Saturday, June 22, 2019

SimShaker - Wheels beta version 3.8 published featuring 2 modern Forza titles support

Hi guys,
in this version:

  • added support for Forza Motorsport 7 and Horizon 4 UDP telemetry;
  • some improvements in logging system and GUI (graphical user interface).

A bit more about Forza UDP telemetry since that is something. If you purchase the game in Microsoft Store it adheres to Microsoft Windows 8-10 modern apps safety rules and technics like Network Isolation, App Container and may be some more other stuff like that. In brief for game users it means that localhost data streaming (i.e. traffic inside the PC) will be blocked as it claimed here. You can add a local loopback address 127.0.0.1 and 29373 as a destination IP address and port, as we usually do in some other games, but actually no packets will be sent from the game. Well, this is an official Microsoft policy. According to it you should run Forza game and app consuming data via a network protocol on different devices. Hence, if you run the game on Xbox and run SimShaker - Wheels app on a PC in your home local network it should be fine. Just add your PC IP-address and port 29373 as destination point for telemetry packets, select appropriate game mode at SimShaker - Wheels 3rd tab (not Auto), allow firewall software adding a rule for this traffic and enjoy the game.
If you run the game and SimShaker - Wheels on the same PC most likely it will not work, since the only way existing to obtain telemetry from the game is currently a UDP network protocol, wich traffic inside the PC will be blocked.
Although there is a workaround. For developing and debugging purposes Microsoft provides an ability to unblock this traffic with a special built-in command-line tool CheckNetIsolation. It may be useful but not very convenient.
There is another enabling loopback tool by Eric Lawrence featuring a graphical interface, which makes this task much more easier to do. You just need to select Forza app in the list, mark it, press "Save Changes" button and quit the app.
Please bear in mind that Microsoft recommends it for for testing or debugging purposes only.

click to enlarge
Well, enough reading such a boring stuff.
Let's give it a shot and have a great racing weekend!

Once again the most essential part: use IP-address 127.0.0.1 and port 29373 in settings for the game on the same PC and your PC with installed SimShaker - Wheels IP-address (it may be like 192.168.1.23 for example) and port 29373 for the game running on the console.
Game mode selector at the 3rd SimShaker - Wheels tab may be Auto or Forza for the same PC-based game and must be Forza for Xbox-based game.