FlightFactor FFA320 FMGS Overlay

[Detlef]

Hi pilots,

I have made my first overlay instrument for Airmanager. I have the desktop version only. And I have X-Plane 11 only.
The instrument is an overlay for the FFA320 Flight Management Guidance System (FMGS). I uploaded the instrument today and I think it will take some time until it appears for download (if allowed by the admins I guess).

If it is available please feel free to test and if you find problem I can try to help.

Thank you
Good flying
Detlef

[JackZ]

Nice work. Would for sure complete my FMGS display emulator perfectly.

https://siminnovations.com/forums/viewt ... 109#p34109

Was about to make one myself, but the overlay was on the back burner since I had an Opencockpit hardwareCDU for this.
Could you publish the siff file here for us to test, as I don’t think your overlay is in the store yet?

Thanks
Jacques

[Detlef]

Hi Jacques,

that piece of hardware you use emulating the FMGS looks impressive.
I attach the overlay here

ffa320-fmgs.siff

(1.47 MiB) Downloaded 252 times

, had trouble to find the path where it is stored. I hope it works.

[JackZ]

Hi Detlef. I tested yourt instrument briefly.
It works nicely, though the buttons are not animated when pressed, but the sound click gives an appreciated feedback anyways. (maybe a bit too loud).
I would suggest to modify the line 6 as follow to reduce the volume

Code: Select all

local gSoundButtonClick = sound_add("click.wav",0.1)-- insert a value between 0 and 1.0 to set the volume

Nice idea to use a function for the key dataref to be used, passed as a parameter.
I incorporated my display instrument to see if it fits, both are working seamlessly.

I think that all the annunciator lights are missing. Namely FM1/FM2/IND/RDY at the top, MCDU MENU, FAIL AND FM at the right/left sides.
I can try and add these for you if you wish.
No big deal though, as I think that not all of the features associated to these lights are implemented yet in FFA320 anyways, especially the MCDU MENU.

Jacques

[Detlef]

I think that all the annunciator lights are missing. Namely FM1/FM2/IND/RDY at the top, MCDU MENU, FAIL AND FM at the right/left sides.

Hi Jacques,

you are fast! Thank you for testing, I am glad it works.
Regarding the annuciator lights: I was not aware there is a function behind those lights other than the Ready light. I am currently trying to get my cockpit flyable, only to say I will not add annunciator lights right now. If you want to do it, I am happy if you go ahead with that. I still have to learn so much regarding Airmanager programming, A320 and other things.

I made an Arduino-based hardware panel (I call Flexpanel) with 20 buttons with LEDs and a display showing the current meaning of the button. I can switch pages for example PARKED, TAXI, AIRBOURNE. I get it working piece by piece. Today I spent lots of time getting the APU Master and APU start functions working. A buttons LED associated to a function will be dark while the function is off, lit when the function is successfully activated, flashing slowly when the function is in transition (e.g. in case of the APU while it is spooling up) or flashing fast, when the function failed after a timeout (which I programmed for some functions only until now). You see from that, I am not aiming for a real world cockpit pendent. I want it flexible for different aircrafts and different phases of my cockpit hardware. So you see how I spent my time

I have two touchscreens but the FFA320 FMGS was not operable per touch, so I am glad I found a solution. I made the touch sensitive fields bigger then the actual buttons on the FMGS because I wanted an easy use (still find the button after a beer haha).

I am very bad with graphics, one reason having not the appropriate tools. I have On1, a pretty powerful photo editing software. Here I use it to make transparent areas in a picture. On1 is bad with small bitmaps. So my buttons are just transparent rectangles, no animated pressing.

I modified the click sound as sound_add("click.wav", .5) for a lower volume. You are right there. I guess it depends how you balance your sounds in X-Plane.

Again, thank you for testing. I just uploaded the file two days ago, not sure what the process is for getting it in the database for all users.
Oh and thank you for pointing me to the Flightfactor aircraft. It is great but complex. I have only four flights until now. So really, I need to do some flying, not only hunting down datarefs.

Thank you
Detlef

[JackZ]

Hi

As I said the annunciator lights at the top are to signal for fallback modes when one of the FMGC (the computer part of the FMC) fails. The affected MCDU will then use the opposite FMGC and light the corresponding annunciator (FM1 or FM2). If both FMGC are separated and can no longer communicate to each other (which is the normal mode), the IND (ependant) light will come out.

As per the lateral annunciators, one is for the MCDU failure (FAIL), the other two are to signal to the user that the corresponding part of the system , ie either the FMGC (FM) or the other features which are not part of the FMGC and grouped under MCDU MENU page, namely ATSU, ACARS requests for example,) or Maintenance & diagnostic modes (CFDS) request their attention.

For example if you are using the MCDU to request weather via ACARS, if there is an important message coming from the FMS (that should appear in amber in the scratchpad), the FM light will come out.
For now it’s useless, as I found out that the ATSU, ACARS and CFDS function are not implemented yet in FFA320 in the MCDU MENU Page.
Here’s an example of the ATSU functions we use in flight.


Jacques

[Detlef]

Hi Jacques,

thank you for the cockpit video and for your explanations, I appreciate both. I might do some more work on the FMGS overlay at a later time then.

Regards
Detlef

[Detlef]

A320 FlightFactor Ultimate - FMGS Overlay_1_1.siff

(1.48 MiB) Downloaded 214 times

Hi,

in case someone is using this FMGS overlay instrument. I made a modified version, that reacts to a button touch regardless how short it is. I don't know whether this was an issue when using the mouse also, but when using a touch screen I had to put my finger on a button for a minimum time, otherwise the key press was lost. This is corrected now, in this version.

Thanks
Detlef

[EcstaticAviator]

Would love to see this done for the FBW A32NX!!

[Detlef]

Would love to see this done for the FBW A32NX!!

Hi EcstaticAviator,
sorry for the late answer, I was busy with by hardware and some other things. And sorry I only have this one A320 from FlightFactor. So I am unable to do modifications for the FBW. But it is not that complex actually to modify the Lua code. You have to find out the datarefs and commands being used by the FBW aircraft for that.

Thanks
Detlef