GregWoodsLancs

I got a reply from the MSFS Developer forums about the blue highlighting. https://devsupport.flightsimulator.com/t/is-there-any-way-to-trigger-the-mouseover-blue-highlighting-of-cockpit-controls/10443/2 It's a long learning curve ahead... with other projects in front of the queue at the moment (and a day job), so whether anything come of this is debatable, but the research is always interesting, and I'm always happy to make ideas public... maybe someone else could run with it... Although I sudpect for my VR use-case, mixed reality will make this idea irrelevant in a year or two,

As far as Windows goes, the "light touch" would be a normal joystick input. So each physical button presents itself as 2 HID buttons, one activates for a click, the other for a touch. Windows doesn't know any of this, it just sees 2 separate "buttons". I know how to do that side of things with a microcontroller... It the MSFS side I'm fairly clueless about. But yes, it looks like exploring the other SDK options is the direction I need to go in.

Thanks so much for the reply. You answered my question. Just for clarity, the request regarding FSUIPC had nothing to do with VR specifically. I would be using a physical hardware controller to detect a physical light touch on a physical button. This would produce a joystick input. But then that joystick input needs hooking up to whatever MSFS internal event handler causes the glowing highlighting thing to work. But if nothing in MSFS / SimConnect / FSUIPC / Offsets etc etc exposes that highlighting interface, then as you said, I need to look elsewhere. Thanks again though... ruling options out is part of the process 🙂

Background... I'm building a G1000, but it will primarily be used in VR. I noticed the other day that in my car audio, the physical click switches to change radio channel are also sensitive to my finger being near them, showing a preview of the radio station which would be selected if I actually clicked the button. This got me thinking that this would be awesome for hardware controllers like the G1000 when in VR. Instead of blindly counting my way along the soft keys, I could reach out and lightly touch a key and have it show light up with the the blue "neon" highlighting (when Cockpit Interaction Mode is "Lock). I get visual feedback in the sim without mixed reality, and I then know which button to click! The hardware side is technically easy, and cheap. There are loads of 8-16 channel capacitative touch boards available for pennies. The sticking point is likely to be interfacing with MSFS... And for interfacing, FSUIPC is the only place to go 🙂 My thinking is that everything is an offset somewhere! Do these offsets exist? Could they exist? How would I go about working them out? Any "input" appreciated!