MSFS Pop Out Panel Manager (with Touch Panel Support) [v4.0.3]

RoastGnu -

I think another issue is going to be user’s with home cockpits like me and I know we all set them up differently and that could turn this into a nightmare trying to accommodate those setup (or at least it appears it would be difficult) or possibly we all pretty much use these three items and it makes it easier with a little manual intervention… IDK, I found flipping a few switches is worth it working 100% of the time. I’d be happy if that is all I have to do. lol

So here is what I found in my configuration below with the aircraft I have tested the most. Your program gets me 99.9% there and me flipping a few switches works for me.

So my battery switch is set for Set Battery 1 and the avionic switches are set for Avionics Master 1 on and off and Avionics Master 2 on and off

I tested the following aircraft - Caravan (stock), DA40NG (mod), Kodiak 100, SR22, Caranado C182, DA62 (mod), B58/G58, G36, C172 and Milviz Porter PC-6. At least these are the ones I fly the most so started here.

100% of the time as soon as the plane loaded if I switch my battery and Av1 and Av2 on then the panels popped out perfectly

The panel errors below without me injecting the switches -
The Caravan always said can’t pop out panel 1
The Sr22, Caranado 182, B58, G36 and C172 always said can’t pop out panel 2 - This is the issue you can’t reproduce yet I can 100% of the time

The DA40NG, Kodiak 100, DA62 worked perfect each time using or not using my switches in the mix

One thing I did notice, if the panels failed to pop, I can’t go to file / restart to close the 1 open panel and restart the program or just restart the program to then just pop the panels out again. I have to close the program and then re-open it. This would be nice to be able to do that, I believe you could in earlier version.

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OK. Are you talking about physical battery switch? Like a battery switch on Honeycomb alpha yoke?

Yes my Battery Sw is on the Alpha and the avionics are on the Bravo

Hi Azpilo61,

Now I see what is going on. For example, when the battery switch on the alpha yoke is in “off” state when flight starts, I’m guessing it constantly sends a signal to the game through SimConnect probably at milliseconds interval to set the in-game battery power simvar to “off”. This is so because the switch is probably keep the power switch in sync with the game. On the other hand, pop out manager starts the pop out process and sends a SimConnect “on” battery power signal to the game but it immediately gets overridden by Alpha yoke to “off”. With the MSFS G1000 bug I stated earlier, panel will fail to pop out if battery simvar is “off”. This also goes with the avionic switch.

Now if your Alpha switch is on either before flight starts or when the flight starts in cold and dark, the game PFD/MFD panel display is probably turn on by Alpha yoke and not POPM. Pop out manager then sends the “on” battery signal, but since Alpha yoke had already turned on the power, POPM signal goes through but it probably didn’t do anything or needed.

To confirm, since the last step of POPM auto pop out is to turn the panels off to get the plane back to cold and dark, did panels get shut down when Alpha yoke power and avionics switch is still on? My guess is the panels are still on after cold and dark pop out process.

Unless Asobo fixes this critical bug, software and hardware will fight each other and POPM will always get overridden by hardware.

Btw, I’m doing a line by line MSFS code comparison (code that I can see) of G1000 PFD/MFD vs all other panels. I’m looking for a line of game code that tells MSFS to activate the Right-Alt left click pop out option. To see the issue, start a Kodiak flight in cold and dark, you cannot manually pop out PFD or MFD, but the altimeter backup to the left of PFD, you can pop out in cold and dark. So this bug is not aircraft specific but only occur in PFD/MFD code in the game.

The panels stay powered up until I turn off my switches and then they go dark. You are correct, as soon as I see the screen change to load the AC I’m already flipping the switches on and no matter what POPM thinks that power is there and it just continues on as you noted.

I’ll have to go try that on the Kodiak very interesting

Interesting, I can’t pop out the backup PFD for anything. Even if powered on it won’t pop out. lol

Switching things on manually from the virtual cockpit will always work but that defeats the object of the automated process. The Bravo’s switch handling deficiencies can’t be resolved with this app for the reasons stated above. However the Caravan mod not working correctly is not the Bravo issue but rather I suspect because it’s not using default simvars. I’ll dig out what it’s using tomorrow so we can be sure.

I installed a second gpu, wasn’t there a way of avoiding the fps drops this way? I’m still getting the massive fps drop on DX11

Understand completely, what would really fix the issue is if those panels on cold and dark could be popped out. Then none of this other extra stuff would be needed. XP has really spoiled me with this scenario.

