v1.6.0 - TP v4 Features, FS 24 Updates, & More

[mpaperno]

Changes since v1.5.0

Version number: 1060000

New Features for Touch Portal v4.3

• Added ability to customize the "On Hold" behavior for each individual action:
  • Can now set if an action will be activated on Press, Release, both, or neither (repeat only).
  • Repeating on hold can be turned off.
  • The Repeat Rate (interval) can be set per action.
  • A new Repeat Delay property is added for setting an initial wait period before an action starts repeating (a new plugin setting has been added to set the default delay, see "Other New Features").
  • You can now have separate actions triggering for a button's "press" vs. "release" by placing them in both the "On Hold" and "On Pressed" button setup panels, respectively.
    The action(s) in "On Pressed" is/are only activated when the button is released, while the one in "On Hold" can be set to fire only on the initial button press.
• All action & connector category groups are now placed inside one main group for the whole plugin. They also now have new individual icons.
• The long actions from "Custom States & Variables" category are now formatted in a multi-row form-style layout.

Other New Features

• Added "Request an Input Event Value" action for "Custom States & Variables" category which allows selection of an event name from a live list.
• The lists of available Simulator Variables and Events in various actions (like "Activate a Selected Simulator Event") are now filtered by connected simulator version.
  The database distinguishes between MSFS X, 2020, and 2024 versions. 'MSFS' plugin edition loads FS 24 data by default (before first connection to sim), 'FSX' edition loads FS-X data
  (P3D users are on their own for now, sorry!).
• Event names in the HubHop Events list now indicate if it is a "potentiometer" event (expects an input value) by appending an "@" symbol. A snippet of the event description,
  if any exists, has also been added.

New Settings

• Added "Check For New Plugin Version on Startup" setting, which does as it says. This is disabled by default. Minimum time between update checks is 6 hours, even if plugin is restarted.
• Added "Default Held Action Repeat Delay" plugin setting. Initial delay value is going to be the same as the current repeat interval (rate). (This affects all held/repeating actions,
  not just the new "TP v4" style added in this version.)
• Added "Maximum Length of Descriptions in Action Lists" setting to control how much description text appears in lists of Simulator Variables, Key Events, and HubHop Events.
  The descriptions can also be disabled entirely by setting this option to zero.
• Added "Maximum Message Log Lines" setting to control how many logging entries are sent in the "Most recent plugin log messages" state value. This can also be set to zero to suppress
  all updates of that state.

Fixes

• Fixed being able to set string type values on Simulator Variables (like ATC IDs) in MSFS edition since plugin v1.5 (FSX was OK).
• Fixed missing value field in "Set Cowl Flaps Lever" action (cowl index was duplicated instead).
• Fixed action "Radio Interaction" with options "COM3 Decrease 25 KHz w/ Carry Digits" which used an invalid event ID.

Changes

• Moved "Failures" action into "Simulator System" category. This removes the "Failures" category from the actions menu since that was the only action in it.
• Renamed "Set a Selected Airplane Input Event Value" -> "Set a Selected Input Event Value".
• Minimum held action repeat interval (rate) was reduced from 50ms to 25ms.
• The lists of available Simulator Variables and Key Events in actions now include those marked as deprecated in sim documentation, with a "(DEPRECATED)" note added in details. Some of those may still work.
• Improved version comparison check when using SimVersion property in variable request INI files and added example of usage in the Custom States - INI Files wiki and included States.ini.
• When using the "Plugin - Status of SimConnect" state in an IF action, the 3 possible value choices (true/false/connecting) will be available for selection.
• Touch Portal v3 users may wish to use the alternate entry.tp plugin definitions file as described in the Replacing The entry.tp File For Touch Portal v3 wiki page. The TP v3 file is already included with the plugin.

For MSFS 2024

• Setting 'B' type variables (triggering Input Events) is now possible for the "_Set", "_Inc", "_Dec", "_Toggle" etc, suffixes found in the sim's dev mode "Behaviors" inspector.
  These do not show up in the list of Input Events the plugin gets from the simulator itself, but can be manually entered in the "Set Named Variable" or "Execute Calculator Code" actions.
• Validation of Simulator Variable ('A' type) names will now accept the new "VARIABLE NAME:'ComponentName'_n" syntax in MSFS 24.
• New Simulator Variables and Events are available in action selection lists when connected to FS 24.

'FSX' Edition

• Removed all actions/connectors which use Key Events that don't exist in FS-X.
• Events and Sim Vars shown in action selection lists will now be limited only to those that FS-X is known to support.
• The "Set a Named Variable" and "Request a Named Variable" actions have been simplified to exclude the irrelevant variable type selector.

Other Improvements

• Updated database of Simulator Variables and Event IDs imported from MSFS 2020 & 2024 SDK Web site documentation as of Nov. 25 '24. The groupings now reflect published FS '24 documentation (a few events/vars were moved around).
  Also added 91 Key Events that aren't documented anywhere except in the game itself (these are sorted into the "Miscellaneous - Undocumented" category).
• Generated documentation layout of plugin actions, connectors, and events has been updated for clarity; Separate MSFS and FSX plugin edition versions are now generated, and the documentation has been moved to the Wiki.
• Documentation of plugin's settings has been improved for the new Touch Portal v4.3 layout. Actual (dotted) version number is now shown at the top as well.
• HubHop data update has been streamlined a bit, and now fixes any mis-categorized "potentiometer" type events (that expect input values) in the downloaded data,
  where some events that did not expect input were marked as if they do, and vice versa. The included database of events is current as of Nov. 30th.
• Improved error checking on some submitted action data to provide more useful diagnostics in the plugin logs in case of failure.
• Some minor improvements on shutdown when dealing with unexpected simulator/SimConnect disconnections and Touch Portal exceptions.
• Updated to use .NET 8 runtime for MSFS edition (up from v7). Most external dependencies also got an update. (All required components are included in the distribution as before.)
• MSFS edition built with latest MSFS 2020 SDK/SimConnect v0.24.3.
• Updated WASimCommander components from v1.2.0 to v1.3.1 for features and fixes.

Full Commit Log

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Make sure to also update the WASimModule component if you're using it!

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Check the README for installation instructions and other documentation.

The MSFS-TouchPortal-Plugin and FSX-TouchPortal-Plugin are separate plugins which can co-exist in Touch Portal. The "FSX" edition supports FSX Deluxe SP2 or newer simulators, including MSFS 2020, but the "MSFS" version is recommended for that instead. See the README for details.

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This discussion was created from the release v1.6.0 - TP v4 Features, FS 24 Updates, & More.