Using winwing as an example, most aircraft I want to use their hardware with works either with their own software, or with the free (and easier to use IMHO) mobiflight.  I’ve never found spad to be user friendly, and the model they have where certain pieces of hardware require paying for a certain level of spad (without knowing for sure if there’s even a functional profile for you want to do ahead of time) is annoying.

I am getting annoyed waiting for Skalarki to release their new profiler that should at least provide FCU support for the inibuilds airbuses, and if I could do it all again today, would buy winwing instead, but that’s another topic I guess.

Maybe I’m missing the boat on spad and would happily be pointed in the right direction if there was a benefit.

Thanks @regis9 - I think I'm going to have to learn more about Mobiflight. I don't want to derail this thread so will go and investigate elsewhere.

8 hours ago, KL Oo said:

- Some of the snippets are just rubbish. Sometimes trying to find something that works for a particular function on a particular aircraft with a particular piece of hardware is difficult because people upload snippits with little to no description...

This is precisely why the lack of newer snippets doesn't concern me.  I'm afraid that in my experience not just some, but many of the snippets are less than helpful, just plain wrong or out of date.  I notice the latter particularly with Honeycomb snippets as SPAD changed the way it deals with Honeycomb's "button press" definition of toggle switches, and many of the snippets use the old method.

Snippets are most helpful when first starting with SPAD as they CAN at least give you a starting point or hint about how to do something.  As you become more used to the product and all of its tools such as the Event Monitor, they become less useful particularly when dealing with products from developers who document their LVARs. 

Add Black Square to the list of those who now do a good job with this.

 

Scott

I think it's important to make distinctions between spad and some of the other free options.  In the beginning I just wanted my hardware to work with a pre made profile by someone else.  Then I realized over time, I wanted to customize how the equipment worked.  So for example.  My skalarki FCU I use to control all my aircraft.  Doesn't matter if it's a 737, MD-80, A300 or even a Duke.  That pushed me to make my own programming.  Or take the bravo.  On the MD-80 I like to use 2 of the levers to control the pneumatic levers.  It works for me, but somebody else may find the snippet and it wouldn't make sense for them to use.  So I think for some spad is crucial.  

19 minutes ago, micstatic said:

I think it's important to make distinctions between spad and some of the other free options.  In the beginning I just wanted my hardware to work with a pre made profile by someone else.  Then I realized over time, I wanted to customize how the equipment worked.  So for example.  My skalarki FCU I use to control all my aircraft.  Doesn't matter if it's a 737, MD-80, A300 or even a Duke.  That pushed me to make my own programming.  Or take the bravo.  On the MD-80 I like to use 2 of the levers to control the pneumatic levers.  It works for me, but somebody else may find the snippet and it wouldn't make sense for them to use.  So I think for some spad is crucial.  

I think that's great Dave, and I it would be great if you shared those snippets after you went to the trouble of setting them all up. I guess its just about making sure there's sufficient detail in the description to tell people what the snippets contains and what it does. 

20 minutes ago, KL Oo said:

I think that's great Dave, and I it would be great if you shared those snippets after you went to the trouble of setting them all up. I guess its just about making sure there's sufficient detail in the description to tell people what the snippets contains and what it does. 

Mine are published. Sometimes description is short. But they are there. I like to click the picture that shows what each command is doing. I think it’s the binocular button 

4 hours ago, tttocs said:

Add Black Square to the list of those who now do a good job with this.

Would you mind sharing? Couldn't find a thing...?

19 hours ago, eslader said:

I bought it back in the p3d days, and any time I got a new plane it was virtually guaranteed someone had already set up a profile for it that used my Bravo throttle. 2020 was the same way. I hardly ever had to manually configure anything even with just-released planes because someone almost always beat me to it.

But these days it's kind of the opposite. I've started using 2024 a lot more since I got a system that can handle it, so I'm exploring all the new planes like the A400, C17, etc, and I'm not seeing much for online profiles of them. I'm happy to make and publish my own, but it just seems odd that they seem to have dried up so much.

 

Are you a member of the SPAD.next Discord? Seems like you should be.

SPAD.NEXT is an amazing piece of software!  Go to SPAD.next Discord and find out what it can do

Edited October 11, 2025Oct 11 by DeCampos

3 hours ago, Micko said:

Would you mind sharing? Couldn't find a thing...?

Not sure what you're looking for, but glad to help if I can. 

I was referring to Black Square doing a good job of documenting LVARs on their newer planes (basically everything post "Analogue xxx").  In the manuals, you'll find a section called "Hardware Inputs and Outputs" where they list most of the LVARs used.  Both Dukes, the TBM 850 and the Starship manuals all feature this information.

On the older planes (Bonanza, Baron, Caravan) you can often find some information in the Black Square section of the Just Flight support forums, but the developer had not yet begun including it in the manuals.

 

Scott

10 hours ago, tttocs said:

Not sure what you're looking for, but glad to help if I can. 

I was referring to Black Square doing a good job of documenting LVARs on their newer planes (basically everything post "Analogue xxx").  In the manuals, you'll find a section called "Hardware Inputs and Outputs" where they list most of the LVARs used.  Both Dukes, the TBM 850 and the Starship manuals all feature this information.

On the older planes (Bonanza, Baron, Caravan) you can often find some information in the Black Square section of the Just Flight support forums, but the developer had not yet begun including it in the manuals.

You’re absolutely right! I totally forgot about the Dukes — perfect example of how we (or at least I) tend to remember only the bad things. I had trouble finding the Lvars for the Bonanza, and that’s all I remembered. Next time, before I make any negative remarks, I’ll remind myself to check more thoroughly first.

3 hours ago, Micko said:

You’re absolutely right! I totally forgot about the Dukes — perfect example of how we (or at least I) tend to remember only the bad things. I had trouble finding the Lvars for the Bonanza, and that’s all I remembered. Next time, before I make any negative remarks, I’ll remind myself to check more thoroughly first.

No worries!  This is really a case of a developer listening to the community.  He saw lots of requests in the support channels from his early analogue conversions so began documenting the planes he built from the ground up.

As for the Bonanza (which you've undoubtedly already got working) , I was able to figure out most of the LVARs using SPAD's  "Update LVARs" feature and looking for anything that started with "bksq".  Most names are pretty descriptive.  That and the Event Monitor usually gets me where I need to go when documentation is sparse.  But documenting these things in the manual is still the gold standard and much appreciated.

 

Scott

Seems I'm not the only one to share frustration at developers not routinely publishing their list of lvars for a given aircraft.

 

One work around I have found is to download the profiles uploaded by guensli on flightsim.to for the aooh or whatever lol.

 

It is a document filled with code BUT it will show you the function you want and the lvar including H:vars etc that makes it work, tough trawling through but it gets there in the end.

Certain aircraft can be a real struggle for me. The maddog for example 

The whole process can be frustrating and it's more frustrating when you buy a very expensive piece of HW thinking it's "plug and play" only to find you have to go through what can be a non straight forward and complicated process just to get it functional.  Thank goodness for IO4FS for my OpenCokpit modules for example.  But even that is not a process you will get without thoroughly reading the manual and having some level of IT comfort...

More frustrating when HW manufacturers don't disclose it and people find out the hard way...  

As for Spad, I had my Winwing units working with Simapp.  Then I ran a Spad update and it seemed to take over my winwing units by default "breaking" Simapp. 

Simply De-Activating the Winwing units in Spad device profiles fixed the issue but I am wondering if I re-enable Winwing will my CDU's be plug and play or do I have to find a snippet and configure them myself?