Overview
The Flight Sim IO Server is the heart of the software suite. It communicates with your tablet/touch screen devices, with the Flight Sim, with the Virtual Flight Sim Hardware Builder, and with the Flight Sim IO Module. In Microsoft FS2020, it does not communicate with the Flight Sim IO Module but with Flight Sim IO Lua.
The Virtual Flight Sim Hardware Builder is only needed for building and configuration and can be shut down when flight simming, everything else is required to be running.
Status
The Status tab should show 3 green LED's if everything is operating correctly. Investigate the Log and check the Settings if any red LED's are showing.
Occasionally an LED may go Yellow, which indicates and temporary error has occurred.
Services
This tab allows the display of the Detective and Lua windows and also offers a function to restart the software. The flight sim must be running for these options to be enabled.
Power
This tab allows overriding the Data used for the current loaded aircraft to determine if the aircraft has electrical power. It is used as part of the process to determine Lighting Effects. Also see this video.
Settings
Networking
This section defines what IP address (or DNS name) and Ports that the software will use on the PC it is running on. These need to match in the Virtual Hardware Builder Settings and in the Settings of the Virtual Flight Sim Hardware Client App running on your tablets/touch screen devices.
SimConnect Module / X-Plane Module
This section defines what IP address (or DNS name) and Port to use to communicate with the module running in the flight sim. If the flight sim runs on the same PC as the Flight Sim IO Server, then the IP addresses will be the same as the Networking section.
Tablet Controller
Auto Authorise Tablets
With this enabled, new tablets connecting to the Flight Sim IO Server will be automatically excepted. If this is disabled, then tablets need to be authorised to allow connection, in the Virtual Hardware Builders Connection Manager.
Tablet Update Interval
Indicates how frequently updates are pushed out to tablets. Lower values will improve responsiveness on fast tablets but may overwhelm slower tablets. The default is 50 milliseconds.
Tablet Update Timeout
The amount of time the software will wait for a tablet to indicate that it has fully loaded a Device Panel. Until this indication occurs all updates or Device Panel Upload requests are blocked, or until this timeout is reached.
Misc
Polling Interval
During SimConnect flight simming, how often Local Variables (lvars) are checked to see if they have changed. In X-Plane it applies to Data Ref changes.
Repeat Interval
When an Event has an Action of Repeat, this indicates how long to wait between sending each repeating Event.
Cover Auto Close Interval
If a Cover has been configured to close automatically, this indicates the amount of time it will wait before closing after being opened
LED Exception Reset Time
When an error or exception occurs, the relevant LED will turn yellow. This indicates how long the LED will remain Yellow before returning back to green.
Dawn/Dusk/Night Effect
Enabling this effect will make your tablets/touch screen devices react to the light levels in the flight sim. The loaded Device Panel will slowly darken at Dusk, appear very Dark at Night, and then slowly lighten during Dawn. Use this function along with Panel Lighting, Lit Parts and Displays in the Virtual Hardware Builder, to create night time lighting effects. See this video for further information.
Anonymously Send Crash/Exception Data To Developer
Please consider keeping this option enabled as it will greatly assist in keeping software errors down to a minimum. The anonymous crash and exception reports are sent to the Microsoft App Center Service which allows use to examine the data and determine what caused the problems.
Start Minimised
Enabling this will cause Flight Sim IO Server to start minimised to the Windows notification area. To make it visible, simply click its icon in the Windows notification area.
Aircraft
This section allows the currently loaded aircraft have its name shortened. Shortening an aircrafts name allows Snippets and State Configurations to work with multiple variations of the same aircraft. Many aircraft have different models or liveries or both and this is often reflected in their names. By removing this detail and using a shortened name a single set of Snippets and State Configurations will work with all models and livery combinations.
It is best to shorten the name before building any aircraft specific Snippets and State Configurations.
Lua
Lua Required
If you do not wish to use Lua, you can save some computer resources by disabling this option.
Time Out
The amount of time in milliseconds that a Lua script is deemed crashed or stuck and will be terminated.
Hook Count
The number of Lua lines executed, before Lua checks if the script has crashed or is stuck.
FSUIPC (Not available in X-Plane)
FSUIPC Required
If you wish to use the FSUIPC Detective Tasks (Read Offset, Write Offset, Run Lua), then enable this option, otherwise it can stay disabled. Note that Run Lua Task related to running an FSUIPC Lua script and not a Flight Sim IO Server Lua script.
Host Address / Host Port
This is the IP Address/DNS Name and IP Port to be used to connect to FSUIPC. When it connects it communicates to a Lua file called flightsimioserverlua.lua in the Modules directory of the flight sim. You can edit this Lua file to configure the host and port entries listed at the top of the script, if there are communication problems.
Note, if using Prepar3D, Wide Client must be used to run the Lua script.