F1 2016 Possible hotkey solution

[Booth.the.doberman]

For anyone searching for a way to do macros in F1 2016, I think I may have stumbled upon a reasonable candidate. G-Hotkey (g-hotkey.com) is a free program that allows you to reassign keys or assign macros to keys (I have no connection to it, by the way) and it works with directx/directinput/etc. In just a few hours tonight I was able to figure out how it works and was able to program a couple of buttons to navigate the MFD. I had one button that would select each fuel mix. A button to set brake bias forward and another to set it to the rear. Two buttons each for diff and downforce. I don't know if this is the best solution or even a reasonable solution, but it's something others might find interesting to examine for themselves. My plan is to use the innards of a numeric keypad and add some buttons to my G27 wheel so I never have to take my hands off the wheel to easily operate the MFD.

 

[TheFlamingRed]

I'm not a big in race tinkerer when it comes to brake bias and differential, but fuel management is something I do a lot of. I have three spare buttons on my wheel (by buttons, they're actually a dial) so it would be awesome if I could hook that to lean, standard and rich.

I'll try and configure it when I have time Sunday, - but if it's a Macro, how does it know which MFD screen you're already on, so it can change mixes?

 

[JoelGL]

For anyone searching for a way to do macros in F1 2016, I think I may have stumbled upon a reasonable candidate. G-Hotkey (g-hotkey.com) is a free program that allows you to reassign keys or assign macros to keys (I have no connection to it, by the way) and it works with directx/directinput/etc. In just a few hours tonight I was able to figure out how it works and was able to program a couple of buttons to navigate the MFD. I had one button that would select each fuel mix. A button to set brake bias forward and another to set it to the rear. Two buttons each for diff and downforce. I don't know if this is the best solution or even a reasonable solution, but it's something others might find interesting to examine for themselves. My plan is to use the innards of a numeric keypad and add some buttons to my G27 wheel so I never have to take my hands off the wheel to easily operate the MFD.

Thanks. Have you tried xpadder or joy2key? I'm guessing they might be similar to G-hotkey, but not sure. Have you got the MFD layout, for reference on mapping? I believe you'd have to know the position to determine the correct number of key presses, as well as the direction of the key press?

 

[Booth.the.doberman]

I tried joy2key, xpadder (I only looked at the older free version) and autohotkey and a couple of other obscure ones and did not have any success with those because of the directx connection. They fail for the same reason macros and key reassignment on the G27 profiler fails.

Here's how you know where you are in the MFD. Every time you open the MFD or go through the pages until you get to the "Change" one (I'll use that name to describe the settings page), it always goes to the top and has Fuel Mix selected. So, the first thing you have to do manually is navigate with the MFD button to that "Change" page. Now you can use a macro button. Let's say you want to have a button that sets the mix to rich. No matter which mix is currently selected, you only have to go right twice to get to rich. The fuel mix selection does not wrap around and it stops when it reaches rich no matter how many times you press the right button. Similarly, if you want to switch from anything to standard, you only have to go right twice and then left once (you could go right 100 times and then left once and you still get back to standard).

How about a brake balance button. From the "Change" window (where it always opens with fuel mix selected) you need to go down once. So a button to move bias forward is down and then right. As soon as you hit that key and it goes down and right, you want it to finish by going back up once. This puts you back at the fuel mix selection so any additional presses go down right up (advancing the bias and returning to fuel mix).

The two critical things here are that you have to manually navigate to the "change" page before you can run any macro and that each macro has to finish by returning the selector to the Fuel Mix option. That gives you a fixed starting point. So, for example, if you wanted to set differential higher, you would navigate to the "change" page and press your Diff+ button, which would do a down down right up up. If you immediately wanted to change bias forward, you press the Forward Bias button and it does a down right up. The only "special" one that I remember is Next Tires. Next Tires wraps around so you might only need one button to move down to that selection and then go right through the selections. I haven't gotten that far. I don't remember how wing fix works either off the top of my head.

 

[JoelGL]

I tried joy2key, xpadder (I only looked at the older free version) and autohotkey and a couple of other obscure ones and did not have any success with those because of the directx connection. They fail for the same reason macros and key reassignment on the G27 profiler fails.

Here's how you know where you are in the MFD. Every time you open the MFD or go through the pages until you get to the "Change" one (I'll use that name to describe the settings page), it always goes to the top and has Fuel Mix selected. So, the first thing you have to do manually is navigate with the MFD button to that "Change" page. Now you can use a macro button. Let's say you want to have a button that sets the mix to rich. No matter which mix is currently selected, you only have to go right twice to get to rich. The fuel mix selection does not wrap around and it stops when it reaches rich no matter how many times you press the right button. Similarly, if you want to switch from anything to standard, you only have to go right twice and then left once (you could go right 100 times and then left once and you still get back to standard).

How about a brake balance button. From the "Change" window (where it always opens with fuel mix selected) you need to go down once. So a button to move bias forward is down and then right. As soon as you hit that key and it goes down and right, you want it to finish by going back up once. This puts you back at the fuel mix selection so any additional presses go down right up (advancing the bias and returning to fuel mix).

