Simple Shift Command vs Compound Command

[scottb613]

Hi Pete,

I’ve been a customer since your first releases of FSUIPC and have enjoyed your products for many years... I don’t frequent this forum often - so I don’t know if you’re open to suggestions...

I’ve been using a full CH HOTAS setup for probably as long as I’ve been using FSUIPC (game port days)... Seems as if CH chose to abandon their proprietary Control Manager software with the advent of Win10 making it prone to BSOD and loss of features - really forcing their customers to stop using it...

One of the best features it offered was a [shift] command to allow every button on your HOTAS setup have two functions - a normal and shifted button press... It’s sorely missed and I would think a large portion of the FSUIPC community could benefit from effectively doubling the number of buttons you have at your disposal...

I’ve done my due diligence and researched the function - here - in your forum (noticed the mode control posts) - as well as your manuals... From what I gather - it is possible to replicate this feature by manually editing the config file - however it seems a tad cryptic and cumbersome for novice FSUIPC users... I’m sure only an extremely small percentage of your customer base ventures outside your provided GUI to interact with FSUIPC... The fact than many of us use “aircraft specific profiles” complicates this even further as we would need to manually configure multiple profiles adding the compound command functions as needed...

Based on how benneficial this could be to so many users - have you ever considered adding this to your GUI - a simple selection that this button will act as a [shift] thereby allowing users to press it while assigning other buttons via the FSUIPC GUI ? I’m not a programmer so I don’t know how difficult this would be to implement or how it would affect the complex interactions within the sim...

Anyway - just a humble suggestion - my two cents - please take it for what it’s worth...

Thanks for your consideration...

Regards,

Scott

[Pete Dowson]

9 minutes ago, scottb613 said:

Based on how benneficial this could be to so many users - have you ever considered adding this to your GUI - a simple selection that this button will act as a [shift] thereby allowing users to press it while assigning other buttons via the FSUIPC GUI ? I’m not a programmer so I don’t know how difficult this would be to implement or how it would affect the complex interactions within the sim...

I can add it to my list, for consideration next year. But if I implemented anything like that it would only be in FSUIPC5, for P3D4. I'm not delevoping FSUIPC4 further except for bugs fixes and any future FSX-SE updates.

And would you see this Shift assignment to apply across to buttons assignments on all connected (now and future) devices with buttons? And what about buttons and switches assigned via WideFS, on a networked PC, which are also assigned in FSUIPC on the main PC? And what if someone assigned more than one 'shift' button? Would they be alternatives, or multiply the choices by 2 each time (as you can go via INI file editing)?

As you can see, there could be a lot of ramifications. Those are just the first that come to mind, and which certainly need to be considered before even starting the program implementation design.

Pete

 

 

[scottb613]

Hi Pete,

Concur - FSUIPC5 and P3Dv4 is all I use... I don’t think it would be fair for anyone to expect feature additions to software that’s been replaced by newer versions... Around flight sim - you never know though...

:)

Yep - I had thought of some of the ramifications you listed...

You've been more than fair/gracious - and - consideration is all I hoped for...

Thanks for all you do - much appreciated - and have a good day...

Regards,

Scott

 

 

[scottb613]

Hi Folks,

LOL - Pete - I thought I read about your retirement - yet you still appear very active here...

😀

I was just wondering if this ever had more consideration ? I could truly use a “shifted” joystick button press - so each one of my buttons could have two functions...

For example: 

I bought this great button box where I want to use my six "rotary encoders" to do such things as set my heading, course, and altitude - maybe prop/mixture as well... The rotary encoders are just glorified push buttons that press a specific button multiple times as you spin it - and another button when you reverse direction... The aforementioned flight sim controls (heading, course, and altitude) have a normal and fast speed increment... I've set these up using two rotary encoders per flight sim control - one for course/fast adjustment - the other for fine/slow adjustment - and they work quite well - - - although - - - I don't really want to use two rotary encoders per flight sim control... A shifted key press would allow me to use one...

Anyway - thanks for the consideration - either way - and have a good day...

Regards,

Scott

[John Dowson]

Hi Scott,

Pete has retired from FSUIPC development, although he is still active on the support forum. I've taken over development of FSUIPC5 since the beginning of the year (I'm Pete's son). I'll discuss this with Pete and have a think about it, but as Pete mentioned it looks like it could be quite a complicated/involved update.

For your example though, a standard way of handling this using one rotary is with a lua script, which would time the requests and send different controls depending upon the delta between them, allowing you to rotate slowly for fine control and faster for course control.

Cheers,

John

 

[scottb613]

Hi John,

Ahh - thanks for the info - since this is the first we’ve corresponded - welcome aboard...

I’ve seen the “track the delta” mentioned before - I’ll start plugging through the manuals and see if I can figure it out - I’m not much of a programmer...

Appreciate the consideration - hopefully you guys will figure something - as it was a popular feature in the “CH” community and having it included in the interface would make this available to far more users than the custom scripts will do...

Have a good day !

Regards,

Scott

[John Dowson]

Hi Scott,

to have different functions on your joystick buttons depending upon whether a key is pressed or not, you can try the following:

1. First select the key to use. Unfortunately this cannot be just a modifier key (shift, ctrl, alt, etc). For this example, I will use the '|\ key (which is the key next to the leftmost shift key on my keyboard).

2. Program this key to send a 'BUTTON FLAG Toggle' event, using the FSUIPC 'Key Presses' tab. For the parameter, choose a joystick (and button) number that you do not use (<16) and multiply this by 256. I only have 2 joystick devices, so I choose joystick 10 (button 0), so my parameter will be 2560. Set to send the same control/parameter on both key press and release, and check for 'No repeats!'.

This will set a button flag (joystick 10, button 0) on keypress, and clear the flag on key release.

The entry in your ini will look something like:

[Keys]
...
6=N220,8,1005,2560,1005,2560     -{\|key: Press=BUTTON FLAG Toggle: Joy 10 Button 0, Release=BUTTON FLAG Toggle: Joy 10 Button 0 }-
 

3. Modify your ini file to add the conditional on any buttons for which you wish to use this feature.  For example, I have the following button entry in my ini file:

[Buttons]
...
9=PS,0,C65752,0     -{PARKING_BRAKES}-
...

To make this conditional on holding the key I defined ('\'), I would modify this to the following:

9=CP(F+10,0)S,0,C65752,0     -{PARKING_BRAKES}-
 

and now I can add a new entry for using this button without the key modifier, e.g.

[Buttons]
...
9=CP(F+10,0)S,0,C65752,0     -{PARKING_BRAKES}-
...
19=CP(F-10,0)S,0,C66079,0     -{GEAR_UP}-

Hope that makes sense! Full details on button flags and compound button conditions are in the Advanced User Guide.

Cheers,

John

 

[John Dowson]

Hi Scott,

you can use just the shift key only by modifying the key definition

    6=N220,8,1005,2560,1005,2560     -{\|key: Press=BUTTON FLAG Toggle: Joy 10 Button 0, Release=BUTTON FLAG Toggle: Joy 10 Button 0 }-
 to
    6=N16,9,1005,2560,1005,2560     -{\|key: Press=BUTTON FLAG Toggle: Joy 10 Button 0, Release=BUTTON FLAG Toggle: Joy 10 Button 0 }-
 

It seems that 16 is the keycode for null, not 0 as specified in the documentation (which I will update).

Cheers,

John

Edited August 6, 2019 by John Dowson
correction of modifier code from 8 to 9