Hello dear RPN Afficionados,

I was curious wether it'd be possible to trigger the highlighting of knobs and elements from an AAO RPN script and if anybody could point me in the right direction? It would be so cool to visualize which knob is beeing targeted by my poor overworked Bravo THQ Rotary Encoder 😄 
Thanks in advance, cheers
J

51 minutes ago, JulezHaze said:

Hello dear RPN Afficionados,

I was curious wether it'd be possible to trigger the highlighting of knobs and elements from an AAO RPN script and if anybody could point me in the right direction? It would be so cool to visualize which knob is beeing targeted by my poor overworked Bravo THQ Rotary Encoder 😄 
Thanks in advance, cheers
J

I've never looked into that - I'm not sure that you can. What simulator are we talking about - and what should be highlighted exactly when? (so I can analyze the correct item from the start instead of poking around blindly)

What you could do is display a small text messagebox in the sim when you turn the encoder. That can be achieved with Coherent calls over the AAO InGame panel.

Or create an AAO gauge that shows the current position of the rotary selector. Something like that.

Edited December 5, 20241 yr by Lorby_SI

Here is the code to show a textbox in the sim for 5 seconds at the location 1000,500. The AAO InGame panel must be active (can be hidden using the AAO Gauge menu)

'SHOW_TOOLTIP|0|HELLO there|1000|500' (>L:AAO_COHERENT_TRIGGER, String) 
(SPLIT:5000)
'HIDE_TOOLTIP|0' (>L:AAO_COHERENT_TRIGGER, String) 

Personally, I think that a gauge like Funatic's X-Touch instrument would be ideal - an image of the Beta in sim with the currently selected function highlighted. 

The use case is VR in MSFS2024 (I got 2020 too, if the encryption of airplane files is an issue). I have programmed I think 4 layers on the AP Controls (with their 5 sub-layers if you will).

I actually have build such a cute AAO gauge that shows what is selected, and that works quite well, but anything reducing floating windows in VR is welcome 🙂 (Also its a PITA to adjust to different airplanes, all the image work in photoshop and so on).

I was imagining something like highlighting the COM1 / NAV1/ ADF Frequency Knobs or VOR/HDG Bug in lets say the DHC-2 Beaver.
If i would rotate the selector through the different Radios the knobs would highlight blue (or even red?! 😄 ).

All I got in this quest so far is stumbling over the "HIGHLIGHT_NODE_ID" XML-Tag in the SDK Documentation, but I wouldnt know what to do with it 😄 (e.g. https://docs.flightsimulator.com/msfs2024/html/5_Content_Configuration/Models/ModelBehaviors/TemplateExplorer/Asobo/Generic/Complex/Misc.html?rhhlterm=highlight_node_id&rhsearch=highlight_node_id )

Thank you so much for chiming in!

Love your product 🙂 Great fun!
(Let me show you the gauge, it also illustrates the sensible options to try to highlight).

1 hour ago, JulezHaze said:

but I wouldnt know what to do with it

I've been looking at that too, and I'm in the same boat.

I believe that the highlighting mechanism is built into the behavior code. I don't think that one can manipulate the behavior code from the outside, not with what AAO has to offer. It can do stuff with the HTML content, like the gauges, PFD, MFD (using Coherent.call, Coherent.trigger) but noth with the 3D objects and their animations. You would have to add specific custom trigger code to every single switch and knob to make that possible. And even if you went there, the chance of success is slim, this seems like a hard coded feature. 

And then there is the problem of the VFS lock in MSFS 2024. Even if you could find a way using behavior code, we can no longer inject it into the sim (like I did with the early version of the LVar/BVar mapping). 

Sorry.

Edit: the checklist system is doing it somehow, with the "Look at" function. But that could be hard coded too.

Edited December 5, 20241 yr by Lorby_SI