PMDG MD-11 and Mouse Macros

[Tim Abbott]

Hi Pete,

I really appreciate the work you've put into FSUIPC and how it takes FS to the next level!

My question: I'm using FSX Acceleration, FSUIPC 4.60 (registered of course) and have a couple GoFlight panels installed. I'm trying to create a mouse macro for the fuel cutoff switches, but the macro isn't recognized. The verification screen doesn't pop up no matter what I press in the cockpit. I've seen a video on youtube that seemed to work, and I've searched the web from top to bottom before posting here.

I was able to get the macro to work in the PIC737 so I know it will work. It also seems the VRi guys have been able to create macros as well. I've the FSUIPC manual, searched the forums, etc.

I know I'm missing something here....

Thanks for any insight!

Tim

[Pete Dowson]

My question: I'm using FSX Acceleration, FSUIPC 4.60 (registered of course) and have a couple GoFlight panels installed. I'm trying to create a mouse macro for the fuel cutoff switches, but the macro isn't recognized. The verification screen doesn't pop up no matter what I press in the cockpit.

This means that whatever you are pressing is simply not amenable to such methods. The mouse macro method relies on a specific way, which was once standard in add-on aircraft, of programming gauges -- this is for C/C++ gauges written using the Microsoft gauge SDK. Although Microsoft themselves did not use it for the default aircraft, many FS8 and FS9 developers did and it works for those.

However, since FS9, and much more so in FSX, there are other ways of writing the gauges for aircraft, usding XML, which is a type of scripting language. In FS most of the default aircraftas are written this way, and more and more add-ons now.

These are simply not amenable to the mouse macro way of assigning, and never will be.

There may well be alternative methods using Local Variables ("L:vars"). These are named variables declared and used inside the XML gauges. When these are discovered thery can sometimes be written to, via FSUIPC macros, to change settings, switches and so on. There is some data about Lvars in the FSUIPC documentation, but I cannot say that discovering and using them is an easy process. You can make FSUIPC log them, and there are Lua plugins provided which will log changes so you can see how they operate.

[LATER]

I just noticed:

There is a user contribution about the PMDG MD11 in the "User Contributions" sub-forum. Have you checked that?

Pete

[Tim Abbott]

Thanks Pete,

I've seen Lua mentioned before, sounds a bit out of my element. My next thought was that they used xml for their gauges. I didn't see the post about the MD-11 under the contributions, I'll certainly check it out! Thanks for the help!

Tim