Ive been lurking around here for the about the past year while dabbling in X-plane 10 but this new Dash 8 has brought me back into FSX pretty hard. Congrats to Majestic on a very fine aircraft! 

 

While there is a ton to really enjoy, one thing I don't enjoy is having to manipulate a lot of the cockpit functions with the mouse when I have hardware that under normal circumstances would be able to be used; easing the workload of piloting under demanding workload conditions.

 

I understand that much of the code is ran outside of FSX but is there any plans to incorporate some enhanced hardware options?  Even my trusty GoFlight 166's are useless for Nav/Com functions, which is a first for any payware aircraft I've ever purchased.  I hope you'll give this some consideration to hardware support in future development?

 

Oh, and lastly having the payload editor (weight and balance) screen available as a pop up or drop down menu from within the sim would be nice too; a convenience more than anything so as not to have to come out of full screen mode to edit.

 

Respectfully,

Robert

Robert,

Hardware support is something that is on the drawing board, but at the moment has not been confirmed.  We'll be able to give a better update once the PRO/TRAINING Editions have been completed as there will have to be FSUIPC offsets, especially for the TRAINING Edition.

 

In understand the frustration in not being able to utilize hardware.  The only thing that we have implemented thus far is HDG/ALT SEL/CRS1&2 - which has been mapped to the FSX default AP functionality.  I have tested it thoroughly with my GoFlight MCP without any issue.

 

That's fair enough.  I'm willing to pay for the additional capabilities and hope you can get some into the pro edition because judging from the marketing I don't think I'd use most of the features in the training edition since I'm not a RW pilot.

 

I have been able to use my MCP as you describe, furthermore I have had partial luck "trapping" commands in FSUIPC.  Most of the soft key push buttons in the overhead and pedestal can be mousetrapped but they seem to only function one way. For example I can bring the APU online completely mouse free but I have to use the mouse to shut it down because the release function of those switches seem to use uses some other logic.  Perhaps some of the Lua experts that frequent AVSIM will be able to program and share some scripts?

 

At any rate I appreciate you giving this consideration and again cheers to a magnificent aircraft.

Thanks..