2.9 and multiple controllers

[MarkH]

Thanks for 2.9, some welcome changes in there. I have not installed yet because I read the bit that said 'controllers are now referenced by name'. I just wanted to ask how sophisticated is this? I ask because other apps have problems with multiple devices having the same name. For example, I have seven Leo Bodnar boards that all appear in the Windows Game Controllers dialog as 'Button Box Interface'. Also two Saitek quadrants with the same name.

[RussDirks]

It's not as sophisticated as I'd like it to be. It simply uses the "display name" of the controller, and that is because of a "controller order" issues that came up in P3Dv3.1, which LM tried to fix in 3.2 with a new SimConnect function. But the new function also only used the display name. So it's been kind of frustrating that way.

The old numbering system is still supported, though, but for that you have to hand edit the .cfg file as before.

About a month ago I was on the Leo Bodnar website, and I thought I saw he had a little firmware utility where you could give each device a unique name, but I was just looking again today and I couldn't find it??

[RussDirks]

Here's a link to a thread over at LM that relates, in case you're interested.

[MarkH]

It's not as sophisticated as I'd like it to be. It simply uses the "display name" of the controller, and that is because of a "controller order" issues that came up in P3Dv3.1, which LM tried to fix in 3.2 with a new SimConnect function. But the new function also only used the display name.

I have no experience programming this stuff but from using the FSUIPC Lua libraries I know that HIDs present with VID/PID/UID identifiers (I think that's Vendor id, Product id and Unit id, which is just a sequential number). Unfortunately only the first two are guaranteed and when enumerating HIDs Windows can assign the last one in unexpected ways for devices with the same VID and PID. But I noticed that the Bodnar boards also have unique serial numbers, and Leo pointed out that you can use these to distinguish devices:

Serial number is part of the USB device specification. Any USB device of any class (HID, flash drives, sound cards, etc) can have it if it wants to - we provide it just in case customers want to use it.
Windows uses it to uniquely identify the device so even if you swap two devices while the PC is off it will not get confused (if they have unique serial numbers.)

SN is a USB device attribute but you can drill it out via HID interface using HidD_GetSerialNumberString https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/librar ... s.85).aspx

You might find it helpful to contact Andrew Gransden (a.k.a. ScotFlieger), the current developer of LINDA, over at the LINDA forums. He's just done this for the latest release of LINDA, which now distinguishes multiple devices of the same type by serial number.

Still, good to know the old way will still work if need be.

[RussDirks]

I've just uploaded FS Force v2.9.0.1373, which includes improved support for installations containing multiple controllers with the same name. This allows you to use Profile Manager to program your trim commands and other controller functions that affect FS Force. Unfortunately this only applies to installations running FSX or FSX-SE. If you are using P3Dv3.2, you will still have to fall back to the legacy method of hand editing the .cfg file, as explained in the Appendix section of Getting Started. This is a result of limitations in the way that LM has implemented certain aspects of P3D/SimConnect.

[MarkH]

Thanks Russ, hope for a chance to try it this weekend!