Question Dual PC Setup

I actually started with another game. X Plane. After spending a week on that, I moved to testing it with LFS.
The firewalls are off on both PCs. I have attached pictures above of both firewalls being off.

Sorry to dwell with this question - I am trying to figure out where to look for the issue.

Does a game send data through Game Manager to the other PC? OR When you say directly, do you mean that it bypasses Game Manager as well?

Second question - while both run on the single PC - does a game still use the port 4123 OR does it use a different mechanism for single pc communications?

Update....
tried two other computers with Win 10, Firewalls shut down. Ports explicitly opened up.
No joy.
Tried netstat - a.
Dont even see 4123 on that list even when Game Manager and Game Engine are running respective PCs. Directly connected via switch. No wireless router in the middle.
Have to ask - Does Simtools 2.4 still provide that Dual PC functionality?

Lastly - I have asked before - for X Plane I installed the plugin on both PCs. For LFS the plug-in is installed with SimTools. Is there a need to download separately and install?

Correction - Now I do see 4123 on Game Engine PC . The port doesnt show up in the list (netstat -a) until I start LFS up. No 4123 in list in Game PC.

Forgot to mention, still no telemetry.

So sorry to be such a bother. I do have a hard time giving up on something. I think I must be close.
Yes, it does. The buttons disable on the left side on Game Engine. The top indicator goes from green to blue.

And when I toggle the ON/OFF switch, the indicator goes from blue to green.

What is the best tool to use to see if packets are coming in on the Game Engine PC? Now I know the port is open.

SUCCESS... Kept checking everything over and over again, It didnt help. The port would open up as soon as I launched the game and started driving.

Checked all config files. They were all good.

Finally started checking the LFS folder to see what other files were there. Found the LFS cfg file. Opened it to just see what was in it. At the end of that file were two lines indicating an IP address and port number. I found that it was still showing the IP address of the local PC (the game PC). I am not sure when or what modifies this IP address to point to teh Game Engine PC (I am assuming it occurs when we setup Game Engine IP in Tools. But that clearly wasnt happening. This is despite unpatching and repatching each time an IP address change was made. I must have unpatched and repatched each time i launched the game just to be sure.

In any case, that was the issue in my case. Modifying that IP address to point to the Game Engine PC did it!

I then launched the X Plane game. I did the same in the Data Output section of X Plane config.
Telemetry transfer occurred seamlessly.

This has been a good learning experience. I think what is missing is an architecture schematic indicating that while Game Manager and Game Engine connection is necessary, it is not sufficient to ensure that telemetry data will flow to the Game Engine PC.

At least for myself, I understood it to be as follows –
a) Game communicates with Game Manager (that is the purpose of patching
b) Game Manager communicates with Game Engine
c) Game Engine communicates with the Arduinos/Motor Drivers etc
d) Arduinos/Motor Drivers communicate with the hardware (aka Servos, Actuators etc)

….. until @yobuddy said that telemetry data flows directly from the game to the Game Engine via port 4123.

This broke my thought process described above because it meant that even after (a) and (b) are done, the game needed to know where to send data to via that port. That’s what led to me to search for how LFS would know that destination target. That is why I went searching for a config file or something like that where the destination would be indicated. At first I searched in the options within LFS game. Didn’t find anything. I then began to look for config files.

I may just draw this communication model up and post it so that others can benefit from my experience - (and maybe such an artifact exists and I just didn’t find it.

I now think that all along this was the issue. I haven’t reverted any of the firewall settings yet to see whether any of that extra setup was needed. Will update after i do those steps.

THANKS very much to all that helped me over the past week.

Regards,

CJ