Aircraft Manager Pro + Location Manager Pro now available

@Sonicviz Is the Locmanager meant to operate without the toolbar installed? When I remove the toolbar I am unable to save new locations.

Keeping fingers crossed that the auto-profile work is successful. I have Logitech Yoke/Rudders and Thrustmaster Hotas to test with.

Works for me without the toolbar plugin part, in the main world map. Maybe you ran out of free slots (10)?

l have the pro version with 3 used of 200 available.

It should, though it is meant to be a companion app and used alongside it. There are some differences between the free and pro versions under the hood as well.

Why did you remove it, out of interest? Fyi if you donā€™t want to see a toolbar widget then you can turn it off via the toolbar settings control on the far right.

In the meantime, if it works fine toolbar companion installed, please keep that installed.

I hate to be a pain, but as per Microsoft tos these forums are for general discussion, not product support.
Can you please scroll to the support form at the bottom of Location Manager for MSFS - Sonicviz and submit it with the requested details, and Iā€™ll look into it. Thanks!

I removed it because I already have the Flow Pro mod and use itā€™s Portal feature with the default toolbar hidden. I have reinstalled your toolbar feature and everything works as I would expect now. It seemed odd that the main app wouldnt work without it but didnt want to make any assumptions about its functionality.

I didnt want to make an unnecessary ticket without confirming first and also to have this noted in this forum for others to come across. Iā€™ll put in a ticket for ya at your site. Thanks! :slightly_smiling_face:

You can use Location Manager toolbar widget with Flow. Add it to a Flow slot by dragging it from the search area in edit mode (or not!). I think itā€™s under community/control but you can just search for location (manager) to pull it up. Even if you use Flow Portal as your main location goto in fly mode (I use it for some things too, as well as FStarter), itā€™s nice to have the option to access LM as well, rather than not at all.

There are some nice new enhancements to Location Manager Pro in the works too, but Iā€™ll reveal them as they get closer to public test status.

Question to anybody reading and interested in Auto Control Profile Switching.
Iā€™ll be doing a more formal data survey collection on this soon, but as a quick straw poll here Iā€™d really love to know:

  • How many control input devices you currently have connected, and their names (including basic ones like keyboard, mouse etc).

  • Which ones you create different aircraft profiles for, or would like to.

Just trying to get a sense of the outer limits. Thanks!

Iā€™ve got:

  • Wireless mouse
  • Wired KB
  • 1 Wired Xbox 360 controller (only used for drone camera)
  • Honeycomb Alpha XPC (for yoke planes)
  • Logitech Throttle Quadrant (for smaller prop planes mainly)
  • Saitek Throttle (for jets and some bush planes that have that kind of lever throttle)
  • Microsoft Sidewinder FFB2 (for stick planes)
  • Logitech Rudder Pedals
  • Logitech Autopilot/Multiswitch (using standard driver, so unconfigurable)
  • Logitech Switch Panel (also unconfigurable)
  • Track IR 5 - shows up in the controls but canā€™t do anything with it
  • StreamDeck - not seen by MSFS

I keep things simple and have a lot of double binds so I donā€™t need to keep changing profiles. I do have a helicopters profile, but discovered recently that I can double bind the cyclic and rotor trims to my main stick profile and it works for planes and helis so I donā€™t need to swap that one now.

I have a specific profile for Wilga on the Alpha, as it uses different fuel selector tanks config and as I have the Logitech switch for the magnetos, I use the magneto switch of the Alpha to select fuel tanks instead. This often needs to be different per plane depending how their tanks are set up.

Generally now the only other thing I need to do is when flying a yoke plane, I choose a DISABLED (blank) Sidewinder profile so that doesnā€™t fight the yoke (as it has no self-centering so keeps taking focus if you donā€™t). And if I am flying a prop that isnā€™t the Wilga, I select my Main Alpha profile which has the tanks set up how most planes have them (with a lot of exceptions!).

I would like to go deeper and have specific setting for different planes but I am too lazy so found the best common denominator that works for everything which is what I have now. With a tool like this though, I would take the time to set up more detailed binds.

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This is my equipment:

  • PC
  • Keyboard
  • Mouse
  • Xbox Controller
  • Logitech Yoke
  • Logitech Throttle
  • Logitech Rudders
  • Thrustmaster T.Flight Hotas One

I have been using a USB hub with on/off buttons to enable/disable the components Iā€™m not using at the moment but will create empty profiles to auto assign. I can test using the USB hub to see what the app does when equipment is unavailable as well test test just switching profiles with everything enabled.

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Thanks for the input.

Update on auto control profile switching:

I squeezes fingers came this close to being slam dunked by a showstopper issue out of left field, but I managed to wrestle it into submission with some code that makes even my eyes pop.

Upshot:
Auto control profile switching per aircraft appears to work, at least with my small test set of 5 control devices. Iā€™m not sure if it will be as consistent out in the wild with the crazy device setups that people have, as it is quite tricky under the hood when switching a bank of device presets on the fly.

