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The A32NX & A380X Project are community driven open source projects to create free Airbus aircraft in Microsoft Flight Simulator that are as close to reality as possible.
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Improve Ext. Lights mapping for MSFS UI and SIMCONNECT #5932

Open frankkopp opened 2 years ago

frankkopp commented 2 years ago

Aircraft Version

Development

Description

With more custom logic for external lights we have lost some of the MSFS build-in mapping [0] capability and also lost some SIMCONNECT capability.

As many users only use the MSFS UI to map lights or default drivers for external hardware like the Logitech Switch Panel it would help these user a lot if we could keep up compatibility to the default mappings (UI, Events, Vars) as best possible.

I went through all the mappings and created a table of what works and what doesn't. [1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kGaEWUv1rsPaRKso_YBKkLFF6Yb_-UUJL9F9BlGruec/edit?usp=sharing

I also made a proposal how it should work [2]. See second tab on the Google Sheet.

@Devs - Ping me on Discord for questions.

References (optional)

[0] MSFS Controller Mappings for Ext. Lights

image image

[1] Current image

[2] Proposed image

Additional info (optional)

No response

Discord Username (optional)

Cdr_Maverick#6475

P1NBA11ER commented 2 years ago

I’ve tried a couple times to configure lights to my X-Touch-Mini using simconnect/mobiflight and basically discovered what you’ve illustrated here very well, Take Off lights and Taxi lights do plenty of weird stuff. If this gains some traction that table should help a lot.

frankkopp commented 2 years ago

@2hwk why is that an Asobo bug?

hotshotp commented 2 years ago

@2hwk why is that an Asobo bug?

Asobo simply doesn't let you easily connect hardware to custom vars I think. Not too sure though

bouveng commented 2 years ago

Take Off lights and Taxi lights do plenty of weird stuff.

Could you elaborate? I touched those light recently doing other stuff, but it might work better now?

/J

P1NBA11ER commented 2 years ago

Using the vars for lighting would cause some lights to turn on/off simultaneously and in not expected positions. The chart in the original post describes all this exactly. I haven't messed with it in months.

bouveng commented 2 years ago

Using the vars for lighting would cause some lights to turn on/off simultaneously and in not expected positions.

JFYI. It was never possible to combine taxi with t.o lights for nose gear before, but I fixed that. Also the landing lights work indepedently now.

P1NBA11ER commented 2 years ago

Awesome thanks! I'll re-do my lighting configs for my x-touch now. I was trying to set buttons so I could have one push for off, one for taxi and one for takeoff and it would never toggle appropriately since the taxi/to lights were inexplicably tied together.

frankkopp commented 2 years ago

Additional info - I have added a way to separately control the Landing Lights and Nose T.O. and documented this here: https://docs.flybywiresim.com/pilots-corner/a32nx-briefing/a32nx_api/#external-lights-panel See note below table. As I'm using some variable which are probably not really intended to be used like that I thought this should be part of this issue discussion (e.g. CIRCUIT SWITCH ON)

frankkopp commented 2 years ago

I tested this with the default Asobo A320 - same issue at least for the mapping with the MSFS Controler Options for TOGGLE and SET.

As many hardware switches use SET (Honeycomb Alpha, Logitech Switch Panel, etc.) it might be a good idea if we fix this in the a32nx although it is also broken in the default A320.