Hi folks,

I want to control my GSX Lvl2 via Streamdeck. Is there anywhere outside a lua script or similar to bring the GSX functionality with FSUIPC to the Streamdeck Buttons?

Edited February 28, 20215 yr by airlinetycoon

Yes and no. But not really. As far as I know GSX is only controlled via the SimConnect menu. So there may be an option around creating a Lua script that would generate the right keypresses to activate the menu/s and choose an option. I imagine it would be a bit brittle though. Then, in terms of getting StreamDeck to kick these off for you - short of writing a plugin for it yourself, the simplest option is probably to have it generate keypresses also, but that functionality in my experience is quite limited and only works well with single keypresses (ie without modifier keys). So you'd have one key trigger a script that would then press other keys to make GSX do things.

SPAD.neXt now has the ability to use StreamDeck as a button source like any other, so you could wire it up that way (I think this support is still in Beta so you'd have to get on the Beta channel). But it would still ultimately still be a case of generating the right keypresses for GSX to pick up on, and you'd still see the GSX menu (though you could move it somewhere off the screen, I suppose).

If there's a way to trigger GSX actions without keypresses, then it might be simpler / easier, but I imagine that's the sort of thing only Umberto could answer, unless someone else has done it?

For myself, I do something very slightly similar, by coordinating multiple copies of GSX across a network; to do this, I echo the keypresses from one machine to the others via a utility called Key2LAN,  so I'm still interacting with the SimConnect menu directly.

Actually, you can do it directly with the Multi-Action script in the StreamDeck app.

Drag the Multi Action event to a blank key, then drag the Hotkey event to the muti-action window, configure it to enter the GSX key (e.g. CTRL-F12), then drag a delay event below that set to a small delay of say 75ms or more, then drag another hotkey event and set that to the number key corresponding to the menu item number that appears in the GSX SImconnect window.

Essentially, you're programming a keyboard macro and assigning it to the StreamDeck button.

Will try. Thx.

It seems you are mixing up two very different issues:

- the ability to control GSX with the Streamdeck, or any other method that will create keyboard macros, which of course is surely possible

- the ability to HIDE the Simconnect menu. This is not possible and, in fact, the very existance of the Simconnect menu on screen is precisely what allows to control GSX with keys in the first place,

GSX doesn't do any keyboard handling on itself, it only registers its own main hotkey, which calls the menu but, once inside the menu, it relies on the simulator own handling of keyboard/mouse to select a choice.

This is how every application with a Simconnect menu works so, if there's no menu shown, the keyboard wouldn't be read ( because it's not read by GSX, it's read by the simulator own Simconnect menu code ), so you wouldn't have any way to control it.

Having GSX working without a menu is possible but, as usual, nothing is as simple as it seems: some procedures are interactive and some menus DEPENDS on other conditions so, while it seems like a good idea to operate GSX without seeing the menu, it wouldn't work.

Take the Pushback procedure, for example. If icing conditions are detected, there will be an extra intermediate step asking if you want deicing, how you could possibly know, from a keyboard macro software like the Streamdeck ( I own a Streamdeck, so I know how it works ), that an extra menu, that has been made invisible, is there or not, without getting some kind of TWO WAY communication with GSX ? The jetway menu works different depending if the gate has SODE jetways or not, and the number of entries *changes* dynamically *while* you are selecting jetways, depending on their number and the order you assign them to the doors that are actually solvable with the current airplane in its current position.

That's why it's not really possible to use GSX without seeing the menu, unless you were prepared to write a fairly complex program that basically replicates lots of the already existing logic ( which would have to be updated, should GSX logic change ), so it's really out of scope of what a simple keyboard macro could do.

Instead, by SEEING the menu, you can do it in the simplest way: just assign a button for the main GSX key, and keys from 0 to 9, and that's it, you keep using it as it's supposed to be, you won't have to worry about the order and/or number of menus in GSX ever changes, you simply use a different input method that might be more comfortable to use.

On 3/1/2021 at 10:08 AM, virtuali said:

It seems you are mixing up two very different issues:

- the ability to control GSX with the Streamdeck, or any other method that will create keyboard macros, which of course is surely possible

- the ability to HIDE the Simconnect menu. This is not possible and, in fact, the very existance of the Simconnect menu on screen is precisely what allows to control GSX with keys in the first place,

GSX doesn't do any keyboard handling on itself, it only registers its own main hotkey, which calls the menu but, once inside the menu, it relies on the simulator own handling of keyboard/mouse to select a choice.

This is how every application with a Simconnect menu works so, if there's no menu shown, the keyboard wouldn't be read ( because it's not read by GSX, it's read by the simulator own Simconnect menu code ), so you wouldn't have any way to control it.

Having GSX working without a menu is possible but, as usual, nothing is as simple as it seems: some procedures are interactive and some menus DEPENDS on other conditions so, while it seems like a good idea to operate GSX without seeing the menu, it wouldn't work.

Take the Pushback procedure, for example. If icing conditions are detected, there will be an extra intermediate step asking if you want deicing, how you could possibly know, from a keyboard macro software like the Streamdeck ( I own a Streamdeck, so I know how it works ), that an extra menu, that has been made invisible, is there or not, without getting some kind of TWO WAY communication with GSX ? The jetway menu works different depending if the gate has SODE jetways or not, and the number of entries *changes* dynamically *while* you are selecting jetways, depending on their number and the order you assign them to the doors that are actually solvable with the current airplane in its current position.

That's why it's not really possible to use GSX without seeing the menu, unless you were prepared to write a fairly complex program that basically replicates lots of the already existing logic ( which would have to be updated, should GSX logic change ), so it's really out of scope of what a simple keyboard macro could do.

Instead, by SEEING the menu, you can do it in the simplest way: just assign a button for the main GSX key, and keys from 0 to 9, and that's it, you keep using it as it's supposed to be, you won't have to worry about the order and/or number of menus in GSX ever changes, you simply use a different input method that might be more comfortable to use.

Thanks Umberto,

I understood. For the jetways and deicing it’s the only way to select all nessecary options. I think a good idea will be to give the opportunity to disable the choice of the ground-operators, especially with no liveries. A random choice would be a good option.

I am using StreamDeck with GSX Lvl2 in P3D V5.4.

I have a GSX button (which opens the menu on a small screen to the left of my main P3D screen).

I also have buttons which simply provide numbers 0-9 and I have also configured door opening buttons.

This way I can bring up the menu, select the options I want and confirm it and if asked can open/close main, pax and cargo doors.

I have multiple pages which give me access to camera selections so my scenery is controlled from my StreamDeck, I have a hardware/software 747 cockpit being built in stages. So the Streamdeck makes integration a lot easier.

 

Cheers,

AlexB