IPAD CDU (working) :)

[metalnwood]

I spent a few hours with this today and got something working. Seeing Ghosts posts I played around to see what the issue was that he could have been seeing with the app he was using and all of a sudden some of it was written. I thought I may as well put an interface on it.

 

I have made a number of 777 panels for an ipad app but as I was just playing around I used Ghandi's CDU to get things going.

 

Here is a youtube clip of it working although I appreciate that the quality is not great but you can see that I press buttons on the ipad cdu and things happen in game..

 

It's one area that I am about to learn so I am doing more button pushing than anything constructive. If you knew what you were doing better than I you would find all the keys working properly.

 

By default I bound everything to something not used - i.e. LControl + LShift + various keys. This leaves me LControl + RShift for the UFC and other things as well as another 100 or so bindings by swapping to RControl key.

 

It's hard to see but there is a tab panel at the bottom so I can swap to different panels, e.g. the ufc.

 

 

[DayGlow]

Do we need to JB the iPad for this to work?

[Groove]

Great work!

 

Are this 3x24" main displays?

[Ghost_unit13]

That looks great! I've got it working myself with Autohotkey as it's interface. not sure if my way is stable. i noticed some delay but i works. I like you grapics better, I cannot get rite of the default buttons of keypadpro. What apps did you use? Any chance I can give it a try?

Edited December 27, 2010 by Ghost_unit13

[WarriorX]

youtube is a little grainy, any close up Pic's Please!!!!

Edited December 27, 2010 by WarriorX

[metalnwood]

Hi all, answering questions..

 

Groove, yes they are 3x 24" displays and helios is running on a 19" below.

 

I Can try to get a close up in the next couple hours.

 

Ghost, I wrote the software to do it so it has a little piece of server software that runs on the pc which sends virtual keystrokes to the game in interfaces with the ipad. The software running on the ipad is something I also did yesterday just for this.

 

The limitations (cause what can you do in half a day?) are that the key bindings are predetermined by the application, although it's unlikely you have the same longwinded keys already assigned. In another app I was doing you got to choose.

 

There is a delay, you can see it but it's hard to know what it is. Maybe 1/10th second.

 

Do you need to jailbreak to use the app? Well I haven't published it as I have only just done it. I do stuff like this for myself from time to time so it never leaves my computer. I have never published anything to the apple store so I don't know how easy that would be. I have never JB my ipad either. I guess if yours was it would be easy to run a copy but I wouldn't want to do that to mine as a long term strategy.

 

I guess I will have to think about what I can do for you guys if there is enough interest. I will probably develop it enough so that I have the panels to do a ramp start without using the keyboard and add the ufc.

[Ghost_unit13]

Sound very good.. I'm sure if you can make it like it sound, you can make a little money out of it.. I'm sure all Ipad A10 users will pay a app price for it. I would say do publisch is when it is ready! Paid or for free. This is very good stuff for the A-10 communitie!!

 

It's been a long time I did some programming, ( more a cut/past programmer ;) ) but are you running in some kind of a developer mode on you I pad? Got it just a week so no idea how to interface with it for what you're doing. Got any links to places with some hands on guides?

[VTJS17_Fire]

@metalnwood: What TFTs do you have behind your Thrustmaster MFDs? Looks like they are compatible in size.

 

 

kind regards,

Fire

[metalnwood]

Hi Ghost, It's not that hard to get going developing for the ipad. You do need to have a mac because the development environment is mac OSX only. You then need to pay $100USD a year. In my case it's $140 per year because of where I live. This is also a bit of a problem because my membership expires next month and I probably wont have the $$$ spare to keep it going for now. In the future I will but not sure when.

 

When you join up you can create developer certificates so that you can run the software on your physical ipad without having distributed it on the app store.

 

Of course the other thing, which is an issue for some is that you need to develop using objective-c, there are no other options. Perhaps there are if you jailbreak but I suspect things become harder anyway.

