Display messages from WASM module

[MSFS 2020] Questions & Community Discussions WASM
1

Is it possible to display messages on-screen (similar to ATC call-outs) from a
stand-alone WASM module?

2

If you mean for debugging purposes, then any output to stdout or stderr shows
up in the “Console” window of the Dev Mode. Each individual write to stderr
shows up as one line (even if just a few characters not ended with a newline),
so make sure to do some own buffering if necessary and write out complete
lines that don’t need to end with a newline (but will show up as a separate
line anyway). As in:

      1.     // Output to std::cerr is unbuffered, and appears in the Console
  2.     // window each part on a separate line. Not ideal. So collect
  3.     // output to std::cerr into one string and write it in one go.
  4.  
  5.     std::stringstream output;
  6.     output << THISAIRCRAFT ": The call '" << call << "' failed at line " << lineNumber;
  7.     std::cerr << output.str() << std::flush;
3

No, I’m talking about on-screen, messages to the user.

4

The “legacy”
SIMCONNECT_TEXT
call will feed into the Notification system.

5

Thanks, I tried that, but no text was displayed. My call was: hr =
SimConnect_Text(g_hSimConnect, SIMCONNECT_TEXT_TYPE_PRINT_MAGENTA, 5,
EVENT_TEXT, strlen(msg), msg); Also, the documentation (I know it may be way
behind) says: The SimConnect_Text function is not currently available for
use.

6

That’s because the Simconnect_Text is tied to the flying Tips feature so, if
it’s disabled, you won’t see anything. This is something we asked a while ago
to be improved because: If Tips are disabled, there’s no way to send any
feedback to the user. The original call in FSX allowed to select a text color
and, most importantly, the message duration. Right now, the text always appear
as a Tip, with a fixed length of about 8 seconds, which means if something
sends many calls in a short while, it will take a while to clear all the
messages left in the queue. FSX could use scrolling text, MSFS can’t. And,
most importantly, the SIMCONNECT_TEXT_TYPE_MENU is not supported, which is
very limiting, considering it was very useful to do simple user interactions.

7

Thanks so much for all the info, much appreciated! I do hope this “feature”
improves in future.

8

PS: Is there any way to enable the flying tips box from a WASM module?