Can someone here please tell me what the best way I can bind certain functions of the plane to keyboard shortcuts, specifically in planes such as the Fenix A320 and PMDG 737. The less I have to pan around and select these buttons/knobs/dials/switches with my mouse, the better and more immersive I find the experience. The functions I am interested in binding to keys are:

1. Runway Turnoff Lights
2. Taxi/TO Lights
3. Beacon Lights
4. Wing Lights
5. Logo Lights
6. Landing Lights
7. Strobe Lights
8. Nav Lights
9. Engine knob selector
10. Fuel Tanks
11. Eng 1/2 ign fuel cutoff switches
12. APU bleed
13. APU master
14. APU start
15. Seatbelt
16. Emergency ARM switch
17. Cabin Call button
18. and more

 

1 minute ago, captain420 said:

Can someone here please tell me what the best way I can bind certain functions of the plane to keyboard shortcuts, specifically in planes such as the Fenix A320 and PMDG 737. The less I have to pan around and select these buttons/knobs/dials/switches with my mouse, the better and more immersive I find the experience. The functions I am interested in binding to keys are:

1. Runway Turnoff Lights
2. Taxi/TO Lights
3. Beacon Lights
4. Wing Lights
5. Logo Lights
6. Landing Lights
7. Strobe Lights
8. Nav Lights
9. Engine knob selector
10. Fuel Tanks
11. Eng 1/2 ign fuel cutoff switches
12. APU bleed
13. APU master
14. APU start
15. Seatbelt
16. Emergency ARM switch
17. Cabin Call button
18. and more

 

I'm old school. I bind very few things/ I usually just look around with my Track IR and toggle whatever function I want with the mouse. Makes it feel like flying a real aircraft to me. 

Well another reason I'd like to bind functions to keys is when I'm in the exterior or drone (showcase) view and can toggle on lights and stuff without being in the cockpit view. Since I am interested in making some realistic flight videos in the not too distant future, I would love to be able to bind these functions to my keyboard.

Have you considered a button box?

https://kb.fenixsim.com/useful-default-keybinds

 

No, would rather not have to buy any additional hardware.

I still use FSUIPC for this. I've been using it for a long time now. The developers are great and go the extra mile to help and support their customers. Son took over from father - how cool is that?

I have all functions I need mapped to my keyboard (for the Fenix). It's also invaluable, that FSUIPC automatically loads the correct profile, unlike MSFS.

There are alternatives I never tried (because FSUIPC offers all I needed). Axes and Os / Spad. 

Agree with above and heartily endorse FSUIPC for its profiles, including keyboard and.device button function bindings. 

Alternately, you could use SPAD.next or Axis and Ohs (both of which do much more than key binding).

I wrote a LUA for controlling the Fenix lights with my THQ buttons. It used to work beautifully, but, since the update, I can't make them work at all. I'll check later with them if the LVARs changed. The other assignments I did for the FSUIPC profile work without issues.

If I get the 737, I hope they keep the same LVARs they used for the NGXu, so that I can just reuse the LUA I already have.

Edited June 14, 20223 yr by Luis Hernandez

@Luis Hernandez how difficult would it to be to bind these functions to keyboard? Could you give me a brief example of how I would bind the landing lights in either the Fenix A320 or PMDG 737 to the L key per se?

I just want to get an idea of how it's done. or whether it would be a complicated process since I do not know scripting or programming at all.

For the fenix all you listed can be done via aao. There is also a Streamdeck profile and an aao template on flightsim.to for both. And you can easily bind the functions to the Keyboard instead of a Streamdeck or in my case x-touch Controller.

Additionaly i assigned two keys for tiller Connect and disconnect

Hi There. This option may not appeal to you, but if you have an android tablet, you may wish to look at a free software called Matric. The software runs on your pc and the 'slaved' android tablet shows 'Decks' that contain 'Pages'. These pages have a selection of graphical switches and buttons that operate the switches and buttons in your cockpit. The graphics show a toggled state which is quite cool. There are various Decks available from the Matric site and you can also make your own by interchanging various switches etc. on the tablet.

I quite like it. I have a tablet sitting at the side of my main monitor and just tap the tablet with a wand to operate the cockpit switches and buttons. I realise that it does not answer your question regarding using your keyboard but it's another option.

here is the link...https://matricapp.com/

There is also a Discord channel for Matric and some useful YT videos. Hope this helps.

Regards...Kenny.

18 hours ago, captain420 said:

how difficult would it to be to bind these functions to keyboard? Could you give me a brief example of how I would bind the landing lights in either the Fenix A320 or PMDG 737 to the L key per se?

The problem is that both PMDG and Fenix use custom LVARs for controlling the lights (except the landing lights in the NGXu, that are binded to Ctrl+L). I'd be glad to be wrong, but in FSUIPC I can't directly control an LVAR, and that's why I wrote a LUA. I'm away from my sim rig, so I can´t give any clues right now. Anyway, you can map this LUA to either a button or a key in FSUIPC.

I understand AAO makes this thing easier, but anyway, I needed FSUIPC for running PF3 (and I had a discount).

Nice going to give this a go