Intercept key press in a toolbar addon?

Question

question

Diagonalization asked Jul 17, '21 dga edited Jul 27, '21

Intercept key press in a toolbar addon?

Is it possible to write a toolbar panel addon that responds to custom key events? I would like to create what are effectively macros for common flows, and trigger them from the keyboard (or a joystick button, ideally).

default html

10 |10000 characters needed characters left characters exceeded

Attachments: Up to 5 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 4.8 MiB each and 23.8 MiB total.

Answer 1 · 2021-07-19T08:55:00Z

dga answered Jul 19, '21 dga edited Jul 27, '21

Look into leveraging inputs.js.
It enables you to register an InputsListener, which allows you to poll for input states.

As an example you could look at the updateInputs() method in MapInstrument.js in asobo-vcockpits-instruments in the official packages.

Be aware that this doesn't allow to mask inputs. So it will still trigger bound key events with the sim.

2

10 |10000 characters needed characters left characters exceeded

Attachments: Up to 5 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 4.8 MiB each and 23.8 MiB total.

Diagonalization · Jul 19 at 01:50 PM

Thanks this works. Here is a small snippet of code that prints "2" when the water rudder key is pressed:

setInterval(() => { 
   console.log(GetInputStatus("PLANE", "KEY_TOGGLE_WATER_RUDDER")); },
 500);

How do you figure out the magic strings for each key? Many of them are in the XML files in this directory:

C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_1.17.3.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe\Input

0 ·

dga Diagonalization · Jul 27 at 09:27 AM

Take a look on those pages in the docs

https://docs.flightsimulator.com/html/index.htm#t=Programming_Tools%2FSimConnect%2FStatus%2FStatus_Of_SimEvents.htm

https://docs.flightsimulator.com/html/index.htm#t=Programming_Tools%2FSimVars%2FLegacy_Event_IDs.htm

Also since you are looking into intercepting key events (i thought just characters). Take a look at this new API feature too (but in your case you shouldn't mask events)

https://devsupport.flightsimulator.com/questions/960/request-documentation-for-su4-ability-to-intercept.html

P.S.: I think SU5 will have an update to inputs.js which will allow a more event based approach instead of polling for it

0 ·

question