Dummy Flightsimulator v 1.0.0 © 2026 By Sven Rowoldt, fs-addons.de

Dummy Flightsimulator is a little program for MobiFlight SimConnect connections via LAN.
If You want to run Mobiflight on a different PC than the Flightsim-PC, Mobiflight needs to see a running 'flightsimulator.exe' for a successfull initialization.
So Mobiflight finds a flightsimulator an the same machine and is happy. And You are happy, because the Dummy Flightsimulator is lightweight and does consume almost no CPU-power. And Your Sim-PC is a little lighter, because addon-programs like Mobiflight run on a different computer.

Dummy Flightsimulator can start Mobiflight and can be stopped automatically, when Mobilflight exits.
It lives in the tray, from where You also can stop both, Mobiflight and Dummy Flightsimulator itself.

Installation is very easy:
Just unzip flightsimulator.exe and settings.ini into a folder of Your choice.
(If it is a folder where You can directly write to, makes editing of 'setings.ini' more easy. So 'C:\Program Files' is not the best choice.
Make shortcut to Your startmenu or to Your desktop (or even better: Use MSFS Launch Helper - also from fs-addons.de - which can let Dummy Flightsimulator start with MSFS).

Edit 'settings.ini' for Your needs:

[Mobiflight]
Start MFConnector=True  --> Will start Mobiflight when Dummy Flightsimulator is started, True or False
Stopp MFConnector=True  --> Will stop Mobiflight when Dummy Flightsimulator is stopped, True or False
MFConnectorFullPath=C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Local\MobiFlight\MobiFlight Connector\MFConnector.exe --> the full path including the program name of Mobiflight, needed to start Mobiflight
[Common]
StopMySelfWhenMFExits=True --> Stops Dummy Flightsimulator, when Mobiflight is stopped, True or False.

SETUP SimConnect Files
----------------------
This is a little tricky and again: My program 'MSFS Launch Helper' makes life much easier!
To let SimConnect accept connections from other PCs over ethernet You need to generate / edit two files:

ON THE PC WHERE THE SIM IS RUNNING:
On the machine that hosts Your Simulator 'SimConnect,xml' needs to be extended.
For MSFS 2020 it is located in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Microsoft.Flightsimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache,
for MSFS 2024 it is located in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Microsoft.Limitless_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache.

It needs to be extended with an additional portion of
<SimConnect.Comm> ... </SimConnect.Comm>

So add the block
<SimConnect.Comm>
        <Disabled>False</Disabled>
        <Protocol>IPv4</Protocol>
        <Scope>global</Scope>
        <Address>0.0.0.0</Address>
        <MaxClients>64</MaxClients>
        <Port>4506</Port>
        <MaxRecvSize>4096</MaxRecvSize>
        <DisableNagle>False</DisableNagle>
</SimConnect.Comm>
right before the last </SimBase.Document> - tag.

Address 0.0.0.0 means, the Sim-PC will listen to any network computer. You could yet this to the IP address of Your remote computer to just accept connections from them. You do not need this to prevent access from the internet, because for connections from the internet a port - forwarding of Your internet router to Your SimConnect -PC  is required, which is normally not there.
You could also change the port to another. 500 is also a common port for SimConnect, but any would do. 49152 – 65535 is the safest area. It must be the same, that is written in the SimConnect.cfg on Your remote-PC:

ON THE REMOTE PC WHERE PROGRANMS LIKE MOBIFLIGHT ARE RUNNING:
On the remote machine where for example Mobiflight is running to connect to the Sim-PC remotely a file 'SimConnect.cfg' is required, which is stored in Your 'Documents' folder

If it is not there, make one with the content:
[SimConnect]
Protocol=IPv4
Address=192.168.XXX.XXX
Port=4506
MaxReceiveSize=4096
DisableNagle=0
ProtocolParameters=192.168.XXX.XXX

and replace the two IP-addresses with one of Your Sim-PC. The last line 'ProtocolParameters=...
is not required on every system.


After this You are good to start the first test.
Start Your Simulator and start a command prompt cmd.exe on Your Sim-PC.
Type the command
netstat -ano | findstr :4506

if there is an answere like ...4505 LISTENING, it tells us, that a programm is listening to port 4505. There is also a PID, a number which represents the ID of the process, which is listening. We could prove this, but let's go and start Mobiflight.

Mobiflight has two status sections on very left of the statusbar at the bottom:
The first 'Connected devices' tells if there are any controller devices are found and the second 'Sim status' telles us, if we are connected with a flightsimulator.
You can click on the little arrow ion this label, whoch will popup a small information panel.
The firts line tell us, if a simulator is found and the second line tells us, if this simulator is connected to Mobiflight. The third is only used by Pro Sim as simulator.
If there are ttwo green symbols in the 'Sim status' panel you are good to go.

The first one requires now Dummy Flightsimulator running. WHen it runs, it should state 'MSFS detected'.
If the secon indicatior is still yellow, the firewall of the Sim-PC might be the cause. Normally the firewall is open for MS Flightsimulator, but also can be openend just for special ports.
You could turn of the firewall completely for a quick test. If You get two green arrows, the firewall is the cause and has to opened for SimConnect.

If You are not familiar with opening portts of Your firewall. I recommend using a KI tool like chat-GPT, GoogleGemini or MS Co-pilot. Just ask:
"Tell my how to open the port 4505 and 500 on the firewall of my Windows pc for both, TCP and UDP, outgoing and incoming and for all three environments."
This should get You to Your goal.

MSFS Launch Helper (released in the end of july 2026) can easily make those SimConnect files for You, but not the firewall thing. It might will be extended on this, if You ask kindly... ;)

Always happy simming!
Sven Rowoldt