 

The apple developer community has a lot of videos in the apple university which becomes available to you when you sign on as a developer. You will need to supplement this with books though.

 

 

I will tell you what. I will put on the UFC and some switches to get a ramp start going and get some opinions about putting it on the store.

 

The reason is that it is quite a bit of effort to put a fully customizable application on and with the time restraints I have there will be compromises, i.e. preprogrammed key bindings. If they conflict you will have to change the assignment on something else. Having said that I would make them obscure so it's not likely.

 

May not support different orientations for all panels, e.g. portrait for CDU and possibly not landscape. There would be various compromises and I would like to hear others opinions if it would be too restrictive for their needs to bother doing it. The thing is that I would need to charge something or I am loosing money to keep up the developer subscriptions which don't earn me any $$ for anything else. At the same time I don't want to charge $$ for something subpar. I hope you know what I mean.

 

 

And here is a closer view that someone asked for.

 

[Teej]

Heh. I should look into whether I can do something interesting with my new Droid. :D

[metalnwood]

VJS161_Fire, they are not separate monitors, they are just sitting in front of the main center screen and I have created a screen config to put the mfd's behind them.

 

It's easier to see from this

 

[power5]

@metalnwood: What TFTs do you have behind your Thrustmaster MFDs? Looks like they are compatible in size.

 

 

kind regards,

Fire

 

They appear to be in the main screen just overlaid on the main view window. The MFDs are placed in the lower corners of the main view. He does not have small LCDs for his MFDs.

 

 

Edit, yup I was too slow.

Edited December 27, 2010 by power5
sniped

[flyboy101]

I am very interested in this Ipad App. I would probably be willing to spend up to $25 for it if published to the app Store.\

 

 

How did you put this program onto your ipad, i suppose you could probably just sell the file without the app store assuming you can load it dragging it into the itunes interface and thus skip the app store completely.

Edited December 27, 2010 by flyboy101

[Ghost_unit13]

That's a great setup you've got Metal. I understand what you mean with something sub pair. (I dropped an offer to sell a copy of the source of my webshop for this same reason). But on the other hand. I'm sure there are a lot who are willing to pay for it (they did for the beta of a-10) ;) You might have a business model here to sponsor you Developing work.

You could drop the question here in the forum and simhq.com and see what people say.

 

Keep up the good work!

[metalnwood]

Thanks ghost, this is my racing and flying sim. You can see a couple of bolts either side of the gauges monitor. I pull them out and the who center console can lift out and I replace it with another that has a wheel mounted. Only a few minutes from flying to racing.

 

As you can see, it can only take a day to do something that you know works with your set up and that you are happy with but then takes forever to make nice to sell. You can't beta test on the apple store, you need to provide an application in good working order so you can't finance the build by selling early and improving as you go.

 

I will just see how things go, I would like to get it in to the hands of like minded ipad using a10 flyers :)

 

The other issue with the ipad is the subject of two way communications with the sim. My FSX stuff has all the radios, autopilot etc showing all the displays on the ipad and wherever you update them, in game or on the ipad, they are always synced. A major benefit for a10 would be switches that are in the same position as the actual game.

 

I will probably have two sets of pre set switches. One that is ready for a cold start and if you do everything from the ipad they will always be in sync. Another that is set up for an air start where a lot have already been switched. Once again, use them only on the ipad and they will be the same as the in game setting.

 

In FC2 I used lua to export information to my ipad about 6 months ago just to play around. I could do that here _but_ I am using the helios beta and plan to buy it when available so I am not sure that I want to have two lua scripts exporting information, i.e. mine and the helios one. If it was just for me and never to leave my ipad I would probably just hook in to the helios data but that is a no go if I was to ever think about distributing it.

 

I may have a look at what sort of performance impact would be had if I added another export script to a10. While helios sends a lot of information I would only be interested in reading a dozen or two switches and it wouldn't really matter if they were updated every second. The major benefit would be when the game starts that all switches in the ipad synced up.

