I bought a VCX Nano and loaded Ford’s FJDS onto a laptop, then bought a 3-day FJDS license via Ford and was able to load a bunch of updates to the different modules (DDM/PDM/ACM/etc…) bypassing the need to go to the dealership or buy the ultra expensive VCM2 with the ultra expensive IDS license. They just aren’t interested in using IDS to update firmware because they lose out of money for labor hours. The VCX Nano is a SAE J2534 pass-thru device, so you can run FORSCan with it at a significantly faster speed than OBDLink MX / ELM327. OBDLink MX and ELM327 is like watching paint dry compared to VCX Nano with FORScan.
This is what I bought to use with Ford’s FJDS on my 2017 Fusion Sport (17k miles):
https://www.vxdiagshop.com/wholesale/vxdiag-vcx-nano-for-ford-mazda-2-in-1.html
It also happens to work fully with FORScan as a SAE J2534 pass-thru device instead of ELM327. It is much faster than OBDLink though.
I even ran Ford’s IDS hardware with FORScan and it took forever. It’s kind of funny that Ford’s IDS hardware/software is slower to pull DTC error codes than with FORSCan and either ELM327/OBDLink/VCX Nano.
With Forscan the OBD Mode 6 shows a bunch of stuff including misfire for each cylinder for the past 10 drive cycles as well as prev drive cycle. It’s supposed to be a generic universal set of data PIDs defined for OBD2.
I don’t use FORScan to display gauges/datalogging because it isn’t pulling DMR’s and is too laggy for actual tuning use. I run HPTuners for datalogging/tuning but haven’t upgraded to the MPVI2 module yet.
I used FJDS with VXDIAG VCX Nano Ford to successfully program modules on the Fusion Sport and Explorer, it was able to pick up the MS-CAN and HS-CAN modules, so I was unsure why others had problems. It’s not like you are using FJDS every day to be honest, but I found VCX Nano could be repurposed for use with FORScan so I can clear DTCs after tuning or read MS-CAN module data much much much faster than with OBDLink MX or a modified ELM327.