Interesting that 3 AC work fine with just power or whatever and the other’s show some degree of 1 panel or the other panel not popping out. I’ve also noticed that not all planes follow the same rules with commands either, fighting with one that the avionics work if I manually use the switches on the panel, but assigned to the Bravo don’t work, yet all my other AC work fine. This frustrates me the most with this sim running into things like this.

This is actually in the WT G1000NXi and not an MSFS thing. It wasn’t always like this. You used to be able to pop out windows with power off even with the G1000NXi mod.

The update where they added the boot screens to the G1000 is where this feature broke. I’ve asked about this a few times on the WT Discord. When I first reported it after release, Matt said he’d look into it. I’ve asked a couple of times since and never got a reply.

Several folks in this thread talked about what you have setup and it didn’t seem to make a difference with FPS loss once the panels were popped out. Some said they have nothing plugged into the GPU but have a monitor in the mainboard and seems stable. IDK, I’d rather see MS fix the issue than blow it off as an enhancement.

That 2nd GPU to avoid frame loss was always a red herring IMHO. The ONLY way it helps if you have 1 popout screen per external monitor and Alt+Enter to fullscreen the popout. It then causes minimal frame loss. And that’s not a feasible way for most of us to use them.

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Here is result for investigation regarding G1000 power on required to pop out panel bug, where this bug is also stopping azpilot61 from using Honeycomb alpha and bravo correctly in conjunction with auto pop out panel.

After spending few hours of trial and error yesterday night, I’ve identified (and able to fix) the bug that G1000 panels cannot be popped out unless power switch is on for PFD and avionics switch is on for MFD. This fix has been tested on SU10 beta which has WorkingTitle G1000 NXi integrated. It also works if you install WT G1000NXi v0.14 in content manager.

Here is a video for popping G1000 panels out in cold and dark without power on and you can also see how switches work in operating the panels:

In current game without fix, using Cessna 172 as example with 2 avionics switches:

  • Power switch turns on PFD
  • Avionics 1 switch turns on MFD
  • Can only pop out panels if both of the above switches are on

I think this is not quite right since one type of switch turns on one screen and another type of switch turns on the other screen.

With code fix (tested on C172, Kodiak, and 208 Grand Caravan):

  • Power switch on turns on aircraft power but does not turn on either PFD or MFD if aircraft is equipped with two avionics switches. Otherwise, power switch will turn on one of the screen depending on aircraft.
  • Avionics 1 switch turns on PFD
  • Avionics 2 switch turns on MFD
  • Above switches do not have to be on to pop out panels (Which totally solved azpilot61’s Honeycomb bravo issue)

Now, the above switch operations make more sense!

The root cause of the bug, I’m guess here, where PFD instrumentation template is being used, is returning to game engine with template ID “AS1000_PFD”. WorkingTitle could named the template anything they wanted but they’ve named it as default “AS1000_PFD”. And I bet within the game engine, something is hardcoded that does not allow panel to pop out if it matches this particular template name. My fix is simple, I changed the reported template name to “WTG1000_PFD” or anything else will probably work too and viola, problem solved. MFD just inherits this bug and unable to pop out also but nothing has to be changed for it once PFD is fixed.

*** This fix may only work with SU10 latest beta since I’m not able to test it on SU9 ***
To fix this issue, you just need to override the code in couple of files for WT g1000Nxi by installing the below package in community folder. The fix folder has to start with “zzz-” since it has to be loaded after the default WT G1000. To download, just go to my github repo latest v3.4.1 release section and download and install “G1000_cold_and_dark_power_fix.zip” into your community folder. With this fix for auto pop out, you no longer need to check the checkbox to turn on power. There could be side effects with this fix but with my short testing so far, I’m not encountering any yet.

Please let me know if it works or not. If you’re SU9 users using WT G1000Nxi, please go ahead and try this fix too and let me know if it works for you too.

Stanley

Wow this is awesome, I’ll test it out when I get home tonight and let you know how it goes.

RoastGnu

I’ve tried a few planes (Kodiak, DA40NG, DA62, C172) and the panels pop out perfectly each time, however they all experienced the following problem.

All but the C172
When I turn on the Battery 1 on the alpha yoke, the MFD comes on. When I turn on the Avionics 1 the PFD comes on. Should work the same as the C172 does below

In the C172 its interesting.
The Batt 1 turns on some lights on the bravo
Avionics 1 turns on the PFD and Avionics 2 turns on the MFD

Stby Batt (which is Batt 2) and Batt 1 should both be able to turn on the PFD with Av1 and Av2 for the MFD and standby radios etc.