Anyway, weā€™ll see. Onwards, upwards, and sideways.
Will drop a short video soon demonstrating current auto control profile switching functionality.

Edit:

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looks great, I like what you doing

Edit: Iā€™ve put a hold on the aircraft control preset release for now, pending investigation into an initialisation conflict.

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Nice one! Looks good :wink:

Some questions: when you say that it assigns IDā€™s to the controllers in your columns, how does it handle the assigned profiles of Windows sees a device in a different order/slot (after plugging into a different USB socket perhaps?) or is it linked in a way that wouldnā€™t matter?

I assume as you say things are synched, once you set up the profile assignments, then just using the main aircraft list OR the MSFS grid view, will also do the switching?

Side question: are you still going to try and fix that weird sorting / page position bug on the free version? I know youā€™ve been busy on this. :wink:

Small bug: you know we talked before about one of my planes losing its Tag? It happened again and it canā€™t be anything to do with having loaded the sim without the last used / default set livery with that plane being the last selected one before closing the som the loading without it (as we suspected at the time). So Iā€™m not sure why but it happened to the same plane again so seems to be something about that plane. Next day, it remembered the tag so there is some situation (that I have not found yet) that seems to wipe it.

Anyway Iā€™m gonna share your post on my thread and you should t try and find ANY thread talking about the subject of auto control selection and share this news man!! :wink:

Unique profiling

ID is only temporary and can change as devices are changed.
Unfortunately the unique Guidā€™s are not passed through, so there are some issues with duplicate devices atm.

re: devices see known issues @ Aircraft Manager for MSFS - Sonicviz
Thereā€™s an MSFS bug with multiple devices, people who have multiple devices need to zendesk it if they want it fixed.

Itā€™s complex. Timing is tricky as well, updating a bank of presets.

Side question: are you still going to try and fix that weird sorting / page position bug on the free version? I know youā€™ve been busy on this. :wink:

Fixed and updated a week ago :wink:
See changelog @ Free Favorite Aircraft and Location Manager for MSFS for Microsoft Flight Simulator | MSFS

Tag

What plane is it? Is it free or payware?

Gotta go, dinner time! l8rs

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Ah I missed that - Iā€™m gonna Go Pro now anyway, but good for other users :wink:

Itā€™s payware - the WB Sim Cessna 172 which creates a separate plane. I have never removed it from Community BUT I did rename one of the downloaded liveries in SimObjects so that it makes it the first alphabetically (therefore it becomes the default, as I only fly that plane with that skin saves me a few clicks when I want to use it haha). Also never removed that from Community (using Addons Linker but that livery is set to all profiles).

So what happens to all your selections if the ID changes? It loses those connections?

Sorry, donā€™t have it. Iā€™ve got no other reports of it happening.

Can you duplicate the issue with other planes?
Have you tried reverting it back to its stock config without your hack, run it, and see how it behaves over time? If itā€™s ok, itā€™s likely an issue with what you did, but as I said before Iā€™m not catering for custom mods to mods. Thatā€™s a rabbit hole time sink. Sorry!

So what happens to all your selections if the ID changes? It loses those connections?

Presets are saved with unique keys including plane name + controller name. If the ID changes via a cold swap my testing shows it will pick it up. Proviso is as noted previously the use case of multiple duplicate devices I currently canā€™t cater for due to an MSFS bug assigning the same controller name.

The deviceID is only used on a session basis to keep devices and preset selections in synch.

Ah I missed that - Iā€™m gonna Go Pro now anyway, but good for other users :wink:

Great, but please donā€™t go crazy with the setup changes out the gate. Iā€™ve allowed for 12 devices but the switch timing is tricky stuff and there may be some lurking issues still with the wildy different PC performance setups people have. I would start with the core config and just change 1 or 2 at a time to confirm things are working. Thereā€™s a delete data button to help testing. It should work, but software being softwareā€¦let me know of any issues via the website contact (not here, forums are for general discussion not product support). thanks!

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Thanks. I primarily engaged on Aircraft-specific control profiles - #248 by Sonicviz as that seemed the most active. But, as some of the users there say, itā€™s not that big a pain point to switch manually so I think itā€™s a good fit to roll it into AM Pro.

For me it wasnā€™t either until the choppers as I just used a couple of presets, but now I keep forgetting to switch and it was a pita, which is why I kept poking at it till I had a lightbulb moment.

Iā€™ve run into an issue with the latest version of AM Pro: there are no options on the World Map other than ā€œGo Backā€ and ā€œFlyā€. You can still pick the aircraft, livery, etc, but none of the options at the bottom of the screen other than ā€œGo Backā€ appear. At first I thought it might be another conflict with Wingmanā€™s Modern UI mod, but it occurs with nothing in Community except AM Pro, so itā€™s not that.

Can you please send details via the website form and Iā€™ll look into it more.
The forums here are not for product support.

Please give as much detail as you can according to the guide points on the website (scroll to bottom of page). Most especially is details of the steps you took to trigger the issue so I can (hopefully) replicate it. If I canā€™t replicate it, itā€™s very difficult to fix. Thanks.