The main reason why any editor ( airport, airplane, quick pushback ) goes into Slew mode, is to be able to intercept SLEW EVENTS, which are keys (not necessarily) that are normally not used in normal flight, so not only we have many keys that would otherwise required by the sim in Normal Flight, but we also reduce the chances with conflict with something else required in normal flight because, while GSX is editing something, it temporarily "steals" those events, but it give them back to the sim as soon editing is done so, even in the unlikely cause anther app would need those events *while in slew*, the conflict would only last while GSX is in editing mode AND the sim in Slew mode as well. In addition to that, we can easily recognize when you are done editing, by simply intercepting the Slew toggle key, usually Y.
So yes, as usual with GSX, everything is done for a sound reason, and everything works in the best way possible.
However, as usual with many things in MSFS, everything method that worked well in FSX or P3D, either because bugs in Simconnect, or because of weird design choice, and this will result GSX for MSFS NOT entering in Slew while editing.
This is due for several reasons:
- the Simconnect API call that allows an application to temporarily "steal" events from the sim is bugged, meaning the sim will always receive the key, even if we explicitly ask to mask it from the sim, which was a normal and officially approved Simconnect method since FSX came out in 2006. When we reported this bug, Asobo developers replied they have not intention to fix it, since they basically don't like the whole idea of an application stealing keys from the sim, even momentarily, so they removed the API call from the documentation altogether.
To our objection that removing that call will prevent lots of existing applications to work and, for example, prevent a "proper" simulation of a modern airliner with an *actual* keyboard, like an A380/A350, which might require to momentarily steal the whole PC keyboard in some situations (it would be silly having to click with a mouse on a 3d PC keyboard in the VC, when you have a real PC keyboard in front of you...), they realized that yes, maybe stealing keys might be useful in some cases, so they replied a new way of doing that might appear in future SDK, but there's no timeframe for that, of course.
Since we surely cannot wait years for something to happen ( Asobo took a year to finally confirm they won't restore the existing Simconnect menus and short text messages which were used by lots of app ), we had to work with what's possible so, instead, of going in Slew mode to intercept Slew keys, we'll just take some keys from the sim but leaving it in the normal flight mode, hoping they won't be used anywhere else and/or won't cause too many issues if they will. Speaking of Simconnect bugs, if an application asks for CTRL+Shift+F12, for example, and they sim has just F12 assigned to something, it WILL do that "something", even if you press Ctrl+Shift+F12 and not just F12 so, which of course didn't happened in FSX/P3D but, again, it doesn't seem fixing Simconnect bugs is a very high priority so, we need to work with what we have.
Those are the bugs. The "weird design choices" are the fact that, when you activate Slew mode in MSFS, you are forced into the Slew Camera with no other choices, which is quite useless for GSX editing, so that's another reason why we won't use Slew mode in MSFS, so you'll be able to use whatever camera you like, usually the Drone Camera is the best one for editing.
So, moving away from Slew in MSFS comes with many limitations, that's why we won't do it in P3D, which works so much better because in Slew mode editing is completely insulated from any other simulation event, both because all normal "flight" events are not happening in Slew mode, but also because we have several key events we can use AND temporarily take away from the sim without any issues.
