Is Flight Sim Controls, X-Plane 11 and Teensy 4.0 fully supported and operational ?

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caggius

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I have been playing with X-Plane and dataRefs for some time using ethernet connectivity and having run into performance problems with ATMEL controllers I have switched to the faster Teensy.
Rather than pursue getting Teensy working with my ancient arduino ethernet card I decided to try out the Flight Sim Controls package.

I bought a couple of Teensy's an LC and a 4.0 and currently I have a working Windows 10, Xplane 64 bit 11.41 and Teensy 4.0 system, using a modified throttle example, that lets me read multiple datarefs and action them.
Debug is somewhat Heath-Robinson using Serial2.prints on the 4.0 down to the LC which is running the modified UART example to echo the output to a serial monitor - but hey it works and cost me only a little time.

My problem is that I prefer to use Linux and not Windows 10 for X-Plane as I seem to get a much better frame rate.
So I rebooted into Ubuntu 18.04.4 and installed the same Teensy Control plug-in, start up X-Plane 11.41 and the same Teensy 4.0 never makes contact with the Linux plug in.

I have tried various order of start ups and plugging the Teensy in - I rather miss the reassuring beeps as Windows detects the Teensy USB being plugged in but "lsusb" does show that the Teensy 4.0 Flight Sim Controls as present.

I have tried both versions of the plug in - Teensy original and the Bliesener update. Log.txt originally showed that the plug in was loaded but then reported an error

[Fetching plugins for /home/bob/X-Plane-11/Resources/plugins
Loaded: /home/bob/X-Plane-11/Resources/plugins/PluginAdmin/64/lin.xpl (xpsdk.examples.pluginadmin).
dlerror:libudev.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I resolved the libudev.so.0 error, installing the libraries, so that no longer appears - but I still can not get the Teensy4.0 to read the throttle control.

Is this supported still ? Difficult to tell as the Teensy examples and pjrc web pages have not really been updated fully for the Teensy4.0

Does anyone have any suggestions for my next step ?

thanks Bob
 
currently I have a working Windows 10, Xplane 64 bit 11.41 and Teensy 4.0 system

Do you mean, it works in Windows but not Linux? Seems like linux config would be the problem in that case, no?

Also, if you are getting better frame rates in linux than windows, something is definitely wrong. Are you sure that you are comparing the exact same graphics settings between linux and windows?
 
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Yep it is working in Windows, quick reboot into Linux and the same physical set up does not work.
Xplane runs OK, it loads the correct plug in with no errors, Linux recognises the HID USB key, so I am not sure what Linux configuration I can change

I will go back and recheck my settings for the Frame Rates - but I wonder why you would expect worse ?
Seems to me Windows has just become really bloated and does what it wants when it wants.
cheers
Bob
 
So I turned off network logging and all network io, ran all the graphics sliders and options to 0, set 2D panel & full screen, turned off vsync.
I chose a new flight Cesnna 172 sat at the end of Southampton runway - then Window runs at 95fps and Ubuntu 18.4 at 110 fps.
If I run all the sliders up to midway or just beyond, add effects and 3D cockpit - then Windows 45fps Linux 54fps.
Ryzen-5 3600 3.6GHz, 16GB DDR4 3200, GTX 1660 6Gb, Both NVIDIA drivers levels are last weeks. No overclocking.
Task Manager on Windows is not showing any significant other usage, 9.8Gb of free memory, GPU 43%, CPU 21%
regards Bob
 
OK my fault !
Not sure if it was needed but I added my user to the dialout group as this was reported in another sim group as a fix.
But that post also pointed me to the Plugins->TeensyControls->Show Communications dialogue which then showed that I had not added the udev rules.
Downloaded and copied the 49-teensy.rules file to /etc/udev and everything sprang to life !
RTFM Robert....
 
I do not pretend to understand what is going on here as everything I read says the X-Plane is very single threaded. I have just repeated the same flight on both OS and monitored processor/memory usage and fps.

Windows 10 heavily used 3 cores hitting 100% quite often with 4 cores running pretty steadily at 30 to 40% leaving 5 cores totally idle.

I expected pretty much the same on Linux - but no Linux used all 12 cores, all of the time - Balancing 11 pretty well 20% to 45%, with a core peaking every couple of seconds near to 100%, but rarely hitting it, and that busy core could be any of them.

As for fps - Linux easily outperformed my Win 10 system, maybe it is time for a Windows system clean rebuild.

So I will stick with Linux for now, until I can give Vulkan a try.

cheers Bob
 
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