I’m just starting to create AAO profiles for my fav planes but is very cumbersome to get the full list of variables clicking on every switch and knob. Is there an easiest way to recover a list of all variables used in an aircraft? Maybe a tool in Dev Mode that I don’t know yet…
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That’s something I’ve wished for for a long time.
I wouldn’t even mind if hovering over a button or switch with an additional keystoke told me what the actual variable is. But it doesn’t.
As to a list of variables in each plane…good luck.
Some 3rd Party devs use custom variables for some controls, and give you a list in the manual. Some don’t.
There is a way using Dev Mode to find variables, but it’s cumbersome.
This video is by a SPAD user, but it’s not specific to SPAD.
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Right. We asked for more consistency when it comes to controls years ago. MSFS2024 got worse in this matter, though.
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And as far as variables go, it’s still sometimes a real chore to find the right one to bind to a control.
3rd Party devs complicate matters sometimes, by using variables that work in one plane, but not theirs. I understand why they do that, but it makes things difficult sometimes.
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If you have 2020 installed, and you have access to the plane in 2020, AND 2020 closes properly for you when you quit to desktop, you can try this method someone posted on the Just Flight forums. I can’t do it because the sim doesn’t close for me and I don’t care enough to try the solutions people have shared.
That looks helpful. I’m going to try it in FS2024, which is really all I care about anymore. 
2024 doesn’t use the same file, unfortunately, and I couldn’t find a 2024 version of it, but if you do I’d love to know where it is!
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You could try Better Bravo Lights on Flightsim. I use it to light up my Honeycomb hardware, but it also has an option called ‘Variable List’ that displays quite a few of them. I’m not sure how comprehensive it is, but I’ve used it a lot. HTH.
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It’s quite difficult to understand why small devs like Black Square list all variables in an appendix of a comprehensive 100+ pages PDF and big companies with big names don’t even have a manual for their planes.
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Some companies understand that many of the people that fly their planes in the sim do so with more than a mouse and an Xbox controller; some even use 3rd Party software to program their peripherals, and they want to make life easier for them.
Some do not.
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There you go, a pretty comprehensive list:
The full SDK is helpful, but we’re (I’m) looking for a list of variables for each particular aircraft.
An example is: ‘LIGHT POTENTIOMETER:index’
The VAR assigned to the panel light intensity knob on one plane might be ‘LIGHT POTENTIOMETER:10’ in one aircraft, and ‘LIGHT POTENTIOMETER:50’ in another.
I have to figure out which one using tools that can take a lot of time and effort.
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You’re right, it’s not ideal, but it was something for me, at least.
I appreciate it, and I’m sure others will as well.
The behavior debugger in dev tools would show all of the simvars and Lvars used but that would still take some effort to map them all out to the controls that use them.
They could also be extracted from the XML files but with the 2024 modular aircraft, these can be spread among several files plus they are often “compiled” in a way that makes them harder to understand. Some clever AI prompting could possibly yield a script that could walk the files and extract vars.
I’ve used the Behavior tool to parse specific VARS, as it will granularly display them when you hover over a control and press Alt+G. As you say, that process can be quite tedious.
I linked to a video explaining that process a few posts back.