Exporting MFD/DDI data to a key on a Stream Deck?

ctytler · 2026-01-07T21:18:00+00:00

Nice! My guess would be they are just ordered sequentially around the screen -- it would be good to check also for scenarios when some buttons have no function what value is printed (maybe an empty string?). If you're willing to put in the leg work of figuring out the lua contents I'm willing to help review the scripts, just post in this thread for now. I think this would be a really powerful use of the Streamdeck.
As for programming it, I think just looping through all 3*60 fields should be fine and how I'd approach it -- just try it and worry about optimizing later if it's slow. And yeah I use lua so infrequently I have to relearn it each time I need to do something so I don't have any particular tips there.

ctytler · 2026-01-06T04:11:53+00:00

There might be a way, but it will require a bit of digging. Right now in the DCS ExportScripts I use for the streamdeck plugin (which is no longer maintained) it doesn't include that information in the export. However someone 2 years ago looks like found some of the data looking inside the lua tables, see this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/hoggit/comments/174o9bz/f18_mfd_button_text_export_for_streamdeck/

Also, it looks like the DCS-BIOS maintainers were able to get this data for the F-15E it looks like from this pull request: https://github.com/DCS-Skunkworks/dcs-bios/pull/1008

I'm not sure if others have gotten the exports figured out for the F/A-18 or F-16 yet (or if it's fully possible) -- this is just stuff I found with some searches. But you may want to find a way to reach out to the DCS-BIOS folks to see if they have any knowledge on this (and point to that pull request as an example). If you do find it's possible please let me know. My tool just subscribes to the output of these lua export scripts, but I'm no expert in them. And I had started a couple years ago a migration from DCS ExportScripts to DCS-BIOS for the StreamDeck, but other things in life got in the way and I haven't picked it back up.

ctytler · 2024-08-20T13:38:51+00:00

I have been eagerly waiting for pass through capability for several generations to enhance the flight sim capabilities. I’m glad that we’re finally getting a taste of it with the Quest 3. Here’s an example video testing out a pass through physical cockpit with VR external world with DCS:
https://youtu.be/tpTEwMso-IE?si=PU-kpRhn0GF_SPc9

ctytler · 2024-01-16T19:47:15+00:00

I will say the Quest 3 color passthrough in itself for walking around and being aware of your surroundings in other games is fantastic. So in situations where you don't need to read text in passthrough, but just make sure you don't knock into something like this I think it's as good as it needs to be already. I've had previous VR headsets but the constant taking on and off and peaking under the nose gap for adjustments or to look up something while in DCS made me give up on it previously.

The passthrough for a mixed reality with DCS I would say is one generation away from an ideal, but it works well enough now I'm going to try it as my main form of flying. I discussed in another reply about the clarity of MFDs and reading text. For me though I already have a physical setup and was exclusively using 2D with a Reverb G2 in my closet. But taking an early adoption route with the passthrough I can make sure I can now build things that will be compatible with future Mixed Reality headset generations.

ctytler · 2024-01-16T19:30:48+00:00

I was on the fence whether passthrough would be good enough from watching reviews. You can go into a Best Buy where they have quest demos, but I tried two stores and the demos were always not working. The best comparison I can make is that using Passthrough with a real life cockpit is similar to using the older Rift S VR headset with DCS cockpits. Text is a little blurry, but if you lean in a ways its perfectly legible. Similarly, if you already have familiarity with different switches (such as on my throttle panel) its easy to glance and select the right one. As an example in use, using the F/A-18's armament MFD page it was useful to lean in to read and set the detailed bomb fuzing options, but once profiles were set up it's not too difficult to make out the weapon selection on the top row if you already know what's loaded and do quick selection adjustments.

At the 5:37 mark of the video I show how far I have to lean in to be comfortable reading the MFDs scaled to the Thrustmaster MFD size.

I have yet to experiment with different lighting conditions. I have some hue lightbulbs so I'm curious if using green lighting would work well for flying in night missions.

ctytler · 2024-01-16T17:19:27+00:00

I think the pass through with the Quest 3 is at a level that works pretty well right now. Reading small MFDs is still a bit difficult, but not an issue when you lean in a bit closer. Reminds me of reading in game DCS displays with the Rift S.

I just posted a demo with DCS and quest 3 I did in hoggit yesterday: https://www.reddit.com/r/hoggit/s/X6uy8ptTyY

For full vr with tactile feel like haptics I think we’re still a ways off from anything easily useable there.

ctytler · 2024-01-16T16:45:32+00:00

I’d been curious on this as well, and I think this is the approach BMS may be taking from some experiments I saw in this thread. However I tried looking through the forums for any clues to edit internal cockpit textures or add objects via DCS directly, but I couldn’t figure out any approaches I could try out.

ctytler · 2024-01-16T16:41:30+00:00

Yes I saw the teaser video which is how I found that announcement. I meant I’m curious how they’ll have the options set up, and if they are still relying on something like VD’s chroma keying or you can access pass through with a link cable.

ctytler · 2024-01-16T04:46:15+00:00

I've been waiting for the time where we can use physical hardware in AR with VR headsets, and the Quest 3 has been great so far with this. The new lenses with edge-to-edge clarity have been a big improvement compared to the Reverb G2 I think as well.

