Requesting some fixing related to window focuses, panels, dedocked gauges and keyboard shortcuts

Hi,

Thanks for the Airbuses! I'm currently flying the BBS Airbuses (narrow and widebodies) on Prepar3d v3.4 hotfix 1 platform using Windows 10 Pro x64.

For long time ago I was flying the ancient Wilco Airbus for FSX and I was quite happy with their style of preserving the window focus while accessing the overhead and pedestal panel as well as other panels. Let me shortly describe the current functionality, which I am currently experiencing as an issue.

I usually like taxing and flying so that I am using the Outside view as my main view (fullscreen). I also have a smaller extra view showing the cockpit (non-virtual cockpit). I always have the window focus in the cockpit window. This makes it possible to hear the cockpit sounds. Depending on the phase of the flight, sometimes the main window has the (virtual or non-virtual) cockpit and the smaller shows the outside view.

When I want to access the panels, I always use the keyboard shortcuts to access them. We all know this is possible in BBS Airbuses. But the problem is that whenever the overhead/other shortcut panel is closed, the focus will always move to the current main window. This is annoying, as the outside sounds will get visible. This is something I would like to be fixed, in the usability point of view. I would like the software to save the current window focus (thus preserving the current sound focus).

The other issue I'd like to be fixed or changed is the de-docked gauges. Let's assume I am currently flying the cruise and want to have the outside view as main main view (and the cocpit as the smaller view). The focus is in the cockpit window to gain the cockpit sound focus. It is nice to have three gauges in the lower edge of the screen, the altimeter/virtual horizont, the navigation gauge and the engine gauge. Sometimes the lower ECAM gauge is nice to get on top of the engine gauge. But there is no shortcut for the engine gauge and the lower ECAM pedestal gauge! Is it possible to get those as a shortcuts?

Additionally, if I want to close the dedocked gauge, the sound focus is lost (main window gets the focus, thus leading to the loss of sound focus) -- leading to the outside sound getting again even I had the cockpit visible before. This is annoying as well, but I guess this is the same bug as I described earlier.

In addition, I'd like to propose some refactoring to the keyboard shortcuts regarding the gauges.
Is it really necessary to spend the shift-1+2 for the captain gauges and the shift-3+4 for the first officer? Can we refactor these shortcuts somehow? Can the Shift1+2 functionality be made user-configurable so that we can configure them as the captain or f/o mode, showing their panels respectively?

My proposal for the keyboard shortcuts and the rendering position and rendering priorities in case a pane/gauge overlap:
Shift-1: Captain panel OR F/o panel (user-configurable in some settings?)
Shift-2: Captain panel OR F/O panel (user-confurable in some settings?)
Shift-3: Pedestal
Shift-4: Overhead panel
Shift-5: MCDU
Shift-6: Virtual horizon/altimeter gauge (default rendering: bottom-left corner of the screen)
Shift-7: Navigation gauge (default rendering: bottom-center of the screen)
Shift-8: Engine gauge (default rendering: bottom-right corner of the screen)
Shift-9: Lower ECAM gauge (default rendering: bottom-right corner of the screen, having higher priority over the engine gauge if shown on screen)

Whenever the Pedestal or Overhead panel is focused, it should render itself on top of any other gauge, just to make them visible; currently the virtual horizon or the navigation gauge have higher rendering priority, causing the part of the panels to get drawn under the gauges -- can this be fixed as well?

Fixing these small issues would really add to the usability of the Airbuses also on the recreational point of view!

Best regards,

--Pasi
Sign In or Register to comment.