Yesterday, I noticed some people discussing GPS and Autopilot for this addon. I have a suggestion:
Release when ready, please. It spoils it when stuff comes out unfinished (half baked in some cases with other devs). You could do a prerelease WIP, but sometimes stuff stays in that state, and other issues become harder to fix once they’re out in the wild.
It would be nice if there was an independent tablet add-on that worked with any aircraft and independent of the electrical system. Is there such a thing? It would save aircraft devs a lot of work having to reimplement tablet functionality. I just use my actual iPad connected to the sim if I need it, but I know that’s not an option for some. LittleNavMap running on your phone or tablet and synced to the sim is another option for PC users.
It would also be realistic for a lot of restored warbirds - especially the strict period-accurate ones that nevertheless need to be flown in modern airspace.
I’m a fan of the arrangement in That’s All, Brother - Garmins behind a removable period autopilot panel - but there’s not enough cockpit real estate in a single-seater to manage that.
Hope someone picks up your suggestion.
The funny thing is, as I understand it Grumman got its start by making airplane floats, and expanded into airplanes from there…
Admittedly, if I were going to want a weird F4F variant, I’d probably want the F4F-7 over the F4F-3S, but I doubt I’ll ever have enough continuous stick time to exhaust the fuel on an F4F-4, much less the -7.
Wow, a F4F-7 variant is only 150 gallons shy of a DC-3s fuel capacity!
And completely lacking a toilet too…
Yeah floats then planes, then canoes as well which I guess are just floats with the top cut off when you get down to it.
The difficulty with an In Cockpit tablet, is that it has to be part of the Internal Model, so it is not possible to just ADD IT IN, without editing the Model.
There is actually a way to ADD Sub-Models to a Model, without editing the original model, but to do that, it requires the Developer to “set the Unique Id Bit” when they export the model, and most, if not all, do not do that.
If only Asobo / ms/ Carenado etc did this, it would open up some great options for 3PDs to enhance the existing planes.
Without that, the only way to add a Tablet to a plane without modifying the model, is to make it a menu Pull down Item – which for something like Modern Hand Held Garmin, in a war-bird, is not so bad, and could be considered to not be too “EMMERSION BREAKING”.
Pms50 has such a menu Pull down GPS, bundled with his GTN750, that potentially can work in any plane.
Maybe Got Friends will consider setting that Unique ID Bit when they export their models, so any 3PDs (or themselves) can use Sub-Models that can be interacted with.
Fixed that for you, lol. 
I nice suggestion but I think FI have got the right idea with making it a toggle switch for the gunsight.
That way the purests can just ignore it and those who want it (me) can have the standard GPS (or possibly GTN750) at an easily viewing position. Similar to the IRL spitfire video I shared.
Yeah this is another negative for me. I’ll be sure to review the manual before purchase if it’ll be available for download on your site.
Clearly the devs are working around limitations of the current multiplayer implementation so can’t be held at fault but these kind of creative workarounds cause me concern about possibly random bugs in the future.
The current control mapping setup in MSFS is abysmal but at least there are 3rd party addons now (Sonicviz, spad or AAO) to make this a bit easier to manage now.
I’m sure GotFriends will be very responsive to resolve if this does occur but the point/concern still stands.
As the old saying goes “just because you can do a thing, doesn’t mean you should do that thing”.
Predictability and reliability are very important to me.
Great Endorsement from TwoToneMurphy! 
was an awesome stream, he highlighted just about everything major, and then some!
Does it need to inject the geometry through the aircraft model? That would make it aircraft dependent again, rather than an indepdent add-on that works with any aircraft. Just spitballing here, but perhaps a third party tablet could inject its 3D assets in a similar fashion as third party traffic managers do or as some third party dynamic scenery does. Then the “scenery” or “traffic” tracks with the user aircraft using the usual interfaces.
If you’re talking about adding a 3D functional model INSIDE the cockpit, then it needs to be aircraft relative rather than world relative (as your examples are).
A more logical point to attach to, that is on most aircraft already, would be the Co-pilot position. So instead of co-pilot or dog or cat or whatever, you’d show this other thing with an offset to bring it into a better visible position. It still wouldn’t work for all aircraft and I doubt it can even be done, as if it was that easy I’m sure someone would have already done it!
Yeah, it would be a dirty hack for sure. I was just trying to think of ways to get around the aircraft specific limitations. Will world geometry not draw inside the cockpit? Like it’s automatically clipped or something? And I imagine translating the tablet in world coordinates to match the aircraft’s position might turn into a jittery nightmare of the tablet bouncing in and out of the plane, but if the position is updated per frame…
Far as I know nothing in the “world” can move dynamically at all. Anything like that which moves (animated) is either a simple loop animation with a fixed Co-ordinate start position (perhaps the most that could be done is some randomised Y rotation before it starts to play / when it spawns to give it some variation) or animation on a predefined spline/path (such as race cars going around a track).
Traffic is just creating a path using Co-ordinates so that is still bound to the world. It doesn’t know where you are.
What GF have done with bullets and bombs is more like it, but of course that’s built in to the model.
I really think there is no way currently with the SDK.
On the stress/crash discussion… I fully embrace wanting realism. However, turning off Asobo’s “Aircraft Stress” damage setting is not making things less realistic. Because in a real plane, cracking a canopy open won’t cause it to disintegrate in the air. Going a bit overspeed or pulling a G more than the rated performance isn’t necessarily going to kill you either. You might need a big inspection after you land, and you might even not fly that plane again, but the black screen you get in so many situations in the sim with the stress setting is highly unrealistic.
Until Asobo does a better implementation of this, “realism” fans can feel very secure that they’re being more realistic if they turn it off and avoid strongly overstressing the plane.
If I slam into the ground, I know I crashed whether or not Asobo decided to black out the screen for me. If anything, turning off crashes and relying on Got Friends’ F4F coding to reflect crash damage is more realistic, as it allows the “bent it but survived” scenario that the official modeling does not.
As for GPS, I think the add-on GTN 750/NXi method for navigation (or just using the built-in pop-up map) and having a basic autopilot for bathroom brakes is a perfectly good combo for a bird like this.
I am so very much looking forward to this plane! The preview videos have really whetted my appetite, but I’ve been wishing for an F4F Wildcat since I started flying in MSFS 2020.
Until this comes out in the Marketplace, I’ll have to content myself with flying Microsoft’s last F4F (that I have installed, anyway) from Combat Flight Simulator 2.
Really good for its time (circa 2002), but I’m ready for a new Wildcat.
No, its an additional sub-model or Model_Attachment, that attaches to a Unique Identify named node in the original model.
While it could be applicable to the f4f-4 - if its developers desire to go that way, – its really a different Topic, and maybe should not de-rail this SUPPORT thread.
If Sub-models & Model-Attachments interest you, I suggest you might like to read the following MSFS documentation.
https://docs.flightsimulator.com/html/Asset_Creation/3D_Models/Submodel_Merging.htm
https://docs.flightsimulator.com/html/Asset_Creation/3D_Models/Model_Attachments.htm
The only plane in MSFS that I am aware of, using this technique, is the WB-SIM C172 Enhancement mod, that is able to replace non working breakers in the Asobo C172SP encrypted internal model, with individual working animated breakers, (Without modifying the internal LOD 0 model , which cannot be done in any case, as it is encrypted !!)
