⚠ It's essential that you reboot your computer after installing or updating your Flight Panels profiles. Please ensure that you've done this, before carrying out any of the suggestions listed within this article.
Understanding the issue
If you're seeing three dots (waiting for data), when Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 is fully loaded and sitting on the runway (not in the menus), this indicates that there's a communication issue between your simulator and Stream Deck. There can be multiple causes of this issue.
Potential Cause: Applications running as 'Administrator'
To ensure that third party plugins are working properly with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 it is important to run the game as a standard user and not as an 'Administrator' (i.e by right clicking and selecting 'Run as administrator'.
If you're a Steam user, by following the steps outlined in this article, you can ensure that the game is running as a standard user and allow for proper communication with third party plugins.
Open your Steam Application and navigate to your library
Location Flight Simulator 2020 and right click > Properties
Navigate to 'Installed Files' and select the 'Browse' button
On the window that appears, right click on 'FlightSimulator.exe' and select properties, followed by the 'Compatibility' tab. Ensure that 'Run this program as an administrator' isn't selected. If it is, untick the option and select 'Apply' followed by 'OK'.
Reboot your computer
Potential Cause: FSUIPC7 isn't running
FSUIPC7 is an application that allows other programs to communicate with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. When you launch Flight Simulator, an FSUIPC7 splash screen should appear momentarily while the game is loading and the FSUIPC7 icon should also be present in the system tray. The system tray is located in the lower right-hand corner of your monitor beside the clock.
If you can't see the FSUIPC7 icon in the system tray and the splash screen didn't appear, try launching FSUIPC7 manually by double clicking on C:\FSUIPC7\FSUIPC7.exe once the game is loaded and you're sitting on the runway (not in menus).
If this resolves your issue, you may be missing the FSUIPC7 auto-launch entry within your Microsoft Flight Simulator EXE.xml file, which controls which applications automatically launch with the game [FS2020 Forum Article].
🔥 Hot Fix: Flight Panels have developed a hot-fix which will add the required configuration entries to your Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 EXE.xml file. This hot-fix can be downloaded from here.
Potential Cause: Connection timeouts
If your Simulator is slow to load due to a large number of addons or general underlying PC performance issues, FSUIPC7 may be timing out. To confirm the cause, when sitting on the runway (not in game menus), quit out of FSUIPC7 and re-launch it via C:\FSUIPC7\FSUIPC7.exe. Please allow 30 seconds for buttons to populate.
Other Solutions
⚠️ You should only perform these tasks if instructed by our support team. Please ensure that Microsoft Flight Simulator is not running before carrying out any of the steps listed below.
Re-Install FSUIPC7
Select the Windows Start button and type 'Remove'
Select 'Add or remove programs' from the list of results
Scroll down the list of installed apps and click on 'FSUIPC7'
Click 'Uninstall' and complete the removal process
Remove fsuipc-lvar-module from your FS2020 community folder
Delete the folder C:\FSUIPC7
Reboot your computer
Download the latest version of FSUIPC7 from here
Open the ZIP file and double click on Install_FSUIPC7.exe to launch the installer
Reboot your computer
Updating the MobiFlight Module
Browse to your Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 Community Folder
Delete the 'mobiflight-event-module' folder
Download the latest MobiFlight WASM module from here
Open the ZIP file and extract the contents to your Community Folder
Reboot your computer
Re-Install PilotsDeck
Open your Stream Deck Application
On the right hand navigation bar, scroll down until you locate Pilots Deck
Right click on one of the actions (such as 'Display Value') and select 'Uninstall'
If a confirmation popup appears, select 'Uninstall' to continue
Download PilotsDeck from here and launch the installer
Follow the installation wizard
Reboot your computer
Re-Install Stream Deck Software
⚠ Please ensure that you have taken backups
Select the Windows Start button and type 'Remove'
Select 'Add or remove programs' from the list of results
Scroll down the list of installed apps and click on 'Elgato Stream Deck'
Click 'Uninstall' and complete the removal process
Navigate to C:\Users\YOUR-USERNAME\AppData\Roaming
Rename the 'Elgato' folder to 'Elgato_Last'
Navigate to C:\Users\YOUR-USERNAME\AppData\Local
Rename the 'Elgato' folder to 'Elgato_Last'
Download and install the software from the Elgato Website
Re-Install your Flight Panels product, by launching the installer