While I was assigning many  new buttons to a new aircraft, I had to temporarily go to another aircraft for which I had already created Axis and Oh's assignments for reference. Unfortunately, when I returned to my original aircraft, all new assignments were lost. A pop up warning before changing aircrafts, reminding the user that all new assignments will be lost if database is not updated would be helpful. As one may know, assigning buttons to a new complex aircraft is very time consuming, requiring a lot of trial and error before the assignment is considered valid. The pop up warning would be greatly appreciated.

tc

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6 hours ago, flyforever said:

While I was assigning many  new buttons to a new aircraft, I had to temporarily go to another aircraft for which I had already created Axis and Oh's assignments for reference. Unfortunately, when I returned to my original aircraft, all new assignments were lost. A pop up warning before changing aircrafts, reminding the user that all new assignments will be lost if database is not updated would be helpful. As one may know, assigning buttons to a new complex aircraft is very time consuming, requiring a lot of trial and error before the assignment is considered valid. The pop up warning would be greatly appreciated.

tc

Sounds strange, because that is not how this is supposed to work. All changes are immediately made part of the configuration, and they stay there, even when the aircraft is reloaded. They are just not written to disk after every single change.

Something else must have gone wrong. Did the app shut down at any point? What exactly did you do in what order so I can reproduce it?

Edited January 4, 20233 yr by Lorby_SI

Everything appeared normal. This is why I assumed that a&o did not autosave new button assignments after I returned to it. It was a classic situation where I flipped between one aircraft and another using the "go to main" option in msfs.

It might be difficult to reproduce the error, mostly because for the md80 I was using several sources for various aircraft lvars, thus making the whole process somewhat overwhelming. What I do know is that appx 6 new assignments were lost.

One observation regarding combo buttons and xtouch rotaries. Sometimes, the combo field records something other than a "click" when the clickable part of the rotary is pressed. It has to do with whether the "rocker" radio button is activated before pressing the rotary click button.

In my case, I spent a long time figuring out why one of the 4 button assignments(for Nav frequencies) did not work correctly, despite having done everything correctly. In the case of combo, it would be nice to have some warning pop up, indicating that the combo field has different inputs(when in fact they should be the same). I think it would reduce the learning curve. I took screen shots, but I am unable to upload them to a url, since it's new to me. I am happy to sen them to you via email.

Are you saying that if I close a&o and reopen it, I might lose newly programmed buttons? Or are you referring specifically to an app crash.

13 minutes ago, flyforever said:

Are you saying that if I close a&o and reopen it, I might lose newly programmed buttons? Or are you referring specifically to an app crash.

That would be an app crash. AAO saves the database automatically when being closed normally. And at several key points during operations too. But I need to check this for myself, there is always the option that a bug has developed at some point.

When in doubt, click on the yellow "harddisk" button on the main dialog before you do something that feels dangerous.

About the combo - how would AAO know what a "correct" assignment is so it can warn you? That seems like something that would potentially be different for every user and MIDI device.

OK, so I've tested this using P3D

1. Started AAO and P3D
2. A plane loads, AAO loads the corresponding configuration
3. I added two new button assignments for trim
4. Went into P3D an loaded a different plane, AAO loads that configuration
5. Then I went into P3D and selected a different livery of my first plane, so AAO would load a clone
6. ...which it did, and my two new buttons were there!
7. Loaded the first plane again, AAO loading the configuration - both my buttons were there
8. Shut down AAO and restarted it - both buttons still there.

I will accept your test. If I run into the same issue, I will try to replicate it so that I can be more helpful. I don't know if I mentioned the fact that I am using msfs.

This is is the combo issue that I referred to earlier in my post. Same xtouch rotary button click,two different inputs.

http://

 

Lastly, the long , and increasingly long list of simulator events makes finding or remembering ( even with the filter option) an event location very time consuming. The ability to mark some of these groups in the form of color coding or a check mark would help the user to access the useful categories more quickly. With the md80, in programming the autopilot buttons , I assumed that most of them would be in the "autopilot" category. Yet, some are found in less familiar categories. When trial testing various assignments, it's difficult to remember which categories to rule out or which to keep as an active reference for that particular aircraft. If I pick the wrong key down event for a button, I need to go through the entire list, since there's no way to mark the right or wrong category from which the event was selected. I hope this is clear. It's not a complain, but an observation for continuous improvement to what is already an excellent program.

Be well.

 

 

46 minutes ago, flyforever said:

Same xtouch rotary button click,two different inputs.

Looks like something in the hardware is interfering. Left one looks like it came from one of the "normal" buttons, the other is apparently the Encoder click. Maybe reset the device and/ or check its status with the XTouch Editor Software?
But again - how would AAO know that you want one, but not the other? 

Quote

 I assumed that most of them would be in the "autopilot" category

 It's not a complain, but an observation for continuous improvement to what is already an excellent program.

Better not to assume - none of this makes sense. These lists are for one a replica of what is in the MSFS SDK documentation (the lists are generated by a program, then added to AAO). And second they are endless lists of variables that are there in the sim, but where no information exists anywhere what they mean or how they would be grouped - because the aircraft developer just invented them. 

But especially with Addon aircraft, you can consider yourself lucky if even a handful of those events work. I am frankly amazed that anything from those lists did work for you. As far as I remember the MD80 has its own SDK and it uses completely different methods of external input processing than the default simulator events. Check this out: \Documents\Maddog X Files\Docs\List of Commands.pdf

And then there is the state of the matter with MSFS today - what good would color coding do when everything is completely different for the next aircraft you set up? I'm not sure that this would be worth the effort - yours and mine.

Edited January 4, 20233 yr by Lorby_SI

I will pay closer attention to what I am doing, since as you may know, programming buttons for the md80 is quite a challenge. In the meantime, I will accept your testing as well as saving on disk more often as a precaution.

I will try to upload my images to discuss the "combo" question.

One more item that I thought would be helpful as you upgrade your program is a way to "bookmark" or colorcode the various assignment categories, so that when programming buttons, we can mark those less than well known categories when in search of assignments.

For example, the md80 autopilot assignments vary from custom made scripts to places such as

Sorry about the last identical post.  I had two windows open and must have pressed send twice by mistake. tc

Well, with a red face, I am happy to report that the cause for disappearing button assignments was due to my inadvertently switching liveries during the aircraft switch.

tony

4 hours ago, flyforever said:

was due to my inadvertently switching liveries during the aircraft switch.

How did you do that exactly? I would like to cover this base too, AAO should never just forget things that are already in the database.