Chirp chirp chirp little chicken – interfacing Ace Combat 7 for some sweet telemetry for my VF-1 inspired home cockpit

So what happens when sheer stubbornness, a glorified button box, Ace Combat and the Unreal Engine Scripting System meet? Pure magic. I got the game to spew out a constant stream of telemetry data and events in search for more immersion in my VF-1 inspired home cockpit. The approach is the very same that I used for X4 Foundations before: Side load lib Luasocket, get a network connection established and start dumping extracted game data to it. This is highly experimental and the result of hacking away for the last ~4 nights. This video demonstrates the results:

https://makertube.net/w/cbXJAveVgVTGVEi58akVTA / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50J-gjkgJxE

To be perfectly clear: I am aware that Ace Combat is not a “flight sim”, not really worth of an API, and I know that DCS or BMS does it better and in greater detail and even with realism. This is not the point. I started working on this just for fun and to satisfy my own curiosity to see *if I can make it*. This may be hard to believe but chipping rocks together until the computer does what I want is “quality time” for me 🤓

You may have noticed that I’m a Macross fan and that my SimPit is heavily inspired by a VF-1 Valkyrie and that I usually use a modded VF-1 plane in AC as well. This is my personal substitute for the lack of any decent Macross / Robotech game since Macross VOXP.

This said I usually fly Space Pew Pew games with this cockpit so everything you see going on is designed for _space_ and not for flight sim. This is also why I sometimes talk about “ships” or “docked”. This is wording found everywhere in my plumbing pipeline for telemetry. All games I play, that can use this, send their data over this. The idea is that I do not have to rewrite half of the connected systems for every game so I transform the data into a unified format before.

You can read more about this on the dedicated project website https://simpit.dev (and here, of course). I will soon update it with some more details for Ace Combat. If this looks like something you’d like to try let me know, I’d love to connect. I’m active on various social media. Please do let me know if you find this inspiring.

https://beko.famkos.net/2025/12/31/chirp-chirp-chirp-little-chicken-interfacing-ace-combat-7-for-some-sweet-telemetry-for-my-vf-1-inspired-home-cockpit/

#AceCombat #AceCombat7 #arwes #flightsim #gaming #gamingonlinux #homeCockpit #linuxgaming #macross #Robotech #simpit #SpacePewPew #UE4SS #VF1

Showing off the new touch display and HUD UI rework for that VF-1 vibe in the home cockpit

https://makertube.net/w/5uLBzaawSVwqVCjcGfjSfC

Showing off the new touch display and HUD UI rework for that VF-1 vibe in the home cockpit

PeerTube

VFD segment displays in HTML/CSS for my SimPit

So I dunno if you know what a #VFD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_fluorescent_display) is but I’m a sucker for these – at least virtually.

Games like #RebelGalaxyOutlaw perfected the look and this is where I want to go with my #Arwes HUD app for my #EliteDangerous / #X4Foundations home cockpit too.

The segment displays are heavily inspired by #AugmentedUI project (https://augmented-ui.com/) where I’ll borrow some more elements. Learned the neat fake scan lines from there too. And yes the 8 segment display works by shifting bits under the hood 🤓 This isn’t really needed for an app but I have plans to add some real segment displays eventually (I do have a whole box full with these!) so I wanted to know how to implement this anyway.

Video from an earlier stage in the development demos the scan line effect.

The bars are configured with parameters in size, count, percent, colours and thresholds 😁 I also added a random chance of 5% to shift the hue a little bit because just as in real life nothing is perfect.

And yes they are fully themed so switching the colour theme also affects the virtual VFDs.

I’m also going to replace the older horizontal bars, that look way too boring in comparison.

It’s still very early but I hope to get some rad animations going too. See https://www.hudsandguis.com/home/2022/retro-digital-dashboards to get an idea in which direction this is going 🤓

See the dedicated project page https://SimPit.dev for more details on this #Macross #VF1 inspired #cockpit panel.

https://beko.famkos.net/2025/05/04/vfd-segment-displays-in-html-css-for-my-simpit/

#arwes #augmentedUi #cockpit #EliteDangerous #homeCockpit #macross #RebelGalaxyOutlaw #simpit #VF1 #VFD #x4foundations

Vacuum fluorescent display - Wikipedia

Quick demo time: I got a touch display 17.3″ that will re…

Quick demo time: I got a touch display 17.3″ that will replace my rather old one in my VF-1 inspired cockpit panel.

Pick your poison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX4LsyqYPCA / https://makertube.net/w/nCopvNbkvkwR9XcG5QPQ3i

Mostly because of the bad viewing angle. I’m not a huge fan of touch but sometimes it is really useful and if I already spend money why not go the extra mile 🤓

https://beko.famkos.net/2025/05/01/15629759/

#Arduino #arwes #homeCockpit #HUD #macross #ReactJS #simpit #Valkyrie #VF1 #VF1 #ViperPit

Short Demo: New 17.3 touch display for my VF-1 inspired home cockpit panel

YouTube

Short Demo: New 17.3 touch display for my VF-1 inspired home cockpit panel

https://makertube.net/w/nCopvNbkvkwR9XcG5QPQ3i

Short Demo: New 17.3 touch display for my VF-1 inspired home cockpit panel

PeerTube

Showing off new features for my home cockpit: Priority alerts, sounds and more status indicators

This uses my X4-SimPit extension for X4: Foundations, that sends ship telemetry via a socket to my node-red plumbing pipeline, which in turn forwards data to Websockets, SocketIO and MQTT. Various subscriber listen on the new messages to run blinken lights and my HUD app. I’m using the well known message format also used by Elite Dangerous so it’s compatible with that game as well.

Pick your poison: https://makertube.net/w/nUoG2ZPeAW1QhT3A2BXRrM / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wp1PkVhH9cc

Oh yeah… and on Linux PC 🤓

Let me know what you think!

X4-SimPit code (pending changes) is here: https://github.com/bekopharm/x4-simpit
The cockpit panel has a dedicated project page here: https://simpit.dev/

https://beko.famkos.net/2025/03/12/showing-off-new-features-for-my-home-cockpit-priority-alerts-sounds-and-more-status-indicators/

#arwes #BattleStarGalactica #BSG #DIY #EliteDangerous #gaming #gamingonlinux #homeCockpit #linux #linuxgaming #macross #PewPew #Robotech #simpit #Space #VF1 #VF1 #Viper #x4foundations

Showing off new features for my home cockpit: Priority alerts, sounds and more status indicators.

PeerTube
Using React and Arwes for a stream overlay WIP

PeerTube

Short demo Primary Buffer Panel with old TV/VFD effect

https://makertube.net/videos/watch/d798c458-3507-4604-89aa-dcc5a063e636

Short demo Primary Buffer Panel with old TV/VFD effect

PeerTube

Quick trip from Armstrong Orbital over to the huge crater on HIP 117029-4 and back

https://makertube.net/videos/watch/b3985368-df9a-40e5-a8c9-4f9f0dd73157

Quick trip from Armstrong Orbital over to the huge crater on HIP 117029-4 and back

PeerTube

Short demo of the SimPit MFDs booting up

https://makertube.net/w/t1bwEKPavoDDeb1ZoYE4yf

Short demo of the SimPit MFDs booting up

PeerTube