Creating a "Shift" button

[murfman]

Hello, Pete,

I have just recently registered v. 3.71 to use in FS9 and am reading the documentation for setting up my joystick controls. So far I seem to have the axes set up and now am progressing to button programing.

What I would like to do is to program a button which redefines other button assignments. For instance, let's say I want button 1 on my CH Pro throttle to activate the ACCENT key to bring up the default ATC window when button 3 is held down. When button 3 is released I want button 1 to activate the CTRL ACCENT combination, which will bring up the multi-line display window for Radar Contact(that's how I programed it).

Similarly I would like my hat switch to provide view panning when button 3 is released and snap views when it is held down. I was given the idea that this might be possible from a line in the SimMarket ad for your product, namely, that FSUIPC allowed for "Key-press combinations including TAB as an extra shift, for many more assignment possibilities." However, I don't see a reference to this possibility in the user documentation. Did I miss something, or did I misunderstand the line in the advert?

Since I know next to nothing about programing and, for instance, find your advanced user guide way over my head, could you perhaps illustrate by example how set up a "shift" key as described above for the two different display windows, assuming of course that it's even possible?

I thank you in advance for any effort you can provide me in this.

Sincerely,

Tom Murphy

[Pete Dowson]

I have just recently registered v. 3.71 to use in FS9 and am reading the documentation for setting up my joystick controls. So far I seem to have the axes set up and now am progressing to button programing.

Okay, but 3.71 is getting quite old now -- 3.73 was released a while ago, and there's a 3.734 available from the "other downloads" announcement above. 3.74 is due early April. As it says in the Announcements, I really can't support old versions.

What I would like to do is to program a button which redefines other button assignments. For instance, let's say I want button 1 on my CH Pro throttle to activate the ACCENT key to bring up the default ATC window when button 3 is held down. When button 3 is released I want button 1 to activate the CTRL ACCENT combination, which will bring up the multi-line display window for Radar Contact(that's how I programed it).

Yes, you can do conditional button programming, but it means editing the FSUIPC INI file. Details are provided in the Advanced User's document.

Similarly I would like my hat switch to provide view panning when button 3 is released and snap views when it is held down.

Yes, also okay with conditional programming, though you need to understand vthat FSUIPC sees the hat as 8 (or 4 for some hats) separate buttons. There's an example of exactly how to program the Hat for panning in FSX in the FSUIPC4 user guide -- I don't think I updated it into the FSUIPC3 document, so it might be worth your while downloading FSUIPC4 just to see it (in the Buttons section).

I was given the idea that this might be possible from a line in the SimMarket ad for your product, namely, that FSUIPC allowed for "Key-press combinations including TAB as an extra shift, for many more assignment possibilities." However, I don't see a reference to this possibility in the user documentation. Did I miss something, or did I misunderstand the line in the advert?

Er .. I seem to have missed something here. What has TAB support for extra key combinations to do with what you say you want to do?

Yes, FSUIPC3 and 4 both support the assignment of Key combinations with TAB, Windows Key and Menu Key as extra shifts, as well as Ctrl, Shift and Alt (though Alt is inadvisable). This does greatly extend the number of controls you can access directly from the keyboard. But you are wanting to use buttons, so what has extra shifts for more key combinations got to do with it?

Since I know next to nothing about programing and, for instance, find your advanced user guide way over my head, could you perhaps illustrate by example how set up a "shift" key as described above for the two different display windows, assuming of course that it's even possible?

Ahif the Advanced document explains conditional button programming as best as I can, how can I explain it better here? If I could explain it better, I would have done so in the first place, to save having to do it over and over to every user.

Please, I can try to help, but you have to try. There are examples in the document for you to follow. It isn't hard if you read it properly and think. Please read it again, ask specific questions about specific points if there's something you don't understand. But you do need to appreciate that doing advanced things isn't going to be quite as easy as doing easy things. You have to work a little at it.

Regards

Pete

[hm]

Hi,

Some time ago I started some documentation about button programming with FSUIPC. The article however got never finished (my English is too bad. However, Pete was so kind to make some corrections and he published some tricks I programmed in his documentation). I have uploaded the "unfinished" Word document to my site from where you can download it. The link: http://users.telenet.be/desi-iii/ButtonProgramming.doc

Hope the doc helps you.

Regards,

Hugo