Greetings!
I have wanted to map a joystick button to “take a screen-shot” as I can do in X-Plane, however there is no command “take a screen-shot” that I can map to within MSFS - and that has been a pet peeve of mine for a while.
I have just discovered a solution:
Prerequisites:
- Download AntiMicroX to allow you to bind a joystick/controller button to a keyboard key.
- Download Windows Power Toys to allow you to re-map a key to something else.
Steps:
- Install AntiMicro and Power Toys.
- Launch Power Toys as administrator.
- Select Key Mapping.
- Map F13 from the drop-down list to Win- PrintScr. (If you click on the “type” button on the right hand side, you can then press Win-PrtScr to record that button press.
- Save and close Power Toys.
Next:
- Install Anti-Micro and configure the file/shortcut to “launch as administrator”
- Start Anti-Micro
- Select the tab corresponding to the controller you want to map.
- Press the button on the controller that corresponds to the button you want to map to PrtScr.
- Click on the button to bring you to the keyboard assignment screen.
- In the upper right, select “Other” for a list of “other” keys.
- Scroll down to find the F-13 key and select it.
- Press close. You should now see the button mapped to 0x7C, which is F-13.
- Go back to #4 for any other controllers you want to assign a key for.
- I assigned button 7 on my Saitek X52 and the “A” key on my gamepad to F-13 so that either one will take a screen-shot, depending on which one I am using.
- Save the profile. (I don’t know if this is required, but it’s a good idea anyway.
- Go to “App” in the upper left hand corner and select “Hide”
Now, press the selected button on your controller and it should take a screen-shot.
Notes:
- This may only work on a PC as I do not know if the requisite programs are available from the Microsoft Store for Xbox.
- Since this is a Windows global system function, that will work no matter what you’re doing and is not confined to just MSFS.
- Anti-Micro MUST BE RUNNING, (but can be minimized/hidden), for this to work.
- Because of the way this works, this can be used to map any key function to any other key and any joystick/controller button to anything else.
- Power Toys can be used to map keys to other key combinations, especially a single key to a multiple-key combination. This is necessary because certain tools, (like Anti-Micro), can only map to a single key.
- Anti-Micro can be used to map any controller button to anything else than can be expressed as a single key action. For example, you bind F-13, (a single key) to Win-PrtScr using Power Toys, and then bind a controller button using Anti-Micro to that single key.
- It can also be used to map special keys and key combinations in other programs to unused keys or mouse buttons, etc.
- It is also important to note that there is an “extra” row of function keys, (F-13 to F-24), that don’t exist on most keyboards and are usually not bound to anything. These are great keys to bind functionality to, and then use something to send that keystroke. This gives you a bunch of alternate and unused keys to use.
With this done, you can just thumb-over to your selected button and take a screen-shot while flying without taking your hands off the controls.
