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Microsoft Flight Simulator and Garmin aviation handheld GPS
I have always thought that it would be a nice training tool to be able to
get a handheld GPS to work with Microsoft Flight Simulator. I had success with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004, Garmin 196, and Garmin GPS III Pilot. I would imagine that a Garmin 295 would also work. Peter Dowson has some Flight Simulator utilities at http://www.schiratti.com/dowson.html. One of them is a program called GPSout that sends output from Microsoft Flight Simulator to external devices through the computer's serial port. I set the gpsout.ini file to "sentences=AV400", the .ini comments had it as the singular "sentence" for AV400. To get the GPS to use the GPSout data, I set the protocol to "Aviation In" and put the GPS into the simulator mode. After getting the combination of Flight Simulator and either the GPS 196 or III Pilot to work, I did some quick flying, but I did not spend much time with it. There seems to be a slight lag in things like heading changes compared to the real GPS. However, this is just a quick unsubstantiated observation. Overall, it worked great! I did a couple of very quick tests. I changed the weather in Flight Simulator to a 36 knot crosswind and the GPS correctly showed TRACK rather than heading. The vertical speed and VNAV functions also appeared to work correctly. I tried a couple of the other protocols offered by GPSout hoping that GPSout could be used with a non-aviation GPS. Obviously, I changed the protocol on the GPS, changed the gpsout.ini, and restarted FS. I had no success getting a non-aviation Garmin 76 to work. Likewise, I had no success with the Garmin 196 or III Pilot using other protocols other than "Aviation In." I just thought that I would pass this along for anyone interested. John Bell www.cockpitgps.com |
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