Aircraft-specific control profiles

  • Mouse
  • Keyboard
  • TrackIR
  • Virpil VPC SharKa-50 Control Panel
  • Virpil VPC MongoosT-50CM3 Throttle
  • Virpil VPC ACE Collection Pedals
  • Virpil VPC MongoosT-50CM2 Base (VPC Flightstick Extension - 200mm & VPC Constellation ALPHA Prime [R])
  • Behringer X-Touch Mini

Mouse, Keyboard, TrackIR is handled by the Sim with one Global Profile.
Virpil stuff has 1 Global profile / device in the sim as well (Mainly camera control)

For every A/C I fly regularly I build a profile in Spad.Next. Currently I have something between 25 and 30 profiles.

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TCA Airbus Stick and Qudrant
Wireless mouse with 16 buttons
Loupdeck Live
Thrustmaster Rudder Pedals
Keyboard

I use SpadNeXt

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Thanks for the input.

Q for the SpadNext/Axis&O users who switch profiles externally.

What would be the advantage of having an in-sim device preset switcher vs Spad Next, if that already works for you? Are there some pros/cons to SpadNext vs in-sim? I don’t use it myself so don’t know enough about it, but I know it’s been around a long time and used heavily. Ditto for Axis and Oh’s.

Some basic devices like keyboard and mouse are not configurable in SPAD.

But the only reason not to let SPAD handle everything else (other than cost and the considerable investment in time it takes learning the software), the SIM does a better job with control curves than SPAD and has more options (eg reactivity). So although I may have a dedicated SPAD profile for each aircraft, I tend also to have a dedicated profile for the yoke and TQ. For some aircraft I even have a dedicated rudder pedal profile.

Also some events are not visible in SPAD (but this is a rarity and they tend to be things you can only control in the virtual cockpit and not through a control command)

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…And whatever SPAD is, it’s not available for Xbox users.

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For the PC guys already using SPAD.next (or any similar software) there would be nearly no benefit.
For the PC guys not using SPAD.next (or any similar software) there would be(maybe) the benefit to not learn a new software and save some bucks.
For the XBox guys, there would be a REALLY BIG benefit! Given the system is universal and not more complicated than oreding a pizza.

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Thanks for the insights.

That would be ideal, but unfortunately the process for getting approved for submitting to XBox let alone getting a product through the pipeline on a timely basis seems to have some big issues: Marketplace Situation .... from a Dev View

They say they’re looking into these issues, so I guess we’ll see in time.

Progress update: tl;dr looking good so far

Edit: WIP

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This. This. This!

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Here is my set up (to provide another user-case):

GA/Airliners

  • HC Alpha Yoke
  • HC Bravo TQ
  • Logitech flight pro pedals
  • Xbox controller (for camera work)
  • Keyboard
  • Mouse
  • vJoy virtual device

Helis and high performance aircraft

-Logitech X56 stick
-X56 HOTAS

  • Then all the other devices as with GA.

I have to physically switch the X56 devices for the Alpha and Bravo when flying helis

I use a whole bunch of other peripherals too but these are not read by MSFS as controllable devices (Logitech flight panels)

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My setup:

Yoke aircraft

CH Yoke
CH Pedals
Logitech Throttle Quadrants x2
FlightSimStuff TPM

Stick aircraft

CH Fighterstick Pro
CH Pro Throttle

Switches

Logitech Multi Panel
Logitech Switch Panel
Custom-made button box (own build) with dual-concentric rotary encoders and pushbuttons for GPS and NAV/COM radio operation.

I also integrate a Stream Deck for a few things
And always, always use TrackIR

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There’s some caveats to this that unfortunately can’t be easily worked around.

#1 Caveat The major one is the sim needs device detection stability for an enhancement such as auto control profile switching to work consistently and reliably.

What do I mean by that?

In order to save profiles on a per plane/per device/per preset basis you need to be able to map planes to devices to presets. The key here is the device ID. If that device ID is allocated by MSFS, and if it changes due to the user plugging/unplugging different devices and device ID’s get swapped, that basically means you need to manually remap all your presets, as you can’t effectively rely on the original device Id’s mapping back to what device they originally referred to.

This isn’t a problem for MSFS because it’s saving things on a device level, so really doesn’t care.
But if becomes an issue if things are saved lower down the stack at an aircraft level that needs to be mapped to device.

While it may be possible to write some code to check this, remap and resave, that’s also a performance killer to do every time on loading, and also quite complex and tricky to test/debug given the device configurations I’ve seen so far.

So for now, I’m going to keep it lean and mean, based on a simple static configuration of plugged in devices that can be relied upon to deliver consistant device ID mappings once they are saved.
If that device linup is changed, you may need to manually remap some of the plane/device/presets as a result.

That’s not an issue with a small plane collection, but I have seen users with 400+ aircraft, so it bears thinking about how you might want to manage your mapping strategy to cater for changed device situations. Along with that is possibly thinking about how you might be able to make your device connections static, or minimise deviceId assignment/swapping if devices are swapped by USB port ordering etc. Some testing may be needed on an individual basis to get more clarity on how your particular system maps devices to Id’s, and how that changes on swapping/adding new ones.

Still, I’d like to get a sense of how big an issue this might be, so I’d like to know:

How often do you plug/unplug devices, thereby changing the device lineup that MSFS sees in the Controls Options?

