Newbie Questions

[KSI]

Hi all,

I'm a newbie to POSCON. But I have a few years of flight sim experience & was a real-life ATC once upon a time.

I have a list of questions that I thought might easily be addressed by the folks here, rather than a support ticket.

1) I launch X-Plane 11 with a shortcut because I want to enable vulkan & reshade. The POSCON launcher doesn't seem to support this. Is this correct?

2) Due to the above, when I try login in X-Plane, I see "Connection failed: You have been disconnected from POSCON, Reason: Please ensure POSCON Launcher is running" error. Is this because X-Plane was not launched by Launcher?

3) I close down all web browsers when I'm in X-Plane. But it looks like POSCON needs to start a web browser. Is this correct?

4) Is there any other way to file a flight plan easily other than by Simbrief? Like reading from an .FPL file or some other file?

5) The website seems incredibly slow. Am I the only one who experiences this?

6) My X-Plane is the Steam version. Does POSCON have issues/problems with Steam?

 

Thanks in advance,

Regards,

KSI

[Chris E]

Hey there and welcome to Poscon!

A newbie question (or more like a foolish one) is one that's never asked!
I'm able to answer some of those:

1) You launch the actual pilot client through the Plugin menu within X-Plane so that statement is incorrect.
2) The POSCON Launcher is a different tool. You have to download it through hq.poscon.net -> Bottom left on 'More Menu' -> 'Launcher Download'. That one needs to run - but can be in the background.
3) You need the browser once when you start the Launcher to log in. Then once again to file flight plans and possibly see other traffic/ATC on the live map which you can also do on phone, tablets etc. (if I am not mistaken that is)
4) Not that I know of so far but one of the developers or the big boss himself will have to reply to that.
5) The site works normal on my end
6) From what I know it shouldn't be any issue at all, but same applies as 4) 

[KSI]

Hi Chris E.

Thanks for the welcome & some answers.

I think you've misunderstood my Q1.

Within the POSCON Launcher, it is possible to start X-Plane. But this just runs x.plane.exe. But I want to run "xplane.exe --vulkan --allow_reshade" & have a created a shortcut to do this. I cannot launch this shortcut from the POSCON Launcher.

So, Q2, I start X-Plane separately (using my shortcut) (with POSCON Launcher running)  & when I get to the aircraft & start the POSCON plugin (X-Plane Client) & try to login, I get the error message as mentioned above.

An additional question: The POSCON Launcher only runs when I use the "run as administrator" option. Is this the case for everyone? Any reason for this?

Thanks again.

Regards,

KSI

 

Edited February 4, 2021 by KSI
added question

[Maher Abaza]

Hello KSI,

As for your forth question, yes there is an import button that takes `.fpl` files in the Flight Plan Creation page, as shown here:

Not related, but you might also want to link your Discord account, if you have one. The public POSCON Discord is an easy and quick way to get support in the appropriate channels. The administrators and moderators always keep an eye there. Not that they don't do here, but thought I'd let you know!

Edited February 5, 2021 by Maher Abaza
Added note.

[KSI]

Hi Maher Abaza,

Thanks for your answer. I should have explained myself better. Yes, there is an import FPL function. But when I import an FPL file & try to submit it, the system complains that something is wrong with PBN in the Other section. But there is nothing wrong.

The same flight plan when prefiled directly from Simbrief goes through without any problems. So something is wrong. But I don't know what. Hence my question about importing another format. Obviously, I don't want to fill everything section in manually.

Discord is not for me just like FB is not for me. I don't have any urgency on this. If POSCON doesn't work, I'll just leave it out.

 

KSI

[Chris E]

13 hours ago, KSI said:

Hi Chris E.

Thanks for the welcome & some answers.

I think you've misunderstood my Q1.

Within the POSCON Launcher, it is possible to start X-Plane. But this just runs x.plane.exe. But I want to run "xplane.exe --vulkan --allow_reshade" & have a created a shortcut to do this. I cannot launch this shortcut from the POSCON Launcher.

So, Q2, I start X-Plane separately (using my shortcut) (with POSCON Launcher running)  & when I get to the aircraft & start the POSCON plugin (X-Plane Client) & try to login, I get the error message as mentioned above.

An additional question: The POSCON Launcher only runs when I use the "run as administrator" option. Is this the case for everyone? Any reason for this?

Thanks again.

Regards,

KSI

 

Hi! 

