msfs-popout-panel-manager/README.md

# MSFS Pop Out Panel Manager
MSFS Pop Out Panel Manager is an application for MSFS 2020 which helps pop out, save and re-position pop out panels to be used by applications such as Sim Innovations Air Manager or to place pop out panels onto your screen at predetermined locations or on another monitor automatically.

[FlightSimulator.com forum thread regarding this project](https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/msfs-pop-out-panel-manager-automatically-pop-out-and-save-panel-position/460613)

[Online Video - How to Use](https://vimeo.com/668430955) 

[Online Video - Auto Pop Out Panels in Action](https://vimeo.com/674073559)

<hr>



## Application Features
* Display resolution independent. Supports 1080p/1440p/4k display.
* Support multiple user defined profiles to save panel locations to be recalled later.
* Intuitive user interface to defined location of panels to be popped out.
* Auto Pop Out feature. The application will detect current aircraft livery and activate the corresponding profile on flight session start.
* Cold Start feature. Panels can be popped out and recalled later even when they're not powered on.
* Auto Panning feature remembers the cockpit camera angle when you first define the pop out panels. You can now pan, zoom in, and zoom out to identify offscreen panels and the camera angle will be saved and reused. This feature requires the use of Ctrl-Alt-0 keyboard binding to save custom camera view per plane configuration. (Can be configured to use 0 through 9). If the keyboard binding is currently being used. The auto-panning feature will overwrite the saved camera view if enabled.
* Fine-grain control in positioning panels down to pixel level. 
* Panels can also be configured to be always on top, with title bar hidden, or stretch to full screen mode.
* User-friendly features such as application Always on Top and Auto Start as MSFS starts.
* Auto save feature. All profile and panel changes are saved automatically.
* Please see [Version](VERSION.md) file for latest added application features.

<hr>

## History: Pop Out Panel Positioning Annoyance
In MSFS, by holding **RIGHT ALT** + **LEFT CLICKING** some instrumentation panels, these panels will pop out as floating windows that can be moved to a different monitor. But this needs to be done every time you start a new flight, RIGHT-ALT clicking, split out child windows, move these windows to final location, rinse and repeat. For predefined toolbar menu windows such as ATC, Checklist, VFR Map, their positions can be saved easily and reposition at the start of each new flight using 3rd party windows positioning tool because these windows have a **TITLE** in the title bar when they are popped out. But any custom pop outs such as PFD and MFD do not have window title. This makes remembering their last used position more difficult and it seems very annoying to resize and re-adjust their positions to be used by Air Manager or other overlay tool on each new flight.

What if you can do the setup once by defining on screen where the pop out panels will be, click a button, and the application will pop these panels out and separate them for you. Then you just need to move these panels to their final positions. Next time when you start a flight, with a single button click, your panels will automatically pop out for you and move to their preconfigured positions. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

<hr>

## How to Use

 1. Start the application **MSFSPopoutPanelManager.exe** and it will automatically connect when MSFS/SimConnect starts. You maybe prompt to download .NET framework 5.0. Please see the screenshot below to download and install x64 desktop version of the framework.

<p align="center">
<img src="images/doc/frameworkdownload.png" width="1000" hspace="10"/>
</p>

 2. First start the game and start a flight. Then, in the app, create a new profile (for example: Cessna 172 G1000)
 
<p align="center">
<img src="images/doc/screenshot_1.png" width="600" hspace="10"/>
</p>

 3. If you want to associate the profile to the current aircraft livery to use in Auto Pop Out feature or automatic profile switching, click the "Plus" button next to the aircraft livery name. The aircraft livery title will become green once the profile is bound to the livery.

 <p align="center">
<img src="images/doc/screenshot_2.png" width="600" hspace="10"/>
</p>
 
 3. Once your flight is started, you're ready to select the panels you want to pop out. Please click "Start Panel Selection" to define where the pop out panels will be using LEFT CLICK. Use CTRL-LEFT CLICK when done to complete the selection. You can also move the number circles at this point to do final adjustment.
 
<p align="center">
<img src="images/doc/screenshot_3.png" width="1000" hspace="10"/>
</p>

 4. Now, click "Start Pop Out". At this point, please be patient. The application will start popping out and separating panels one by one and you will see a lot of movements on screen. If something goes wrong, just follow the instruction in the status message and try again.
 
 5. Once the process is done, you will see a list of panels line up in the upper left corner of the screen. All the panels are given a default name. You can name them anything you want if desire.
 
<p align="center">
<img src="images/doc/screenshot_4.png" width="1000" hspace="10"/>
</p>

 6. Now, start the panel configuration by dragging the pop out panels into their final position (to your main monitor or other monitors). You can also type value directly into the data grid to move and resize a panel. The +/- pixel buttons by the lower left corner of the grid allow you to change panel position at the chosen increment/decrement by selecting the data grid cell (X-Pos, Y-Pos, Width, Height). You can also select "Always on Top", "Hide Title Bar", or "Full Screen Mode" if desire. Once all the panels are at their final position, just click "Lock Panel" to prevent further panel changes.
 
<p align="center">
<img src="images/doc/screenshot_5.png" width="600" hspace="10"/>
</p>

7. To test if everything is working. Once the profile is saved, please click "Restart" in the File menu. This will close all pop outs, except the built-in ones from the game main menu bar, and you're back to the start of the application. Now click "Start Pop Out" and see the magic happens!

8. With auto panning feature enabled, you do not have to line up the circles that identified the panels in order for the panels to be popped out. But if you would like to do it manually without auto-panning, on next start of the flight, just  line up the panels before clicking "Start Pop Out" if needed.