Azpilot61,

What you experienced is the same as what I’ve experienced. I did some testing using in game cockpit switches and this only tells us one thing. The coding behind G1000 system is probably a mess or very complicated. At the same time, I believe Working Title team is doing the best that they can. Each aircraft behaves however it wants and there is no standard each aircraft follows when a switch is turned on and off. As a programmer, I can go in an fix all these aircraft but keeping them updates will be impossible. *See the bottom of this post for snippet of comment that Working Title team put into G1000 code, it’s pretty telling. And in one of the file I was investigating and debugging yesterday, there are like 30,000 lines of code.

As for Honeycomb alpha and bravo, they added an extra layer of complexity. The SimConnect commands they send to turn on and off switches or responds to signals, there are a few in SimConnect SDK to pick from, some works, some don’t, and may not align correctly with each aircraft. The only sure fire way to get everything working as expected is to understanding how each aircraft behaves against SimVar variables and set Honeycomb accordingly using FSUIPC or Spad.next, etc.

So, it’s a tradeoff for expectation we want to get the simulation to behave and what we can tolerate. It won’t be perfect until G1000 is fixed or become more stable and lock down in future lets say in SU22, hahaha!

Below is my tests for each plane’s electrical system using my G1000 fix and without. And as you can see, there is no standard in how these planes behave.

208 Grand Caravan (prefer my fix)
Without my fix:

  • Master Battery - does nothing
  • AV 1 - turns on MFD
  • AV 2 - turns on PFD, co-pilot PFD and ADF radio

With fix:

  • Master Battery - does nothing
  • AV 1 - turns on PFD, MFD, and ADF radio
  • AV 2 - turns on co-pilot PFD

Kodiak (prefer without fix)
Without my fix:

  • Master Battery - turns on both PFD and MFD
  • AV 1 - turns on the co-pilot PFD and the small backup altimeter

With fix:

  • Master Battery - turns on MFD
  • AV 1 - turns on PFD, co-pilot PFD, and small backup altimeter

Cessna 172 (prefer my fix)
Without my fix:

  • Master Battery - turns on PFD
  • AV 1 - does nothing
  • AV 2 - turns on MFD
  • Standby battery - turns on PFD, cannot turn on MFD even with both AV 1 and AV 2 on

With fix:

  • Master Battery - does nothing but required for AV switches
  • AV 1 - turns on PFD
  • AV 2 - turns on MFD
  • Standby battery - cannot turn on either PFD or MFD

DA62 (Wow! the only aircraft that works the same, LOL)
With and without my fix:

  • Master Battery - turns on backup instruments in the middle (heading and altimeter)
  • AV 1 - turns on both PFD and MFD

Here is some telling comment in g1000 code file proving WT team needs to resort to hacking because of MSFS limitation. These are just 2 lines of code that relates to turn on and off panels. LOL!!!

this.updateFromPowered(this.instrument.isStarted); // Big hack here since there is no other way to get the isStarted state from BaseInstrument

this.updateFromScreenState(this.instrument.screenState); // Another big hack

Stanley

RoastGnu,

Wouldn’t surprise me about the code and hacking. There are many switches and stuff I’ve found with different AC that you would think would work with the commands available but they don’t which makes it harder for those of us with home built cockpits to assign those.

The good thing is the panels pop out 100% now with the little fix you have.

David

So I’ve played most of the weekend with this, working great but now its a trade off between battery, AV1 and AV2 switches that don’t work realistically or using those as they are realistically setup and flipping the power switches on for the pop outs.

For now I’ve opted for turning on power for the pop outs and using the electrics as they should in the airplane. The fact the pop outs work without me having to do that part is a win!

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I’m having a weird situation with POPM + RSG GTN750 + PMS50 750 + PMDG DC-6 + JayD’s 750 replacement mod. (Lol is that enough variables?) :slight_smile:

PMS 750 working, but was super “squished” because it was fitting in the GNS530 housing. Was able to get into the config files and specify the 600x800 resolution that the RSG hardware uses.

POPM works, but only some of the time. I’m hoping to do some testing after work today to figure out if I can replicate it. When it works, it works great!

Just wondering if there’s a way either to have the popouts saved to a certain position/offset on a set monitor, or whether anyone knows how to specify the exact pixel location of a monitor within windows settings?

Basically, things have been working absolutely fine, everything perfect… but then somehow my monitors got “moved” slightly within windows settings I’ve tried moving them back, but getting things to line up perfectly again is difficult without having to manually adjust for every aircraft again within the popout manager.

If i could keep the monitors set to a pre defined pixel position within windows, it would never have an issue… or if the popout manager would use a position within a certain monitor, rather than a position within the overall multi monitor space, again, the issue would be solved.

Any other ideas? Not a huge issue, as i said, i can just manually adjust them again if needs be, but wondering if there’s a better solution?