Entity State PDU question

[jeladi]

What is the easiest way to verify that Prepar3D is correctly receiving Entity State PDUs? I am not seeing any objects from DIS traffic on my display. I checked the connection settings (exercise id of 0, broadcast, subnet mask, etc.) and those look correct.

Also, if I want to attach my display to a object simulated by DIS traffic how does one do that?

[Clifton Crane]

Hello jeladi,

Can you verify that you are receiving network traffic from other clients? This can be done using a program such as Wireshark.

Are other clients able to see your entity?

Prepar3D treats exercise 0 as a special case where it will process all received PDU's from all exercises on the network, so that setting should be fine. If you are participating in an exercise with a predetermined ID, you may want to try changing that setting. Also, you will want to double check that you have a unique Site ID, Application ID, and Entity ID for the exercise.

Under the Connections options, you will want to double check that you have the correct IP address entered. This should be the IP address of the machine running Prepar3D. This value is used in conjunction with the subnet mask to create the send address. If you are having issues with broadcast, it may be worth testing with multicast if possible.

There is also an Activity Log located under the Network section of the menu bar. There may be additional information there as well.

Once you have things working, cameras will be created for all DIS Entities similar to AI Traffic. These cameras can be selected by right clicking the main window or from the menu bar at the top.

Hope this helps!

[jeladi]

I used Wireshark and was able to see the PDUs that I am generating. I don't have any other DIS clients available to check against since my only DIS application is an HLA-to-DIS bridge.

I looked in the Activity Log and all I see there is a message that says "Successfully created broadcast connection" along with the host, subnet, site/app/entity, and exercise id information.

When things are working where in the menu bar should the cameras show up?

[Clifton Crane]

Hello,

Cameras will show in Views > New View > DIS Entities.

[jeladi]

I am not seeing View > New View > DIS Entities as an option so something must still be missing. I tried running multicast but that didn't seem to help. Interestingly enough my DIS bridge can see the PDUs for the plane that Prepar3D puts out.

That leads me to a couple more questions:
1) Is there a particular DIS version that Prepar3D requires? Our bridge uses version 7.
2) If the problem is an entity type mapping issue is there any logging that would report the problem? If so, where is the log file?

[Clifton Crane]

Hello,

Prepar3D PDU's are currently targeting version 6 in the header, however older versions should still work. If there is an entity type mapping issue, this should be displayed in the Activity Log when it fails to substitute, however I would expect one of the default Prepar3D objects to be substituted in if an exact match is not found.

Also, what type of network setup are you currently running? Is the Prepar3D machine on a single LAN or are there multiple connections (i.e. Wi-Fi too)? If using more than one connection, try disabling one or the other and broadcasting with a single connection.

[jeladi]

I am running everything on the same machine for now so setting the IP address to 127.0.0.1 in the DIS configuration worked. I was using the actual IP for my machine previously.

Now I am able to get DIS Entities to show up in the menu and view them. However, in the Activity Log I see a warning that says "Failed to locate a container with the title: HIMARS MTV". Instead of showing a HIMARS vehicle I am seeing a plane at the entity location. What do I need to do to get the correct model to show up?

[Clifton Crane]

Hello,

All DIS entity mappings can be found in DISEntityTypes.xml which is located in %PROGRAMDATA%\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v4. You'll want to remove the HIMARS MTV entry since that object was not shipped with the product.

Once that is removed it should fallback to another vehicle of similar type. You can always modify the DISEntityTypes.xml by adding new EntityType entries for SimObject add-ons. You will then want to correctly assign the EntityTypeString to match what other clients are broadcasting.

Hope this helps!