a connection. It will again disable the button if that connection is lost.

Until you check your fsuipc and widefs logs, I'm not sure I can troubleshoot this further. I've researched all that I can based on web posts and FSUIPC SDK documentation.

As for the .net error, it would be great to have as much detail from any error messages received as this might also help identify the problem and a solution so that it might be addressed.

John