Dastardly Dashboard - testers needed

[DickDastardly]

Hi all,
This is my first post here, so I'd like to start by thanking all those involved in making X-Sim. I'm hugely impressed by the massive number of sims it supports and it must have taken a hell of a lot of work to get to this stage, so thanks very much guys!

The reason I'm posting is that I've just made a set of gauges designed to be displayed fullscreen on a 1280x1024 monitor:



I've been testing them in Live 4 Speed (as that's the only natively supported racing sim I own) but I've run into a few problems with the plugin and profiler and I'd be very grateful if Martin (or anyone else) could help:

BUGS
-Oil temp (3), Lap Number (5), Best Lap Time (6), Current Lap Time (7), Position (8), and Water temp (9), never change from zero, although the plugin table in the manual says these variables are supported in this sim.

-Fuel Remaining (2) is rounded down to a whole number so it's not possible to display it as e.g. 53.7 on the digital display. (I tried multiplying it by ten and adding a painted on decimal point but it seems the rounding occurs before the profiler receives the data so this didn't work).

FEATURE REQUESTS
-The Current Shown Flags (10) variable gives values according to this table:

#define OG_SHIFTLIGHT 1
#define OG_FULLBEAM 2
#define OG_HANDBRAKE 4
#define OG_PITSPEED 8
#define OG_TC 16
#define OG_HEADLIGHTS 32
#define OG_SIGNAL_L 64
#define OG_SIGNAL_R 128
#define OG_REDLINE 256
#define OG_OILWARN 512
#define OG_1 1024
#define OG_2 2048
#define OG_3 4096
#define OG_4 8192
#define OG_KM 16384
#define OG_BAR 32768

The values are added together so if, for example, you have fullbeam and the handbrake on then it will return a value of 6. Using this table I've been able to get the warning lights at the bottom of the panel partially working (basically each light is a stripe bar and I subtract the corresponding value above from variable 10 and then draw the illuminated version if the result is zero). The problem with this approach is that it only works if just one light is on -if you turn on traction control and the speed limiter then neither light will work.

Would it be possible to change the plugin and profiler so that they separate all these variables, giving a different number for each one? Then they could each have a value of 1 for on and 0 for off which would be a lot simpler (and would also be useful in that it would allow lights designed for one sim to work in all the others).

-Would it also be possible to enable export of oil pressure, turbo pressure, tyre temperatures, and blue/yellow/red/green flags in L4S?

-Finally, it would be really useful to be able to specify the format of a number for text gauges. Perhaps this might look something like this:
Format=XXX.Y
...which would display "019.4" if the input was 19.374231, or "005.3" if the input was 5.294123. Similarly:
Format=XX
...would display "19" if the input was 19.374231 or "05" if the input was 5.294123.

Many thanks,
DD

[Mambo]

Wery nice, i also wonder how should flags work .. but there must be some easy way ..

[DickDastardly]

I've uploaded the latest version of the dashboards here [EDIT 25/10/09 UPDATED LINK]. They include sets for LFS and the Steam version of Racedriver Grid, along with a Force Injector profile. They'll probably work to some extent with other sims too, but I don't have any others to test them with. For best results, you'll need to have the Quartz font installed. The Live4Speed version looks like the image in my first post, the Grid version looks like this:



Installation
1. Unzip the file and open the contents. Inside you should see two folders called "Gauge PC" and "Game PC". Open the Gauge PC folder and copy its contents to your X-Sim folder on the PC on which you want to display the gauges. Then open the Game PC folder and copy its contents to the X-Sim folder on the PC on which you're going to run the game. In both cases answer "Yes" if asked about overwriting files (no X-Sim files will actually be overwritten).

2. Set your monitor resolution on your Gauges PC to 1280x1024

3. If you want to play Live4Speed, open your cfg.txt (found in the L4S install directory on your Game PC) in Notepad (before you can do this L4S has to be have been started at least once to create that file). Now edit the following values:

Conn To Master 1 OutSim Mode 1 OutSim Delay 1 OutSim IP 127.0.0.1 OutSim Port 4123 OutSim ID 0 OutGauge Mode 1 OutGauge Delay 1 OutGauge IP 127.0.0.1 OutGauge Port 4124 OutGauge ID 0

4. Open Force Sender on your Game PC and check the IP address matches that of your Gauges PC (leave it as 127.0.0.1 if you're running everything from a single PC). Then click [...] and navigate to your game's executable (for Grid this will be inside your Steam folder as follows: Steam\steamapps\common\grid\grid.exe). Then click [Choose official developer plugin] and select Live4Speed (this plugin is used for both Grid and Live4Speed). Now you can save this setup in the file menu with a filename matching the game. Close Force Sender when you're done.

Running
1. Open Force Profiler on your Gauges PC and click [Gauge Setup]. Then click [File Menu] and select Load. Open the Gauge Dashboards folder and select which Dastardly_Dashboard profile you want. There are three variants for each game, the only difference between them is the maximum RPM (10k suffices for all normal cars, you'll only need the larger sizes if you're driving an open wheel car). Once the gauges have loaded, click [Start gauges and minimise X-Sim] and the gauges should appear.

