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Alternative interfaces to FMCs

Z

Zack Kline

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3
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unitedstates
Hi All,

I'm wondering about the interface to FMCs this morning, such as the ones offered by Project Magenta, among others. As a blind user, I find the default display methodology they use to be very inaccessible.
It strikes me that a majority of "programming," the FMC seems to be a largely text-based process, however. You can use soft-keys to make menu selections, but you end up doing a lot of keyboard input, and the screen displays (admittedly cryptic) information in textual form quite a bit.

I'm wondering how practical it would be to make an alternate UI for some of these simulations? I'm currently trying to find a way to fly SIDs and Stars, and an FMC or GPS add-on of some sort seems to be one solution.

If I could read the interfaces used by any of these products, be they stand-alone programs or in-sim gauges, I could have a much more realistic sim experience, which is my ultimate goal.

Thanks for any thoughts :)
 
It's impossible to code an alternate UI as you need the source code of the gauge to interface with the softkey variables. The only option is to ask the add-on developer to, say, add proper keyboard support for their FMC gauges.
 
Heretic said:
It's impossible to code an alternate UI as you need the source code of the gauge to interface with the softkey variables. The only option is to ask the add-on developer to, say, add proper keyboard support for their FMC gauges.
Click to expand...

Damn. I was afraid it would be something like that. This would obviously depend a lot on individual developers, and since blind FS enthusiasts are a tiny niche anyway, it's not likely to make much difference from a monetary standpoint.

I feel like stand-alone programs are probably easier to make accessible than FS gauges, from my limited experience. The exception might be something like FSNavigator, which displays a whole separate UI on top of the FSX screen.

I'm a bit torn on how I want to proceed, if only because it's hard to justify purchasing a product i can't use in the hope that a developer will be kind enough to make accessibility changes. I've been thinking a lot about the highly-recommended GNS 530, which though it isn't an FMC per se would seem to suffer from a lot of the same concerns, from my point of view.

Thanks for the information, though it wasn't what I hoped to hear.
 
FWIW the recent 747 allows (read) access to FMC screen as well as pushing buttons to write to it, so it could be used to make a vision-impaired-accessible version.
I don't know what about the rest of the simulation though...
 
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