Release Elite Cougar MFD Cockpit Display - game changing new companion app

GJ51 · Jan 6, 2021

I've been putting off trying this because I was never happy with the screen kludges needed to light up the TM Cougar MFD, but I have found some displays that will mount under the MFD and allow my MFD's to remain attached to my Monstertech desk mounts.

They are not cheap, but for me this looks perfect. I have a pair on order but like everything else, it looks like 4 - 6 weeks to fill the order.

http://www.cubesim.com.cn/

Email communication was fast and payment acknowledged promptly.

There's also a review on YT that was very positive that convinced me to take the plunge.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7aUKxidvMk

There area few more videos available

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Cubesim

Bionic Bytes · Jan 6, 2021

I’d love to see some pics when you’re set up!

Bionic Bytes · Jan 14, 2021

Not long to go now (this weekend) for the big release. This release focuses on giving CMDRs extra screens for information, and these screens are fully customisable with a visual editor. As long as the number of displays remain the same, then design changes will be instantly visible. You can now dynamically re-assign which roles goto each display, so for example Orrery to screen 3, Galaxymap to screen 4 and you can have upto 8 screens. However, screens #0 and #1 are fixed and can not be reassigned because these screens are dynamic in that they react to Elite's states and thus display game related activity data on as needed basis.

Bionic Bytes · Jan 15, 2021

Version v1.600 Released
I'm please to announce a major release and set of fixes for Cougar Display.

Customisable information panels
Display role assignment
Up to 8 simultaneous displays
Bug fixes
Updated documentation

Bionic Bytes · Jan 26, 2021

Version v1.610 Released
I'm please to announce a major release and set of fixes for Cougar Display.

Custom panel designer - better screen user interface handling width/height input
Custom panel - Materials - now shows materials of body when approaching orbital descent
FSS Discovery - now automatically updates when all bodies found event occurs
High gravity warning - planet approach
Heading overlay window - now maintains Z order when active
Better multimonitor support - detecting and repositioning of display windows out of bounds from any monitor

Bionic Bytes · Feb 4, 2021

Version v1.611 Released

Custom Panels - Stats - "SellDrones" added to journal events processor
Custom Panels - Nav Route - prints trip distance (LY)
Custom Panels - Materials & status flags - fill colour is derived from MFD_layouts.xml - the iconcolour Off attribute
Custom Panels - Nav Route Destination - colour is derived from MFD_layouts.xml - the targettext attribute
Custom Panels - CMDR ship - colour is derived from MFD_layouts.xml - the statustext attribute
Custom Panels - "Clone" a panel and "Send to back/front" design menus
Custom Panel - exploration panel (version 2) pre-built
New feature: Flight console - FSD Jump status lights

Bionic Bytes · Feb 25, 2021

New version to be released early March will add to and improve space radio chatter, giving a greater degree of freedom customising scripts and controlling various aspects - such as radio chatter in system space as well as supercruise, selection of voices for actor types, improved radio distortion, and more.

Bionic Bytes · Mar 12, 2021

Version v1.700 Released

A major new release focusing on quality improvements and extending immersion (space radio simulation - Air Traffic Control simulation).

New feature: ATC space radio chatter - replacing NASA Space Radio chatter.
New: Custom panels - ship ident, ship manufaturer, Elite Ranks.
New: Additional icons in the MFDIconset.xml (Masslocked, FSD Cooldown, FSD Charging, Analysis mode, Supercruise (change of icon)
Cockpit Layouts - Icon text can be taken from OffColour attribute instead of OnColour attribute.
Heading Overlay - output in km rather than m but displaying as km; Can customise font size and colour (Commander's Log - Navigation tab)
Docking assistant - improvements to the logic and layout of megaship/fleetcarrier rendering
Commander's Log - added volcansim to the list of interesting items; fixed eccentricity threshold not being applied
Supercriuse - console - POI - No longer lists fleet carriers
NPC chatter - cached voice used with NPC pilot (up to 3 minutes)
Text to Speech - Can now choose audio playback device; NPC voices now have audio filters applied to them (same as Space Radio chatter simulation)
Shipyard - added missing cobra/cobra mkiv
Stabilty fix -When approaching orbital cruise, possible internal exceptions - noticeable when application closes.

