X-Plane Key Sender

This plugin enables mapping keys in X-Plane 12 to be sent to a virtual or remote machine via TCP. The virtual/remote machine will need to run xpkeylistener.py which will receive and simulate a keyboard key being pressed and released. The specific key being pressed can be modified in the xpkeysender.lua plugin. The use case this plugin was developed for is macOS X-Plane 12 users that want to run SayIntentions in a Windows VM and be able to map a key in X-Plane to be used with push-to-talk (PTT) in SayIntentions.

Setup

Host (macOS)

• Install FlyWithLua for X-Plane 12.
• Move xpkeysender.lua to the X-Plane 12/Resources/plugins/FlyWithLua/Scripts folder.

Virtual Machine (Windows)

• Follow installation instructions for SayIntentionsForMac.
• Shut down the VM and configure port forwarding by opening Settings for the Windows VM in UTM, go to Network > Port Forward, and click New. Configure the port forwarding as follows and click Save:
  • Protocol: TCP
  • Guest Address: Blank
  • Guest Port: 27900
  • Host Address: Blank
  • Host Port: 27900
• Setup SayIntentions to use the keyboard key specified in xpkeysender.lua for push-to-talk (PTT). The default key used is n, m, and k for key 1, key 2 and key 3 in the xpkeysender.lua plugin.
• Install Python.
• Install the Python package pynput by using pip install pynput from Windows Powershell.

X-Plane

• Map a keyboard or controller binding to FlyWithLua/xpkeysender/send_key1, FlyWithLua/xpkeysender/send_key2, and FlyWithLua/xpkeysender/send_key3. By default, these will send the keys n, m, and k respectively.

Using

1. Launch run.bat from SayIntentionsForMac.
2. Launch xpkeylistener.py by double clicking or using python .\xpkeylistener.py from Windows Powershell.
3. Launch SayIntentions.
4. Launch X-Plane 12.