Telemetry plugins work with rFactor Steam?

[Roland]

Has anyone tested yet if rFactor-on-Steam works with any of the telemetry plugins like Vitumo's XD, Fazerbox' GID, or rFDynHUD?

From personal experience I know that especially the Engine Health in both XD and GID only works with some versions of rfactor.exe, as both these plugins are basically DirectX hacks that tap straight into memory.
Yet Engine Health IMO is THE most important reading in mods like HistorX.

So while rFactor-on-Steam has some nice improvements for modern PC's as described HERE, and I'm tempted to move my game to Steam, I'm afraid memory adressing has had an overhaul as well and neither of the plugins may work..

I don't know about rFDynHud though, as I prefer my PC without Java, but if that's the only one that works, I'd like to hear..

 

[Marcel Offermans]

Ok, I sat down, got the latest release from https://github.com/CTDP/rfDynHUD/releases and installed a 32 bits version of Java 7 (the JRE). Then I installed everything, changed a few configuration options (because by default the latest release is configured to work with rFactor 2) and then it worked. Even with Steam overlay, in case you want to know.

In general, every plugin that sticks with the API that ISI published should work. Plugins that try to be smart and read values directly from memory inside the rFactor executable will most likely not work anymore.

In general, if you run into a plugin that no longer works, get in touch and I will try to contact its author to see if we can find a solution. No promises though!

 

[Roland]

.... Plugins that try to be smart and read values directly from memory inside the rFactor executable will most likely not work anymore.

Wow, that was fast! I was afraid of that being the case though..

So, I'll go ahead and install Java and rFDynHUD then, to see if I can get that plugin to give me just those readings I'd like to see without cluttering my screen.
If that works, I now know I can safely move my game to Steam.

Thanks a lot for your effort, Marcel!
One final question: Is there any particular reason you installed the 32-bit version of JRE?

 

[Marcel Offermans]

Wow, that was fast! I was afraid of that being the case though..

So, I'll go ahead and install Java and rFDynHUD then, to see if I can get that plugin to give me just those readings I'd like to see without cluttering my screen.
If that works, I now know I can safely move my game to Steam.

Thanks a lot for your effort, Marcel!
One final question: Is there any particular reason you installed the 32-bit version of JRE?

To start with that last question, yes there is, rFDynHUD requires the 32-bit version of the JRE because of the way it starts the embedded Java virtual machine. It is actually loaded into the rFactor process and since that is a 32 bit application, the JRE must be too.

I did not try the other plugins because I'm less familiar with them, and to be honest, I did not have time to try them all so I picked the one that I'm most familiar with (I actually wrote a small piece of it, even though Marvin should take credit for it as he did most of the work).

But as long as the plugins don't read from memory directly, you should be fine, so I would not rule out that some of the others work. Maybe some other rFactor user can give you some feedback on that.