The two critical things here are that you have to manually navigate to the "change" page before you can run any macro and that each macro has to finish by returning the selector to the Fuel Mix option. That gives you a fixed starting point. So, for example, if you wanted to set differential higher, you would navigate to the "change" page and press your Diff+ button, which would do a down down right up up. If you immediately wanted to change bias forward, you press the Forward Bias button and it does a down right up. The only "special" one that I remember is Next Tires. Next Tires wraps around so you might only need one button to move down to that selection and then go right through the selections. I haven't gotten that far. I don't remember how wing fix works either off the top of my head.

Thanks for the detail suggestions. It would be of great help though if theres a pic/screenshot of the MFD content. Do you have one, so mapping will be easy to create, having it on the side for reference?

 

[Booth.the.doberman]

Here's a map of MFD

Fuel Mix
----- Lean <=> Standard <=> Rich
Brake Bias
----- Min % <=> Max %
Differential
----- Min % <=> Max %
Downforce
---- Min (1) <=> Max (10)
Fix wing
----- No <=> Yes
Next Tire
----- SS<=>S <=>M <=>H <=> I <=>W (note that going right from W takes you to SS; this is the only selector that wraps around)

 

[Booth.the.doberman]

I wanted to post an update since I have completed this project. I now have macro MFD buttons on my G27 wheel.
Here are the details. The buttons are Fentaly momentary contacts and the control board is salvaged from a $10 USB numeric keypad. The piece that holds the switches is 3/8 acrylic with carbon fiber stick-on film. My objective was to add the button plate without doing any modification to the wheel itself. I also wanted it easily removable. The six screws in the Logitech hub are cosmetic only. The wheel is actually held to the chassis by anther hub hidden behind the Logitech one. That hub also has a bolt coming out that the Logitech hub screws onto (via an epoxied nut) and holds the button plate to the wheel. So to remove the button plate, spin the Logitech hub off its bolt and remove the button plate. The software behind the macros is a free utility called G-Hotkey. G-Hotkey can talk to directx/directinput and it can do key reassignment and macros.Each of the buttons will automatically advance the selector in the MFD to the proper location and make that selection. For example, the red Fuel button will automatically load Rich fuel. Pressing the green Fuel key will load standard mix and the blue fuel key yields lean. Brake bias forward is the red bias key and brake bias rear is the blue bias key. Each time the button is pressed, it will move the selector to brake bias and advance once right or left to the next higher/lower setting depending on whether you pressed the red or blue bias button The other buttons work similarly.
In a nutshell, what this whole affair does is put your keyboard on your wheel and allow you to have macros. I never used the MFD in the past because when I looked at it, I ended up in the weeds. Also note that the six G27 buttons on the wheel are available if desired. One thing: I absolutely HATE THE LABELS. There has to be something better.

One last note, someone will ask why I didn't put more buttons on the bottom. Simply, that's there the controller board sits and all the buttons are wired to it. It has a USB cable that goes to the computer. Which explains why this thing had to be removable. I didn't want Microsoft restarting my computer in the middle of the night and having the USB cable wrap around the wheel and bust it all to hell.

 

[JoelGL]

Nice DIY button box

Quite OT, but while at it, what's 'Differential', is this the same as Power/Coast?

 

[Booth.the.doberman]

Yes. I think it's listed as "differential" on the MFD. But I could be wrong.

 

[TheFlamingRed]

The two critical things here are that you have to manually navigate to the "change" page before you can run any macro and that each macro has to finish by returning the selector to the Fuel Mix option. That gives you a fixed starting point. .

That was the annoying part - scrolling through the screens to the change screen. By the time I am there, I am only two clicks away from choosing a fuel mix anyway.

Wait a second, no other screen is Affected by -> and <- buttons are there?

If I wanted Rich Mix, surely I can make the Macro go -> -> *change MDF* -> -> *change MDF* (repeat for as many screens as there are and stop, and be left on whichever screen I was originally on?


Edit: Oh Comedy... Pressing Left or Right Arrows will AUTOMATICALLY bring up the Change MDF screen... Who would have thought....

 

[Booth.the.doberman]

Yes, it does. That makes it easy if all you want is a macro for Fuel Mix and you don't care about anything else. If you want to have macros for Brake Bias, etc., it gets a little more complicated. For the sake of discussion shorthand, let's say U is the MFD Up key, R is right, L is left and D is down.

So Fuel Rich is RRR from any menu. Fuel Lean is LLL. Fuel Std is RRRL. Easy peasy. Now let's look at Brake Bias forward. From the Change screen, it would be DR. From any other screen, it would be LDR or RDR. But that won't work because if you were already in the Change screen it would move Fuel Mix before going down to Bias. That means you would need two macros...one when you're already on the Change screen and one when you're not and that's not a good answer. If we could turn off MFD, we could have the macro do Off then On (which would take us automatically to Fuel Mix in the Change menu) and everything would work fine from there.

I think that was a great find. Even if you don't want macros, now we all know that to change fuel from any menu just involves pressing the MFD Right button thrice to get rich and the MFD left button thrice to get Lean. That's still better than navigating the MFD menu and that could use two buttons on the wheel.