Attn. Saitek Cessna Trim Wheel Users / P3D V3.0

roger-wilco-66

roger-wilco-66

Administrator
Staff member
Hi,

I was on dire straits with P3D v3.0 lately: heavy stuttering, mouse lock ups (no more cursor or click functions, even in Windows after shutting P3D down, and a hanging system during shutdown, etc).
I found out that the culprit is my Saitek Cessna Trim Wheel. As soon I disconnected it from the USB port the problems went away.

After searching the net I found that this device indeed has compatibility problems with P3D V3.0 - as well as other controller devices. LM is apparently working on fixing it.

While roaming the net I also found that someone picked up developing an application that replaces the good old SPAD - it is called Spad.next ( see http://www.fsgs.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=1 ).
It is supposed to be comaptible with P3D V3 and has much more functions. Didn't try that out yet though, as the classic SPAD also works with V3 here under Win7/64.

Just thought I'd mention that.


Cheers,
Mark
 
I use the Saitek trim wheel and havnt noticed any problems with it. I,m using the Saitek software for all my controllers not SPAD BTW.
 
Might be a conflict with the Saitek Multi panel I have, which also has a pitch trim wheel. But that's just a guess.
SPAD is for the panels only, btw. It does not recognize the controllers or the trim wheel.


Cheers,
Mark
 
I wonder, are you connecting the Multi Panel through a Hub to the PC? I read somewhere the Multi Panel has to be directly connected to a USB on the PC to function properly. I know from my own experience this is the case as when I tried it through a hub, often the MP would just not register and when it did it would cause lock ups.

Here is a handy blog search for SPAD or Saitek maybe your answer is here http://flightsimeindhoven.nl/
Hope you speak Dutch. :)

Edit - just checked above and he seems to have taken down his exhaustive Saitek pages however I have copies on my storage drive and they link to the following

https://spad501.wordpress.com/multi-panel/ which is specific for the multi-panel but if you go to https://spad501.wordpress.com/spad/ you will see the reference to connecting the MP directly to the PC
 
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I have the switch panel, the multi panel, and the radio stack panel. They are connected to a dedicated, powered "panel" hub (3 units). The controllers are on another powered "controller" hub (6 units). The mouse is connected to a port on the mainboard.
That setup was the result of half a year of agonizing around with numerous problems and finally worked flawless until now.

I will make a few tests to try to isolate the cause, but I really believe that the double function of the pitch trim (one one the multi panel, one on the trim wheel) coming from two totally different sources could throw P3D V3 off. Remove the offender (trim wheel) and all's fine. The thing that is really a bit astonishing is that when the mouse function derails, it is permanent even after shutting the sim down, and somehow damages the windows system driver configuration. Only after a hard reset the situation is recovered, because the OS hangs up on shutdown. After snooping around in the event logging I found an error message coming from the NVIDIA driver complex, but I'm not sure if this is just another symptom.

At the end of the day it seems that P3D V3 is a bit unstable in it's controller device management and has the potential to leave the OS FUBAR . I had no such issues in 2.5.

Thanks for the links, Naismith, I'll dig into them!

Cheers,
Mark
 
LM did change something to do with the controllers in V3 (I cant remember what exactly)
Its been noted by Pete Dowson at FSUIPC and A2A. The custom control configs in all the A2A planes are messed up for me.
I believe there waiting to hear back from LM on if the change was a mistake or not before fixing it there end.

Maybe that has some bearing on your problem.
 
Lm has opened a ticket on the issue. Also, there seems to be a workaround by disabling the wheel in the P3D controls configuration and running it exclusively through FSUIPC. I did not try it yet. There's a thread in the LM P3D hardware forum, see

http://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6315&t=113948

It seems that the wheel has a peculiar operation mode that I have noticed before. It is sort of dormant as long as the wheel has not been moved after booting the system. If you fired up earlier versions of P3D in that state, it would not use the wheel. I cured this by moving the wheel a bit up and down a few times to "wake up" the driver prior starting the simulation. However, in V3 it causes the woeful phenomena that had been outlined.

Cheers,
Mark
 
Guess I got a little lucky with my v3 install. I did keep v2.5 installed as well. I just copied over my FSUIPC .ini file to v3 all my controllers work fine. Even my trim wheel, but have to admit that device is the trickiest of them all. If/when I do lose it it takes a few spins of the wheel for FSUIPC to catch it. But so far I haven't had that issue once with v3. For my Saitek (nine different modules), all are managed using the good 'ol SPAD drivers from way back of FSX days. Still work great for me. All I added was copy over the info into the v3 exe.xml file.

Apparently the v3 has taken away the capability for FSUIPC to calibrate devices directly, that's why Pete is asking LM to fix that portion. Otherwise hes suggests just using your old ini files which is what I am doing since they already have the calibration.

Just my take from what I have been reading.


P.S. - after reading the thread in LM forums I guess there is an issue so it goes deeper than what I first thought.
 
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