 

So just to confirm things, you have the POSCON launcher running, then start xplane steam Edition and it still claims that the launcher isn't running? 

Is xplane starting as an admin? 

[KSI]

Hi Chris,

Yes to your first question.  I even let POSCON launcher start x-plane.exe (without the switches for reshade & vulkan) & POSCON X-plane client  still claims POSCON Launcher isn't running.

I have tried running X-Plane as admin & non-admin.

[Chris E]

Check the following location and file: AppData\Local\POSCON\SimConnect\Environment.JSON

What does it say?

[KSI]

Hi Chris

I don't have a simconnect subdirectory in POSCON. I think that's an MSFS thing?

But I have the file in the POSCON subdirectory & Environment.json contains 1 line, as below:

 

{"voiceServerAddress":"aura.flightnet.poscon.net","voiceServerPort":10354,"messagingServerUrl":"https://atc.poscon.net","servicesUrlBase":"https://services.poscon.com/"}

 

[Maher Abaza]

On 2/5/2021 at 11:54 AM, KSI said:

Hi Maher Abaza,

Thanks for your answer. I should have explained myself better. Yes, there is an import FPL function. But when I import an FPL file & try to submit it, the system complains that something is wrong with PBN in the Other section. But there is nothing wrong.

The same flight plan when prefiled directly from Simbrief goes through without any problems. So something is wrong. But I don't know what. Hence my question about importing another format. Obviously, I don't want to fill everything section in manually.

Discord is not for me just like FB is not for me. I don't have any urgency on this. If POSCON doesn't work, I'll just leave it out.

 

KSI

Hello again,

Discord is not a must, and we respect your wish. It is just a faster way to reach a large amount of members.

For the flight plan that you tried to import, do you still have the file? I can take a look and reach the developer for further debugging.
Sometimes the error code that you receive can describe what is missing/wrong, so if you remember what it says please let me know!

And please remember this is still a beta program. We are trying to break things as much as we can so we could cover all the errors before the big launch!

[KSI]

Hi,

Sure, I can send the .FPL flight plan file to you for further debugging. There is no error code when I import the file. It's when I submit that it complains about the PBN/ section in the Other section.

I have no problem with the fact that this is a beta program. I have some experience in software development. I expect things to not work. So I am completely relaxed about it.

[Rob S.]

Did your first question ever get adequately answered?

You can launch X-Plane as you wish.  Doing so from the Launcher is just a convenience, and as far as I can tell is only there for symmetry because the FSX/P3D/MSFS client has a "Launch" button as well.  Your issue with the plugin not detecting the Launcher is not related to that.

Are you running the Launcher as an admin?

[KSI]

Hi Rob,

No, I did not get a direct answer. I didn't think it was an issue. But I thought I'd ask anyway just to cover all the bases. So, thanks for the answer.

Yes, I am running Launcher as admin. I can't run it as non-Admin as I get the "Access Denied" error message.

 

[KSI]

Hi all,

Since my issues with the POSCON software have been solved, I thought it would make sense to close this topic.

I thought the best way to do this would be to answer my own questions.

1) X-Plane 11 can be launched outside of the POSCON Launcher.

2) The "Connection failed: You have been disconnected from POSCON, Reason: Please ensure POSCON Launcher is running" error has nothing to do with Q1.

3) Web browsers open when logging into POSCON. And although they don't need to stay open, they will open when the Flight Plan or Web UI items are selected in the Launcher or sim client.

4) Flight Plans can be imported from an .FPL file.

5) When logging into POSCON, the webpage takes a bit of time to display. But it's not a big deal.

6) POSCON doesn't care if the X-Plane 11 version is Steam or normal retail.

7) Both POSCON Launcher & X-Plane 11 have to run in administrator mode, at least on Windows 8.1.

Also, it doesn't matter if POSCON Launcher is started after or before X-Plane, just as long as it is running when the X-Plane Client attempts login.

Hope this helps other people.

Regards,

KSI

[Maher Abaza]

Thanks KSI, this will definitely help answer questions for other people, glad you posted your answers!

[Andrew (1017363)]

Hello @KSI

I am just rolling around to this now, but I see that your last question was asking about steam. Nobody has reported any issues from what I have heard yet, and my X-Plane runs off steam too. Steam is just a global shop for the game, the game files themselves are the exact same so nothing should be altering that, I recommend running the updater for X-Plane if you get any issues with this.

Cheers

Andrew