 

Things for me to think about anyway.

[Gadroc]

Thanks ghost, this is my racing and flying sim. You can see a couple of bolts either side of the gauges monitor. I pull them out and the who center console can lift out and I replace it with another that has a wheel mounted. Only a few minutes from flying to racing.

 

As you can see, it can only take a day to do something that you know works with your set up and that you are happy with but then takes forever to make nice to sell. You can't beta test on the apple store, you need to provide an application in good working order so you can't finance the build by selling early and improving as you go.

 

I will just see how things go, I would like to get it in to the hands of like minded ipad using a10 flyers :)

 

The other issue with the ipad is the subject of two way communications with the sim. My FSX stuff has all the radios, autopilot etc showing all the displays on the ipad and wherever you update them, in game or on the ipad, they are always synced. A major benefit for a10 would be switches that are in the same position as the actual game.

 

I will probably have two sets of pre set switches. One that is ready for a cold start and if you do everything from the ipad they will always be in sync. Another that is set up for an air start where a lot have already been switched. Once again, use them only on the ipad and they will be the same as the in game setting.

 

In FC2 I used lua to export information to my ipad about 6 months ago just to play around. I could do that here _but_ I am using the helios beta and plan to buy it when available so I am not sure that I want to have two lua scripts exporting information, i.e. mine and the helios one. If it was just for me and never to leave my ipad I would probably just hook in to the helios data but that is a no go if I was to ever think about distributing it.

 

I may have a look at what sort of performance impact would be had if I added another export script to a10. While helios sends a lot of information I would only be interested in reading a dozen or two switches and it wouldn't really matter if they were updated every second. The major benefit would be when the game starts that all switches in the ipad synced up.

 

Things for me to think about anyway.

 

You can just have Helios publish it's UDP packets to a broadcast IP address and read them from your application and Helios.

[metalnwood]

Hi Gadroc, Yes, this is what I would do if I was just doing this for myself - which was my original intent. I plan to buy helios for myself so it's not an issue for me.

 

If on the other hand I was to sell it to recoup my yearly apple developer fees It would not usually be Kosher to build on others work - yours in this case.

 

Of course some others may not have helios so if I wanted that functionality I guess I couldn't rely on it. Oh yes, how things are more complicated if you are not just thinking about yourself :)

 

I have looked at your lua and because you are feeding gauges there is a lot more information than I would probably ever need so the computer would probably not take much of a hit requesting a couple dozen button states now and then.

 

Thanks for jumping in the thread :)

[Gadroc]

Of course some others may not have helios so if I wanted that functionality I guess I couldn't rely on it. Oh yes, how things are more complicated if you are not just thinking about yourself :)

 

LOL. I understand that quote.... please reference TouchPal vs Helios :)

[metalnwood]

I went to the other computer today to put together the UFC graphic. I came up with this. It looks a bit shiny and plastic as colours, textures not final etc but it can be the basis of the UFC.

 

The master caution is still to come but I thought I would call it quits for a little while..

 

I will have to do the CDU as I have 'borrowed' someone elses.

 

[hreich]

Is it possible to use iphone?

[flyboy101]

Is there any way to export the CDU or MFD graphics/displays to the iPad, that way you can use just the iPad without having to track ir over to the in game MFD or CDU to see what you are doing?

[Gadroc]

Nope. CDU graphics and text are not available for export in any fashion and the MFD graphics can only be exported as part of your game output on a real video card.

[metalnwood]

I will post in the next couple of hour a fully working CDU with screen export on the ipad.

 

Lets see how it performs though....

[metalnwood]

OK, have a look here and tell me what you think..

 

 

There is a slight delay because I wanted to show off so I didn't put in some synchronisation code, I put in a hardcoded wait :)

 

 

It seems to work :)

[DayGlow]

Nice.... Does it hook right into DCS or do you need to map key presses?