2. Open Force Sender on your Game PC and load the profile you created during installation. Then click [Play Game].

If you're running Live4Speed you can now play and everything should work. If you're playing Grid, there's an additional step:

3. Once the in-game menu has loaded, ALT+TAB out of the game and start Force Injector. Click [Load profile] and open Dastardly_Dashboard_Grid.csd in your Gauge Dashboards folder. Then click [Try Send Data] in Force Sender. You can now ALT+TAB back to the game and everything should work.

Known L4S Issues
1. Oil temp, water temp, position, lap, best lap time, current lap time, turbo pressure, oil pressure, tyre temp and flags aren't functional as the plugin doesn't provide this data.
2. The row of warning lights for indicators, handbrake etc do work, but only if only one light is lit at a time (this is due to the plugin not providing a separate variable for each item). This means, for example, that if only your Speed Limiter is on then its light will work, but if you then apply the handbrake, the Speed Limiter light will go off until you release the handbrake.

Known Grid Issues
1. Grid uses a different numbering system for gears to the one which the Profiler expects so Neutral gear is displayed as "9" and Reverse is displayed as "N".
2. PLT (Previous Lap Time) will sometimes display nonsensical values until you've completed your first lap (after which it will work fine).
3. The flag indicators and the temperature and fuel gauges are non functional as the game doesn't seem to model these variables.
4. The extra step where you have to ALT+TAB out of the game is a bit annoying, but I have no idea how to fix this.
5. Force Sender seems to make Grid slightly unstable, occasionally it will crash after a race.

Feedback
I'd be very grateful for any feedback, particularly if you've tried the gauges in the non-Steam version of Grid or any other sims.

Cheers,
DD

[Chris]

It works alittle with rfactor
Great job!! keep it up

[splendiddd]

If this could work for DIRT, i will be very grateful, i use the non steam version, steam version sucks on my pc, dvd version works ok.
I also have the non steam grid version so i will test it the coming days.

Regards,

Rob

[DickDastardly]

It works alittle with rfactor
Great job!! keep it up

Thanks very much for the feedback m8. Is there any chance you could go into a bit more detail about which bits do or don't work in rFactor?

If this could work for DIRT, i will be very grateful, i use the non steam version, steam version sucks on my pc, dvd version works ok.

As it happens, I also have the DVD version of Dirt and I'm working on a new Force Injector profile and dashboard version for that game too. I've already got the basic elements up and running (speed, rpm & gear) and hopefully I'll be able to get some additional info like damage -watch this space for updates!

I also have the non steam grid version so i will test it the coming days.

That would be great -it may work fine with the non-Steam version already, but if it doesn't I'd be happy to talk you through the process of how to find the offsets and what values to look for, if you'd be willing (I'd really like to get it working for as many games and versions as possible).

I have some other good news- SirNoName has very kindly added some fixes/new features to the X-Sim code (so the gear indicator now correctly displays neutral and reverse in Grid and Dirt, for example). Also, the dashboard will be included in the standard X-Sim installation in a future update.
Cheers,
DD

[splendiddd]

Thank you !

If it could work for Dirt that would be great!
Still trying to make it work for the DVD version of GRID....the lap times flashes somewhat but that's it really, maybe i need to do another kind of procedure to make it work, motion works though, even when i launch DIRT (dvd) the bottom lights work somehow. in Grid nothing...

I will keep you posted

Regards,

Rob

[Chris]

@DickDastardly

sure no problem

RPM,SPEED,FUEL.work. no digital numbers work.

the lower panels don"t work only the info next to the fuel show but

do not function. lowest panel nothing there.

maybe its me. i hope this helps

Chris


update

i think i was loading them wrong. one at a time and having to line everything up
but when i load the profile they pop up on both screens "duel view" half here and there.

[DickDastardly]

Still trying to make it work for the DVD version of GRID....the lap times flashes somewhat but that's it really, maybe i need to do another kind of procedure to make it work

I should have a new version ready to post soon, which I've updated to work with the new Grid 1.3 patch. That'll only work with the Steam version of Grid, but if you've got a microphone I'd be happy to talk you through the process of finding the offsets for the DVD version (it's actually fairly straightforward once you see how it's done).

i think i was loading them wrong. one at a time and having to line everything up but when i load the profile they pop up on both screens "duel view" half here and there.

The best approach here is probably to re-download the dashboard, overwriting your current version. This should reset all the gauge positions. The correct procedure for loading a set of gauges is to open Force Profiler on your Gauges PC and click [Gauge Setup]. Then click [File Menu] and select Load, open the Gauge Dashboards folder and select the profile you want. Once the gauges have loaded, click [Start gauges and minimise X-Sim] and the gauges should appear.

To reposition the dashboard, right click anywhere on it and select "Move whole panel". This enables you to then left click and drag the entire dashboard wherever you want it. After doing so, right click again and select "Save current positions".

Cheers,
DD

[DickDastardly]

Okay guys, the new version is here. It contains profiles for v1.3 of RaceDriver Grid (Steam version), Live 4 Speed, rFactor, and Race/Race 07/Race On (which should work with other SimBin games as well).



If you want to use the dashboard with any other sim, then the rFactor profile is probably your best bet. Full installation instructions and details of which elements are functional in each sim are in the enclosed ReadMe. Feedback welcome!
Cheers,
DD

P.S. Many thanks to SirNoName who very kindly added some new features to X-Sim which made these profiles possible.