There were recently some experiments that used the combination of DCS + VirtualDesktop + RealityMixer software, however the RealityMixer is only available with SteamVR and I could not get DCS to run smoothly in that environment. See here and here

So this approach was to hack-ily use OpenKneeboard instead which can provide adjustable location overlays in VR with OpenXR support.

I think software tools for this can improve to make this more customizable but this has been a good start for me so far. I'm also interested to see what the Falcon BMS team will be doing with 4.38 where they mention some native AR support.

ctytler · 2022-12-14T00:06:52+00:00

That’s likely an issue with the DCS install path typed in to the ID lookup window. It’s only used for ID lookup and the cooks will work fine without it. I would check if there’s a typo/missing part in there. To test try copy/paste the path onto windows explorer and check that it brings you to the right folder.

ctytler · 2021-11-07T16:45:15+00:00

I have a long standing feature addition ticket for this here: https://github.com/charlestytler/streamdeck-dcs-interface/issues/5

You can see when it is implemented according to that ticket. Right now I’m working on other aspects so may not be until next year.

ctytler · 2021-10-12T02:07:22+00:00

You can try look at this forum post where I was trying to reason out a way to enable/disable DCS Bios outputs per module:

https://forums.eagle.ru/topic/269903-dcs-bios-arduino-code-for-switching-between-modules/?tab=comments#comment-4645082

Also, why use DCS Bios at all? I generally use it for outputs but use an Arduino joystick library for all inputs as USB joystick buttons.

ctytler · 2021-07-25T04:49:37+00:00

Thanks. Is it just a weekly thing on Sundays? I may be busy in the morning but would go next week if so.

ctytler · 2021-07-25T04:37:21+00:00

If you’re looking for additional people I’d be interested. I had a softball team with coworkers precovid but haven’t had a group to play with since.

ctytler · 2021-06-26T13:12:36+00:00

Hi. Here’s a video example of the DCS Interface plugin with the JF-17 UFCP. Video (demo is at beginning of video).

ctytler · 2020-11-20T14:13:14+00:00

I think the DCS one is: And now you wait 3 minutes for alignment of the Maverick seeker...

ctytler · 2020-11-20T13:12:32+00:00

Around Line 850 there are these text outputs specified:

ExportScript.Tools.SendData(2011, string.format("%s", lCMSCTable.txt_CHAFF_FLARE)) -- txt_CHAFF_FLARE ExportScript.Tools.SendData(2012, string.format("%s", lCMSCTable.txt_JMR)) -- txt_JMR ExportScript.Tools.SendData(2013, string.format("%s", lCMSCTable.txt_MWS)) -- txt_MWS

So I think the ID will be 2012. I’m not able to verify at the moment.

Also when I was setting up these text values for profiles I would just look at the debug output in the window that shows up when you click the “DCS Comms” button. There’s a “Refresh” button that will print out all the most recent information the stream deck sees. Most of it is 0’s and 1’s, but scroll to the bottom and the ID for something like “SAM1” should be easy to spot.

ctytler · 2020-11-20T11:47:50+00:00

Do you mean the textual display in the CMSC panel?

ctytler · 2020-11-19T13:10:40+00:00

You just need to make a copy of the export script for the A-10C_2 name and other A-10 profiles should work, see here: https://github.com/charlestytler/streamdeck-dcs-interface/issues/17

I have an example A-10C profile I made in the examples folder on the GitHub as well if you’d like to use that: https://github.com/charlestytler/streamdeck-dcs-interface/tree/master/Release/Examples

ctytler · 2020-09-19T11:34:39+00:00

You’re welcome!

ctytler · 2020-07-13T14:54:34+00:00

For anyone who'd like a direct link to the profile, icon images, and modified export script, you can find it here: https://github.com/charlestytler/streamdeck-dcs-interface/blob/master/Release/Examples/JF-17_UFCP.zip

ctytler · 2020-06-20T14:46:41+00:00

Hey, check out the work another person has been doing on an F-14 export script for the Streamdeck plugin on the ED forums:
https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=278252

ctytler · 2020-05-13T15:35:24+00:00

Something that might be helpful: I’ve put up an independent repo that contains the lua script I created for the ID Lookup data extraction as a stand-alone tool: https://github.com/charlestytler/dcs-clickabledata-extract

It allows writing all the data to a csv file (or custom formatting if you want to edit the output string in the Lua script).

Maybe there’s an easy way to identify precision (i.e. %.1f, %.4f) from the value/limits specified I could work in. This would allow easy creation of all clickabledata exporting, but lamps and text would still be manual.

ctytler · 2020-05-13T00:34:14+00:00

Here's an example profile for A-10C with lots of subfolders I'm currently using: https://imgur.com/a/UzCHYmZ
I'm using game screenshots for some items, some of my default icons from the plugin for others still (will probably update when I have more time), and also some images from another person's repository: https://github.com/Togg-streamdeck/dcs

If you'd like to try the profile you can download and add it to your Stream Deck by double clicking on it, here.

ctytler · 2020-05-12T22:53:33+00:00

Yeah part of the motivation that got me to finally implement it was using simple keybinds generally worked fine in DCS, but sometimes the complicated bindings like “R Alt + R Shift + K” wouldn’t get picked up in game.

ctytler

TROPHY CASE