Bionic Bytes · Mar 27, 2021

Version v1.800 Released - In Preparation for Odyssey Alpha

In preparation for Odyssey Alpha, I'm pleased to announce version 1.800, which includes using ED:CD along side Elite Odyssey alpha.

New features in this release below:

Custom panels – automatic menu system (to switch between custom panels) with hot keys
Custom panels – can assign keypress and background flashes on press
Landing pad assistant – can now reverse image
Low fuel warning (hyperspace jump, custom panels fuel gauge)
Fleetcarrier – Carrier statistics (finance) – human readable currency
FleetCarrier – uses TargetText font and colour from XML file
Windows Monitor scaling – no longer affects window size and positions
FSS / DSS scans – better noticeboard descriptions
Fix to COVAS assistant (wrong voice)

For those intending to use ED:CD along side Odyssey, please add/amend the following into the MFDCougar.ini file
[EDClient]
Title=Elite - Dangerous (CLIENT)
Beta=1
BetaJournalSuffix=alpha

GJ51 · Apr 1, 2021

I put off trying this again as I had a contractor renovating my family room for the last 6 weeks. The Cubesims are now installed and I gave the app another go.

Unfortunately, I'm still getting seemingly unsolvable issues. On the first attempt, the program initialized and I was encouraged, but subsequently a re-load stalled at gray screens that I couldn't do anything with. After that, I was getting sound output, but I couldn't get Voice Attack to respond to any Mic input.

Restoring my system back to before running ED:CD returns everything to normal.

I have no idea what or why ED:CD is not compatible with my system, but I'll try to re-load my system on another SSD in a bit for testing without having to worry about messing up my primary drive. I updated everything and checked for the latest drivers, etc. but ED:CD seems to run into a problem with my sound system/devices and then fails.

Whatever is causing the problem then fouls up sound/microphone operations even after the program is closed and only restoring the box to a time before the program was riun fixes it. I guess I'll have to run the other "Status Display" program unless/until I can figure out why ED:CD is causing fits on my box.

Ryzen 3900X
ASUS Crosshair Hero VIII
32 GB ram
ASUS ROG STRIX 980Ti
Secondary video Nvidia Geforce GT 710
Corsair K100 keyboard and Mouse

Bionic Bytes · Apr 1, 2021

GJ51 said:
I put off trying this again as I had a contractor renovating my family room for the last 6 weeks. The Cubesims are now installed and I gave the app another go.

Unfortunately, I'm still getting seemingly unsolvable issues. On the first attempt, the program initialized and I was encouraged, but subsequently a re-load stalled at gray screens that I couldn't do anything with. After that, I was getting sound output, but I couldn't get Voice Attack to respond to any Mic input.

Restoring my system back to before running ED:CD returns everything to normal.

I have no idea what or why ED:CD is not compatible with my system, but I'll try to re-load my system on another SSD in a bit for testing without having to worry about messing up my primary drive. I updated everything and checked for the latest drivers, etc. but ED:CD seems to run into a problem with my sound system/devices and then fails.

Whatever is causing the problem then fouls up sound/microphone operations even after the program is closed and only restoring the box to a time before the program was riun fixes it. I guess I'll have to run the other "Status Display" program unless/until I can figure out why ED:CD is causing fits on my box.

Ryzen 3900X
ASUS Crosshair Hero VIII
32 GB ram
ASUS ROG STRIX 980Ti
Secondary video Nvidia Geforce GT 710
Corsair K100 keyboard and Mouse

I'm sorry to hear you are having some issues. I'll be glad to work with you in resolving them.
If you hop onto the discord channel, there are lots of people who can successfully use ED:CD with Voice Attack and maybe one of them has encountered this issue and found the cause/solution. If ED:CD is blocking the microphone - you can switch audio devices in the app and it should not do that. Again, I'm willing to write test utilities to investigate the issue further.

Bionic Bytes · Apr 9, 2021

GJ51 said:
Unfortunately, I'm still getting seemingly unsolvable issues. On the first attempt, the program initialized and I was encouraged, but subsequently a re-load stalled at gray screens that I couldn't do anything with. After that, I was getting sound output, but I couldn't get Voice Attack to respond to any Mic input.

