This utility expansion for Microsoft Flight Simulator brings all your favorite desktop applications right into your VR cockpit.
FSdesktop can
- enable you to watch your favorite streamers,
- help you to follow along YouTube tutorials,
- show you streamers out there your Twitch or YouTube chat
- make those long distance flights a bit more entertaining by letting you stay in touch with your Discord communities
- display your vPilot client
- show you your LittleNavMap flight plans
- ... and much, much more
right inside your Flight Simulator cockpit! This is is especially helpful for those of us who like to fly in VR (and thus not being able to look at a second screen).
If you like it, please let me know and share it with other VR pilots :-) Also, consider yourself invited to join me and the community on the FSdesktop and FSdesktop Discord Server at https://discord.fsdesktop.com
EARLY ACCESS DISCLAIMER:
Please note that FSdesktop is still in its very early development. Chances are that you will find missing features or encounter bugs.
If you do, please check out the documentation to learn about known limitations and the feature roadmap in this document.
Please report bugs and file feature requests via our Community Discord.
- Screenshots
- TL;DR
- Try FSdesktop For FREE
- Support the Development and Go PRO
- Getting Support
- Features: Free vs. Pro
- Known Limitations and Roadmap
- Components
- Installation
- Usage
- Troubleshooting
- Attribution
- Releases and Downloads
- Support Your Modders
FSdesktop
vPilot in FSdesktop
Google Chrome in FSdesktop
Twitch Chat in FSdesktop
Toolbar Icon
The Mod consists of TWO PARTS(!): a main application and an ingame panel that you need to install and run BOTH!
Please take the time to at least read the Installation and Usage sections below!!!
It's dead simple! But if you only install the panel to the community folder and ignore the server this mod won't run and may appear "broken" to you!
You can download FSdesktop and try it for free for 3 days. If you enjoy using FSdesktop, pleaser consider purchasing a license to support the development.
If you enjoy using FSdesktop, you may decide to "go pro" at a Pay-What-You-Want-Price! It's really your call! You'll unlock all features of FSdesktop plus you support the mod's development. Also, you'll make a 3-year-old and a 7-year-old very, very happy, as I can buy them more ice cream :-)
If you have any problems, questions or would like to get in touch and stay involved with an active community of like-minded VR enthusiasts, then don't miss out on yoining our community Discord over at https://discord.fsdesktop.com!
Here's a quick feature breakdown of what features are included in both the FREE and the PRO version, and which features are exclusive for PRO version supporters...
| Free | PRO | |
|---|---|---|
| All your desktop apps inside MSFS | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Variable resolution to adjust for optimal performance | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Variable refresh rate to adjust for optimal performance | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Stream YouTube videos | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Control your media player | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Use vPilot | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Follow your flight plan | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Check your Emails | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Follow your stream's chat | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Configurable Hotkey | (✅) Coming soon | (✅) Coming soon |
| ... and so much more! | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Use forever | ❌ 3 days TRIAL period | ✅ Yes |
| YOU actively support the ongoing development of FSdesktop, bringing Flight Simming in VR to the next level :-) | 😎 Sure! Thanks for giving the mod a shot :-) Spread the word! | 💚 YEAH! You rock!!! |
| TRY FREE | BUY NOW |
| Limitation Description |
Status 💡 = (vague) idea how to approach and solve 🔥 = will be added/fixed soon ⏳ = will take time 🤔 = no clear approach / unlikely to be fixed soon |
|---|---|
| Currently only one window can be streamed at any given time; must go back to to window selector tab to switch | 💡, 🔥 |
| Missing drag and drop support | 💡, 🔥 |
| Windows/Applications must be at least partially visible | 🤔, seems to be inherent to the Windows window management system |
| MSFS must run in windowed mode | 🤔, seems to be inherent to the Windows window management system |
| Dropdown/Context menus and "subwindows" cannot be displayed and interacted with. | ⏳, 🤔, needs some "engineering", not clear if this can be fixed |
Supported Input Methods
The mod project consists of two components:
The panel is the actual ingame panel that you see inside Microsoft Flight Simulator and acts as a client. It communicates with the...