I had been wondering about how your app would handle this exact scenario.

Re physical changes. Not more than once a day with the control setup I described above. Physically remounting the Alpha for the X56 is a bit of work and not something I would do too often.

At the moment I do not have both sets of controls plugged in concurrently as I lackthe slots on my powered USB hub. I also worry about the extra power demand of the X56s and conflicts, although with automatic profile switching it would be easy to assign blank profiles to plugged-in devices that you do not want to use with with that given aircraft. The solution for me will be a bigger powered hub with more slots and an excellent power supply.

Other thing to note: SPAD has a nice feature which is that it detect and then (if you start SPAD in Admin) automatically manage the Windows power control for USB devices to take them out of the default low-power mode to prevent Windows putting devices to sleep after inactivity - ie your yoke when go back to manual control after a period in autopilot. The device may cause a CTD as it ‘wakes up’ after being sent to sleep by Windows. The SPAD feature prevents this (you can do it manually, but many a casual PC user may not know how to do this as it’s buried in device management). I should note though that CTDs are now much less common with device status changes after Asobo worked on this problem.

I’m guessing this is one of the reasons why it’s not implemented in the base sim, as it’s not an easy use case to reliably solve. But there are strategies that can be used to minimse disruption and manual reworking, which is the point of starting this conversation.

I think this is probably the simplest, easiest solution.

There’s a very wide range of device scenarios here, unfortunately, and making it flexible enough to cope with an infinitie array of dynamic switching scenarios is not really feasible atm.

The way I currently handle this is the same as if a preset has been renamed between sessions, as there is no way for Aircraft Manager to detect that except for on initial load. So if it detects a saved preset for a plane no longer exists (due to preset renaming or device change) the saved preset is deleted and that slot reverts to blank. It will also be configured to only handle up to 12 devices.

That said, I do have another approach to this I’ll test out to see how well that handles changed device configurations between sessions.

At the moment my solution to this is by default it’s blank, if you leave it blank nothing gets switched.
Only if you select one of the available profiles for a device will it get switched when you select a plane.
ie: the “Default” slots in the video are now blank. Also makes it easier to see which ones have been set.

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Day 1 customer here!

At this point, I’d settle for a drop down menu for each controller, to select the aircraft I’m about to load, instead of doing the left/right arrow dance.

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Pretty identical to what I’ve set up.
I don’t have the Xbox controller (sounds like a good idea!)
I have a TM16000 HOTAS.

Everything is connected to a USB3 powered hub, and I just power off the HOTAS when I’m flying GA in MSFS, and turn off the Alpha/Bravo when I’m flying fighters in MSFS and DCS.

I’m about to buy under-desk mounts for the Alpha/Bravo. It will be great to reclaim the desktop for my keyboad/mouse.

Given that the sim already has a profile manager that can save sets of profile settings, all that is missing is a way to assign a profile to a list of specific airrcraft. I’d not expect that to be so difficult.

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I have a desk with an undershelf that I’ve got the bravo and alpha on, which keeps the desktop free for the saitek panels and an 11" monitor is use for my PFD/MFD /. So still no space for the key board and mouse - the keyboard goes on a side shelf and the mouse is actually a trackball mounted to a kneeboard!

The Control Options screen doesn’t save sets of selected device profiles (afaik, unless I missed it). Each device just has a “Current selected preset”, that’s it. Each device also has a list of presets that have been added for that device, including any MSFS ones and the default profile, managed through the preset manager interface. The preset manager interface could use a rework too, you should be able to switch presets within it but you can’t.

You can hot unplug/replug devices, but the deviceId won’t be reassisgned unless you do a restart, so hot plugging isn’t recommended either. Sounds obvious, but someone is always going to do it and expect it to work!

I’d counter this by saying, if it was that simple it would have been done already.
Then there’s the dedicated resources needed to deal with the inevitiable issues.

Q: I haven’t actually checked, is this on the feedback snapshot list at all?

From my direct experience peeling back the layers to see the different ways it could be done it isn’t that simple once you dig into it. There’s lot of different use cases with devices and saving confgurations for recall/reset, not to mention it needs to be performant. Changng the active device in the control options is not instantaneous, there’s some work under the hood going on to do this that also needs to be factored in when you want to bank switch all (or even some) devices at once. Ditto for device presets, though less intensive.

Some people have upwards of 400+ aircraft as well, and there’s also a wide range of planes & potential preset configurations people may want - in addition to generic presets. Obviously you can’t cater to all them, it has to be a general solution, but it also has to be flexible - to a degree.

So, from my perspective, it’s a tricky little problem to solve for at least a good % of use cases.

I know most people don’t care about any of the above technical implementation issues, they just want to “make it so” & use it - which is fair enough - but the reality of implementing functionality is always more complex than it appears on the surface. That applies to MSFS across the board too.

all that is missing is a way to assign a profile to a list of specific airrcraft.

Sounds like an interesting approach though, an inversion of the aircraft first approach.

Could you elaborate a bit more on how you would see it working, from setting control profile setups to aircraft, then all the way through to hitting the fly button so an aircraft has all its selected presets activated? How do you see it working within the context of the current Aircraft Selection and Control options UI? What would it look like, and how would it flow in terms of user actions to get it done?
It might be worth exploring.

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