GSX with MSFS

[thebig_leo]

Hello, every day I look at the forum to know about updates. But it makes me more anxious. Could you give some feedback on how we are progressing from GSX to MSFS? Now which part of the process are we? Do we have a minimum date forecast?

[virtuali]

We released a preview not long ago:

https://youtu.be/OgjQ2-sixkg

Which shows a very small part of the product ( Pushback ), but of course we are working on all the rest and, as explained so many times, it's a long process because we have A LOT of models to remake from scratch, because we don't want to recycle too much from the P3D version, since GSX will be the definitive ground service product for the next 10 years, so we need to do it right, so we don't have any release date to announce right now, but I can safely say it will be released in 2022, and likely earlier than many are assuming.

We are planning to release other videos in the future, as long as new services are completed. Note that, this doesn't mean in any way that as of today we only completed the Pushback, the GSX code is already fully running in MSFS with all its features, it's just we don't want to release videos/screenshot containing old objects from FSX/P3D.

We need to keep up for MSFS updates. For example, there are some new things that has been added in SU9, which will make the program working better, more efficiently and easily maintained and updated, so we want to take the chance to support them, which might result in a longer dev time ( because some things we did before need to be reworked ), but it will be worth having them in the long term. Users must understand the sim is constantly changing, and the SDK is still lacking, but IT IS improving, in many areas that have profound effects on GSX, most of them in a positive way, but we still don't have everything we would like to have, and some SDK/Simconnect bugs we reported that will affect GSX, are being scheduled to be fixed for SU10, so it's a constant process of waiting for bugs to be fixed, new features to be added and IN THE MEANTIME ( it's not as we "stop" waiting for Asobo to fix the bugs ) keep modeling/texturing and animating new things, redo old things, to achieve the level of quality users are expecting.

[CS-TMT]

Being a unconditional user of GSX since 2015 on P3Dv2 until now on P3Dv4 (skipping v3) and slowly turning to FS2020 which, although still lacking many good airliners apart from the recently released PMDG 737 and Fenix A320, for Ggeneral and light aviation it is already a wonderful Simulator and although I like flying Airbuses and Boeing, I also love lighter aviation and VFR and for that it's already a good sim, so I'm slowly moving to this sim, keeping P3D as a backup for airliners, so now that I'm moving to FS2020, here's a topic I will anxiously follow to see the development of GSX under MSFS 😁
Best regards and best of luck!

[fahdriyami]

hi Umberto, did you got any update from Asobo about the menu implementation inside MSFS?

Take for example a feature available in some of the best airplane add-ons out there: the ability to momentarily "steal" the PC keyboard to use it as an input for the MCDU, so you can just type something instead of having to click on the buttons. This can't be done right now, because it would require to prevent the sim from getting the keyboard events for as long the "keyboard input" mode is active in the airplane. While reverting to mouse only and VC events might not be a huge loss for a typical MCDU, latest-gen airplanes like the A380 or the A350, which have a FULL SIZE real keyboard as one of their standard input methods, they could benefit a lot from this feature.

Is this still the case? Because in the FlyByWire A320neo, the EFB can "steal the keyboard" so it can be used for text input without triggering any sim-related actions.

[virtuali]

Is this still the case? Because in the FlyByWire A320neo, the EFB can "steal the keyboard" so it can be used for text input without triggering any sim-related actions.

Yes, addons written in Javascript can steal the keyboard. In fact, even GSX for MSFS can do that, in the very small part of it which is written in Javascript, that is the menu. However, the menu is less 1% of what GSX does, because most of its code runs completely external to the sim, and relies on Simconnect to interact with it.

This has the obvious advantage that *nothing* we do in GSX could possibly slow down the sim. As long as we model 3d objects in a optimized way ( and lots of time went into this, since every single object uses multiple LOD levels ), the "code", as complex it might be, won't even slow down the sim, since it runs in its own thread, on another process, which will use spare cpu cycles from unused CPU cores, thanks to the OS thread handling, so we won't hammer on the main thread, like a complex full Javascript add-on running in-process would.

And, since you might not need GSX while in flight, with an external app, you might even decide to quit it altogether after takeoff, and restart it again when you arrive, we made some changes to the Couatl scripting engine, which now has a Tray icon where you can restart or exit the app without stopping the flight.

So, the advantage of using an external app that connects through Simconnect only are many and, in fact, what is currently one of the best products available in MSFS, that is the Fenix A320, runs in its own app, which allow it lots of flexibility.

And yes, another advantage is using an external app that works with Simconnect, is that we could keep most of our existing code still working, which would allow to continue to support P3D, without having to rewrite everything from scratch, just like Fenix could use the Prosim engine, which allowed to offer an extremely high-end product in a *reasonable* time.

What is still lacking in the sim, is the ability to steal keys from Simconnect: you can intercept keys, but the sim will always get the event as well. Basically, the key "masking" flag, which worked since FSX, it's not working in MSFS. We MOSTLY used workarounds this, but the issue is not solved entirely. However, it's now very minor, so we'll release the product anyway, since the only effect is that you might have to disable some rarely used keys from the Drone Camera ( Focus blur, for example ), because the various edit modes ( Quick edit Pushback, Parking and Airplane customization ) are the ones where we would need to steal keys.

But sure, it would be nice if we could prevent the sim from getting an event, momentarily, anyway.

When we reported what is an obvious Simconnect bug, since key masking was even documented in the SDK, they replied they don't like the idea of an add-on stealing the keys, not at least from Simconnect, which is puzzling, since they allow that in Javascript, and after my explanation why this could be useful, they seem to realize IT COULD be useful, they said they wanted to take some time to redesign the system, and offer some kind of new solution. We'll surely use it as soon it will came out.