<p align="center">
<img src="images/doc/screenshot_6.png" width="1000" hspace="10"/>
</p>

<p align="center">
<img src="images/doc/screenshot_7.png" width="1000" hspace="10"/>
</p>

<hr>

## How Auto Pop Out Works

The app will try to find a matching profile with the current selected aircraft livery. It will then automatically detect when a flight is starting and then click the "Ready to Fly" button. It will also power on instrumentation for cold start (if necessary), and pop out all panels. This feature allows panels to be popped out without the need of user interaction. If profiles are set and bound to your frequently used aircraft livery, you can auto-start the app minimized in system tray and as you start your flight, panels will automatically pop out for you.

* First make sure in File->Preferences->Auto Pop Out Panel Settings, "Enable Auto Pop Out Panels" option is turned on.

* For existing profile to use Auto Pop Out feature, just click "Add Binding" (the plus sign) and bind the profile to the active aircraft livery currently being displayed. Any bound aircraft livery will appear in GREEN color. Unbound ones will be in WHITE, and bound livery in another profile will be in RED. You can only bound the livery to a single profile so the Auto Pop Out will work.

* During my testing, instrumentations only need to be powered on for Auto Pop Out to work for G1000/G1000 NXi plane during cold start. (There seems to be a bug in the game that you can't do Alt-Right click to pop out cold start panel for this particular plane variant). For other plane instrumentations I've tested (G3000, CJ4, Aerosoft CRJ 550/700, FBW A32NX), panels can be popped out without powering on. So please make sure the checkbox "Power on required to pop out panels on cold start" is checked for G1000 related profiles.

* If you want to fly the same plane with different livery, just add the aircraft livery binding to your desire profile when you switch plane.

* You can go to the preference settings to configure the time delay for each steps for the Auto Pop Out process based on the speed of your computer if things do not work correctly.

* **TIPS:** One trick to force SimConnect to update the current selected aircraft livery so you can do the binding is after selecting a new livery in the World Map, click the "Go Back" button at the lower left of your screen.  You should see aircraft title changes to the active ones. Or you can wait until the flight is almost fully loaded and you will see the aircraft livery gets updated.

[Online Video - Auto Pop Out  in action](https://vimeo.com/674073559) - In the video, after clicking flight restart, the app did all the clicking by itself.

<hr/>

## User Profile Data Files

The user plane profile data and application settings data are stored as JSON files under the following folder path.

* userdata/userprofiledata.json
* userdata/appsettingdata.json
* userdata/autoupdate.json

<hr/>

## Current Known Issue

* Automatic power on for Auto Pop Out Panels feature will not work if you're using any flight control hardware (such as Honeycomb Alpha or Bravo) that permanently binds the master battery switch or master avionics switch. If the hardware control switch is in the off position, pop out manager won't be able to temporary turn on the instrumentation panels to pop them out. This seems to be a bug on Asobo side and only affects the G1000 instrumentation at the moment.

* Current application package size is bigger than previous version of the application because it is not a single EXE file package. With added feature of exception logging and stack trace to support user feedback and troubleshooting, a Single EXE package in .NET 5.0 as well as .NET 6.0 has a bug that stack trace information is not complete. Hopefully, Microsoft will be fixing this problem. 

* Please see [Version](VERSION.md) file for latest known application issues.

 <hr/>
 
## Common Problem Resolution

* Unable to pop out panels when creating a profile for the first time with error such as "Unable to pop out panel #X". If the panel is not being obstructed by another window, by changing the sequence of the pop out when defining the profile may help solve the issue. Currently there are some panels in certain plane configuration that does not follow predefined MSFS pop out rule.

* Unable to pop out panels on subsequent flight. Please follow status message instruction. Also, if using auto-panning, Ctrl-Alt-0 may not have been saved correctly during profile creation. You can trigger a force camera angle save by clicking the "Save Auto Panning Camera" button for the profile. 

* Unable to pop out ALL panels. This may indicate a potential miscount of panels (circles) and the number of actual panels that got popped out. You may have duplicate panels in your selection or panels that cannot be popped out.

* If you encounter application crashes or unknown error, please help my continuing development effort by attaching the file **error.log** in the application folder and open an issue ticket in github repo for this project. This is going to help me troubleshoot the issue and provide hotfixes.

* If you encounter an issue with panels that are not restored back to your saved profile locations, please check if you have other apps such as Sizer or Windows PowerToys that may have conflict with Pop Out Manager.
 

## Author
Stanley Kwok
[hawkeyesk@outlook.com](mailto:hawkeyesk@outlook.com) 

I welcome feedback to help improve the usefulness of this application. You are welcome to take a copy of this code to further enhance it and use within your own project. But please abide by licensing terms and keep it open source:)

## Donation

[<img src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif"
     alt="Markdown Monster icon"
     style="float: left; margin-right: 10px;" />](https://www.paypal.com/donate/?business=NBJ7SZR7MUDE6&no_recurring=0&item_name=Thank+you+for+your+kind+support+of+MSFS+Pop+Out+Panel+Manager%21&currency_code=USD)

Thank you for your super kind support of this app!

## Credits
[MouseKeyHook](https://github.com/gmamaladze/globalmousekeyhook) by George Mamaladze

[Fody](https://github.com/Fody/Fody) .NET assemblies weaver by Fody

[MahApps.Metro Dark Theme](https://github.com/MahApps/MahApps.Metro)  by Jan Karger, Dennis Daume, Brendan Forster, Paul Jenkins, Jake Ginnivan, Alex Mitchell

[Hardcodet NotifyIcon](https://github.com/hardcodet/wpf-notifyicon) by Philipp Sumi, Robin Krom, Jan Karger

[WPF CalcBinding](https://github.com/Alex141/CalcBinding) by Alexander Zinchenko

[AutoUpdater.NET](https://github.com/ravibpatel/AutoUpdater.NET) by Ravi Patel