FS2004 controls description

[borisvp]

Good Morning :)

I'm looking for a documentation or description of the FS2004 controls as shown in the respective Word document.

I have difficulties to assign many of the designators to specific commands (What does it do? :roll: ) and to see the difference in many similar looking controls (What is the difference between AP_AIRSPEED_HOLD, AP_PANEL_SPEED_HOLD and AP_PANEL_SPEED_HOLD_TOGGLE, for instance? :roll: )

And one more: Are these controls only the inputs or are there also outputs to use in external display hardware?

Can anybody help?

Thanks

Boris

[Pete Dowson]

I have difficulties to assign many of the designators to specific commands (What does it do? :roll: ) and to see the difference in many similar looking controls (What is the difference between AP_AIRSPEED_HOLD, AP_PANEL_SPEED_HOLD and AP_PANEL_SPEED_HOLD_TOGGLE, for instance? :roll: )

I did start to describe some of these way back in my first Controls List -- the one for FS2000, still available on http://www.schiratti.com/dowson. Those that you need and which were in FS2000 may be described for you there.

Unfortunately I've never had time to develop that at all. There is now a huge number of controls, but not all of them do anything (they are either old ones which Microsoft forgot to remove or new ones they didn't get time to implement) and some don't exactly do what they seem to say they do. The only way, really, to determine exactly what they do is to test each one and see.

Those that are assignable in FS's own assignments should be reasonably well documented in FS's own help system. The descriptions you see in the FS assignments dialogues are not the same as the Names, of course, but if you look in your FS9.CFG you will find KEYBOARD and JOYSTICK sections which use the control names, exactly as I list, so you should be able to relate them well enough. In the KEYBOARD sections the keypress encoding is the same as that used by FSUIPC -- you will find a table for that in FSUIPC's Advanced User's documentation.

And one more: Are these controls only the inputs or are there also outputs to use in external display hardware?

Controls are only inputs. They relate to keys, buttons, switches and joystick axes connectable to FS. They are never outputs from FS.

Officially FS only "outputs" via its Gauges interface to the gauges that make up its panels (though there is also a "netpipes" interface but by all accounts it isn't good). The gauges interface is documented in Microsoft's own SDK for panel making -- in fact this is where you may also find more dcoumentation for some of the Controls. Look through the main gauges header file (gauges.h) for example.

FSUIPC provides an interface for external programs to read the same sort of values that gauges can, and it also provides a lot more. FSUIPC is the general way to add on displays, but you have to be able to write your own interface program if you do this directly.

There are a number of specific implementations for which display support is already provided. My own EPICINFO does this for EPIC-connected displays, as does FSCommunicator. There's software from both GoFlight and my own GFdisplay for GoFlight displays. And there are developments like FSBus and others for interfacing to other specific hardware types.

In other words, if you design all your own hardware you will naturally need to look at programming your own driver for it and interface that to FSUIPC. But if you are using some already designed hardware interface you should find that the designers/makers have already done that part for you. Check the cockpit builders forums.

Regards,

Pete

[borisvp]

Hello Pete,

thank you very much for this quick and detailed answer :)

Boris