Restoring my system back to before running ED:CD returns everything to normal.

I have no idea what or why ED:CD is not compatible with my system, but I'll try to re-load my system on another SSD in a bit for testing without having to worry about messing up my primary drive. I updated everything and checked for the latest drivers, etc. but ED:CD seems to run into a problem with my sound system/devices and then fails.

Whatever is causing the problem then fouls up sound/microphone operations even after the program is closed and only restoring the box to a time before the program was riun fixes it. I guess I'll have to run the other "Status Display" program unless/until I can figure out why ED:CD is causing fits on my box.

I have run ProcessMonitor (sysInternals) to check if the application writes to an area of the registry it's not supposed to. I have programmed the app to only write to the current_user key - so that it persists user settings. The app does not install any files, dlls or write to any other location. Using processMonitor you can check for yourself if this indeed the case. From my testing, nothing out of the ordinary was reported.

GJ51 · Apr 9, 2021

Bionic Bytes said:
I have run ProcessMonitor (sysInternals) to check if the application writes to an area of the registry it's not supposed to. I have programmed the app to only write to the current_user key - so that it persists user settings. The app does not install any files, dlls or write to any other location. Using processMonitor you can check for yourself if this indeed the case. From my testing, nothing out of the ordinary was reported.

Sorry this has been such a nagging issue.

It takes 3 hours to restore my system if it get borked, so I still need to set up dual boot on an ssd to continue further experiments before moving forward.

I'm also working on bracket modifications to install Cubesim monitors behind my MFD's onto the Monstertech mounts.

Once I get the mounting done and install the dual boot setup I'll be ready to give it another go as I do want to make this work properly. I bought the Cubesims primarily to run your software.

It would be helpful to now what register key(s) you write to see if a simple removal of the key(s) restores functionality to my sound systems once I get set up for another test.

Thanks for your patience with my particular issue, I'm a bit surprised no one else seems to be encountering it.

Bionic Bytes · Apr 9, 2021

GJ51 said:
Sorry this has been such a nagging issue.

It takes 3 hours to restore my system if it get borked, so I still need to set up dual boot on an ssd to continue further experiments before moving forward.

I'm also working on bracket modifications to install Cubesim monitors behind my MFD's onto the Monstertech mounts.

Once I get the mounting done and install the dual boot setup I'll be ready to give it another go as I do want to make this work properly. I bought the Cubesims primarily to run your software.

It would be helpful to now what register key(s) you write to see if a simple removal of the key(s) restores functionality to my sound systems once I get set up for another test.

Thanks for your patience with my particular issue, I'm a bit surprised no one else seems to be encountering it.

Happy to discuss in as much detail as you want on the Discord channel, in a PM if you like.
The registry key I write to is HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\BionicBytes\EDCD

As far as I can see, no other reg keys are written to.

I think you are the only person who has cited this as an issue. Still I'd like to get to the bottom of it.

Bionic Bytes · May 7, 2021

Version v1.900 Released - Odyssey Support

Elite Odyssey support
Can customise the weapons console’s active target animation delay (time to return PiPs and shields back to normal)
Dynamic volume assignment – ATC Radio chatter (via joystick / button press)
Dynamic Market custom panel (Import/Export commodities)
Odyssey Player Vitals custom panel (health/oxygen/temperature/gravity)
Odyssey suits/weapons statistics custom panel (credits,bought,sold,upgrades)
Hyperwarp custom panel – new animation sequence of starting FSD jump
FSSMaterials custom panel can display elements by name or symbol. Highlights materials with less than 50% of max capacity (written in white text)
Mission Log – can now import waypoints from text files (CRLF or CSV)
Improvements to Hyperspace jump animation – Status text colour uses Flight layout console
Key Bindings – quick key assignment has been improved (and bugs fixed)
Layout Editor bug fixed
In theory – now support custom MFD hardware (other than Thrustmaster) and with different number of buttons.
MFD Cougar Joysticks can be assigned to displays other than 0 or 1 (future development planned for this feature)
CubeSim compatibility support
Autoshutdown when Elite closes

