Continuing to work on the FMC; it’s a huge work so I’m progressing more slowly than I would like. Another aspect I have been developping is the implementation of the overhead. The overhead controls all the systems in the plane, so there’s a lot of interactions and complexity. I wanted to do something which can be easily reworked and improved, so I decided to use scripts. X-plane comes with a native implementation of LUA, which is a powerfull scripting language. I have made a script to define “datarefs” containing the state of every element of the overhead panel. These are variables that can be manipulated in the script to simulate the behaviour of the systems controled by the overhead. The overhead hardware state is fed into these datarefs (that’s a lot of switches and knobs !) , so they can be used to programmatically simulate all systems.
Using this approach, I have designed an “open” system which can be easily edited to modify, correct or improve the simulation of the overhead by the end user with a minimal knowledge of programming. This script is contained in a modified version of the Laminar B738, in the folder /X-Plane 11/Aircraft/NTAV B737-800/plugins/xlua.
I have also decided to write a manual for the system, as it is becoming larger and larger and has more and more functionalities and options. I will release it here as soon as possible.