Just installed the new Saitek drivers two days ago as its latest capability of displaying FIPs in desired order at start-up every time is a killer feature which has been longed for by almost all FIP users.
However, the installation or the upgrading of it could be a bit tricky. I will write up another post later.
A good news, the FIP Customizer by Alexey still work perfectly with the new driver. His other utility — the FIP Toolkit — has yet been checked, however.
FSX TIMES 
One more comment. I just bought a new state of the art (i7-5500U based) networked laptop and installed it today. I was amazed to see how fluent the FIPs run over the networked new machine. I was always in doubt if network lag or my poor old laptop were causing the lag, so it was clearly the latter. Which fits into the picture: The FIPs (and/or their drivers) seem to eat raw computing power like fresh bread. Which also causes the microstutters when running locally.
Kind regards, Michael
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Glad to hear that. Try lowering the <Gauge Timeout="40" further. It may further smoothen the display. I once tried "10" on someone's higher network computer. It's "wow".
Tom
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Hi,
I have been using the new drivers (networked) for two weeks now and they have been working without any issues. The capability to keep the FIPs in order is indeed a killer feature and works flawlessly. I was lucky to make a backup of your gauges after I read your notice, thus returning them was easy.
Unfortunately, they still are performance hogs when run locally, if you have an extended number of FIPs. Not only did I notice an fps hit but also the sim runs less smooth overall under difficult conditions (SF Bay Area). But that’s not different from the old drivers.
Networked they are fine, I found that it may help to set process priority of “SaiFlightSimX.exe” and “DirectOutputService.exe” to “High” on the networked machine making gauges behave (a bit) more fluently.
Kind regards, Michael
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Thanks for the note Michael. “Luckily”, I don’t have as much FIPs as you do. Running 10 (1 connected when required) FIPs locally still smooth on my machine by setting <Gauge Timeout="40"
I tried linking them to network computer once. But they became a bit lag due to the computer is pretty low end even I set their process priorities to the maximum.
BTW, I removed SPAD from my computer since I found it conflicting with the new drivers as they did with the old ones. Did you do the same or are you still using SPAD ?
Tom
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I use SPAD.neXt (locally) now, which doesn’t conflict with the new Saitek FIPs drivers (networked). BTW, I “only” have 9 FIPs, but the burden when connected locally is noticeable. This isn’t an issue over rural area of course, but just in areas/airports being difficult as such. I did a lot of experimenting with Affinity Mask / Priority seetings which all didn’t help much.
Kind regards, Michael
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Do you mean you are using SPAD.neXt to drive both FIPs and other Saitek gear on your local computer? How’s it? What are the upsides compared to the Saitek one?
Tom
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At present, I use SPAD.neXt locally for Switch, Radio, and Multi panel. All FIPs are driven via the new Saitek drivers networked. FIPs support via SPAD.neXt is on the way, but will certainly take some time yet to be really usable. SPAD.neXt can also be taken to a networked machine via Simconnect freeing resources on the main machine in the paid version. It works, but still needs a bit of polishing.
Otherwise I am quite happy with what I have now. (Aside the nasty controls unplugging issues under Win 10 you mention in another contribution.)
Kind regards, Michael
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Yes, there are still issues to fix on the FIP side. Hope that get solved soon.
Tom
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