Bionic Bytes · May 8, 2021

New version v1.901 released
Bug fix - Role Assignments - modifying number of MFD Displays Change of behaviour - application start-up and shutdown. Previously, EDDB database files were downloaded. One of these files - listings - could not be persisted because of a limitation of an internal component. To combat this, this file was downloaded and imported on each start-up; however as the size of this file has increased, so too has the import time. The new behaviour is to persist the file to disk (new component used) upon shutdown and load from file (if the file exists) at start-up. Additionally, imports from EDDB are now performed asynchronously via a background thread. This causes some challenges with the UI - for example the user can now exit the application before the imports have completed. Additionally, commodity searching could be initiated by the user whilst the database is being imported. It is felt that the decreased start-up delays compensates for the potential issues arising from the background thread not completing. To combat the potential issues faced by the UI, a splash screen is presented showing there is an import in progress. Users are free to continue using Cougar Display whilst the screen is showing - under the provision that commodity searching whilst imports are executing is unwise!

Bionic Bytes · May 29, 2021

Version v1.10.0.0 Released

Speech synthesis is getting an overhaul in this release to make it more powerful and fully customisable.

Customise and enable/disable/set delays for each speech event defined. (Can use a different language if you wish)
In-game Elite events generating speech will now use the voice assignments as defined by Air Traffic Control (station, system authority, maleviolent, everyone else)
ATC voice assignments also available on the Speech Synthesis tab
Book Taxi - start 5 minute countdown
Dropship - start 5 minute countdown
Start FleetCarrier jump - 15 min countdown
Merging of the two separate systems - speech synthesis and Air Traffic Control
Some bugs fixed relating to applying pitch and filter effects to COVAS assistant voice.
Custom Panels can now have blank title(s) - resulting in no menu across the top
bug fixes:
- Layout editor - button options (enabled/IcontextcolourOff) now persist to XML correctly
- Altitude (custom panel) wasn't always working as intended
- Altitude & fuel gauge - improved texture rendering (especially with long alt meters)
- Ship (custom panel) was drawn shifted due to panel title/menu area
Auto update - now makes backups of potentially customised files
Odyssey - updated journal events and statuses following game release

Bionic Bytes · Jun 12, 2021

Version 1.11.0.0 Released

Flexible joystick assignments to consoles
- allows assignments of custom made "Cougar" joysticks

Fuel gauge - better rendering
Health/Oxygen (On Foot) - truncates health to max of 5 digits
Suit - now shows "shields on" graphic

Custom Panel - Odyssey status flags

bug fixes
-Fixed exception caused by voice effects system getting overwhelmed by too many voices
-Status bits - key press - prevent multiple mouse clicks whilst first is still active
-Speech Events - MissionFailed now retrieves correct phrases
-Rank (custom panel) - no longer displays Odyssey ranks when in Horizons
-Rank/progression events are always read from the journal
-Nasa_script.txt - conversations were using Malevolent role voices instead of security role voices
-Updated journal backpack events due to Odyssey patches

NC Sarge · Jul 16, 2021

It's fun to see how far my "analog" panel inserts for the cougars from my thread of 2014 have come in 2021 - and some icons are still looking familiar ;-)

Bionic Bytes · Jul 24, 2021

Version v1.12.00 Released

I'm pleased to announce version 1.12.00, which supports Odyssey update 5 and more......

New features in this release:

Application memory footprint reduced to allow more TTS voices to load
EDDB commodities now loaded upon request (rather than start-up - saves 500MB memory)
Optimisation - only read assigned joystick devices (or those looking like Thrustmaster MFD Cougars). Saves CPU cycles processing too many joystick devices.
SpeechEvents - 4 new events added (Passenger Liner,Police/Security,Military,Search and Rescue)
Odyssey : ShipLocker event replaces ShipLockerMaterials (Alpha)
Odyssey : Suitloadout - weapon module
StylesMenu - supports the default carbon (dark grey) and Windows themes.
Orrery - fixed issue whereby orbit lines were not picking up their colours from the System Layout (Icon on / off colour attributes)
bug fixes to the initial TTS voice detection
bug fixes to Galaxy Map - when route optimiser creates a route
bug fixes to Galaxy Map - when displaying the orrery
EDDB Commodity loading - now done upon request (via Mission Explorer - commodity search (Refresh button) )

The included fixes_v1.12.0.0 gives more details

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