Compatibility With Other Hardware & Software

We're sometimes asked: Is [SimXperience Product] compatible with [some other product].

There is no simple answer to this question but the short answer is almost always YES. There are two main concerns when it comes to compatibility:

1. Does the software provided with the other hardware behave correctly

2. Does the game you want to play allow telemetry data to be consumed by more than one software.

Software Behavior

Sim Commander and other software like it will communicate with devices via COM/serial ports and USB, etc.. If software from vendor A attempts to communicate with hardware from vendor B, it is essentially sending gibberish to vendor B's hardware which can cause issues.

A well architected software will NEVER open a hardware device that it isn't meant to support or that belongs to another vendor. 

Sim Commander will never open a non-SimXperience device. This means you can count on Sim Commander to NOT cause problems with other manufacturers devices. 

Unfortunately about 95% of the software in the sim racing market is poorly architected and will open devices that it shouldn't. As a result, these other software packages can cause problems with each other and Sim Commander.

Workaround for Poor 3rd Party Software Behavior

The best workaround for this is to launch Sim Commander first. By doing so, Sim Commander can open SimXperience devices and lock them before other software erroneously attempts to.

Game Limitations

Some games utilize UDP to transmit vehicle telemetry data to software such as Sim Commander. Unfortunately UDP only allows ONE consumer of the data stream. This means that if these games are providing data to Sim Commander, they CANNOT provide data to another similar software.

The following games have this limitation:

• AutoClub Revolution

• Dirt 2

• Dirt 4

• Dirt Rally

• Dirt Rally 2

• F12010 - F1 2021

• Forza Horizon 4

• Forza Motorsport 7

• Grid

• Grid 2

• Grid 2019

• Grid Autosport

• Kart Kraft

• Live For Speed

• The Crew

Game Limitation Workaround

Sim Commander is architected to be a "good citizen" of the overall simulation community, providing the ability to "forward" UDP data that it receives to another 3rd party software on a port of your choosing.

When Sim Commander came into existence 15 years ago, port 10001 was not in use by any other vendor so we chose port 10001 for all SimXperience UDP communication.

Different 3rd party software packages will utilize different port numbers. You will need to know what port number your non-SimXperience device software expects to receive data on. This can be found in their documentation.

You can instruct Sim Commander to forward UDP data on a per game basis to a port of your choosing by going to Settings (gear icon on main screen)-->Games-->[GAME NAME OF INTEREST]-->UDP Forward To

In this example, we are forwarding F1 2021 UDP data to another software on port 4123

Advanced Topics

You can use Sim Commander to launch and close your 3rd party software as needed and on a per-profile basis. This screenshot shows how you can have Sim Commander launch notepad before it launches Assetto Corsa and then kill it when you close Assetto Corsa.

Other Notes

Sim Commander launches games whereas most other simulation software will react to a game being launched. It's normal for your other hardware to activate when you launch a game via Sim Commander.

Special Notes About BeamNG

Currently Sim Commander will overwrite the motionsim.lua file that is located in <steamfolder>\steamapps\common\BeamNG.drive\lua\vehicle with an extended capability version of motionsim.lua. Our extended version adds the export of suspension data, engine rpm, engine rpm max, airspeed and other necessary telemetry items required by Sim Commander but missing from the original lua file. We were unable to locate sufficient documentation to extend the lua file and suspect that this is not possible because of the way to UI is tied to this lua file. This may lead to minor compatibility issues with other 3rd party software. The telemetry data that we added to the UDP output via the enhanced motionsim.lua file was added to the end of the UDP stream. This means that the first 88 bytes of the UDP stream are the same as would be provided by the default motionsim.lua file. Sim Commander will forward the entire enhanced data stream via UDP. 3rd party apps can choose to ignore or utilize the additional data. If it winds up causing issues, we can alter Sim Commander to only forward the first 88 bytes which would be identical to the original output. Please contact us if you havefeedback on this matter.

Summary

• Sim Commander is extremely flexible and makes every attempt to co-exist with other software.

• Other software may behave poorly but you can workaround the issue by starting Sim Commander first

• In cases where a game has a single consumer UDP data stream, you can workaround the issue by telling Sim Commander to forward the data we receive to your other software on the port they require per their documentation.