The main application is a webserver and service provider for MSFS ingame panel. It renders the individual windows on your desktop and sends them to the client inside MSFS.
There are two ways to install FSdesktop on your system: With a fully automated installer (recommended) or doing everything manually...
Download the Installer-Executable (Install-FSdesktop-vX.Z.Y.exe) from the release section.
Once the download is finished, run the installer from the download directory. Administrator privileges are NOT required!!!
Select a directory where you want to install the FSdesktop main application. The suggested default location is in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\FSdesktop, but you can change it to whatever you deem fit (like C:\Tools\fsdesktop\ for example). Click Next!
Select a Server Directory
Next, the FSdesktop Installer tries to locate your MSFS Community Folder, where the ingame panel must be installed to. The automatic location mechanism "should work" (TM) for both the Windows Store as well as the Steam versions of the game and the installer will tell you if it did succeed. Otherwise you will have to locate your Community Folder by hand. Then click Next!
IMPORTANT: Just pick the community folder! Do not add any subfolders. Otherwise the panel will NOT work!
Locate your MSFS Community Folder
You should now see a summary of what the installer will copy to what folders. Click Next and the installation will begin. At the end, you will find everything you need to start FSdesktop in your windows start menu.
FSdesktop Start Menu Items
When upgrading to a new version, you should unistall the old one. You are free to try to simply "update" what you already have, but I don't recommend it. Old files may interfere with new ones and break the mod. Therefore, in case you encounter bugs after upgrading, properly uninstall FSdesktop and go for a fresh install!
Make sure to backup your license information, though, just to be save :-)
Download the zip from here.
Place the contents of application folder somewhere convenient (like C:\Tools\fsdesktop\).
Main Application Installation
Place the folder christian1984-ingamepanel-fsdesktop in your MSFS community folder (typically C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Packages\Community)
Panel Installation
When finished, your Community folder should look like this (though there may be more than one extension installed, obviously).
Panel Installation - Done
Please remove all files from the server directory and christian1984-ingamepanel-fsdesktop from your community folder, before installing a new version. Do not "copy over". No excuses! Old files may interfere with new ones and break the mod. Just do it, but keep your license file :-)
In order to launch FSdesktop, you need to do two things:
- Launch the FSdesktop local server application by clicking the FSdesktop icon on your desktop or launch fsdesktop.exe from your command line and...
- ... open the actual FSdesktop ingame panel inside MSFS.
- Step 1: Run
fsdesktop.exeby clicking either the appropriate desktop icon or selecting it from the start menu. This will bring up the FSdesktop core application's desktop window. FSdesktop will now wait for Microsoft Flight Simulator and connect to it. - Step 2: Start Microsoft Flight Simulator. You can do this by either clicking the appropriate icon on your desktop.
- Step 3: Open up the ingame panel once inside the sim (like you would do with other ingame panels like the ATC or weather panel etc.)
When you open the FSdesktop ingame panel for the very first time, you will be greated by an interactive tour that will guide you through the basics of how the application works. Please, please, pretty please: Take the time to follow along and do not skip the tour. It has some very important information in it!
- Step 4: Place the FSdesktop Panel conveniently in your VR space
- Step 5: Click one of the desktop windows that FSdesktop has found to see them in VR.
Please Note:
To get the best out of FSdesktop, please make sure that you run Microsoft Flight Simulator windowed, NOT in full screen.
Run Flight Simulator in Fullscreen Mode
Also, you want to make sure that the window you are about to stream into your VR space is at least party visible.
The Application Should be Partly (Ideally Fully) Visible
If you have purchased a license for FSdesktop, you can activate it by simply entering your email address (the one you used to order) and your serial number in the appropriate fields of the FSdesktop application window. Then click "Checkout FSdesktop License".
If the checkout was successful, your credentials will be stored and, going forward, the license will be checked out automatically when FSdesktop launches.
How to Activate Your License
Core Application Settings
In the FSdesktop core application's settings dialog you'll find the following options:
-
Ingame Panel Scaling: Depending on your screen resolution, the size of your MSFS window and other factors (such as newly released Sim Updates 🙄) you may consider changing your FSdesktop ingame panel's scaling. For most users 100% will work just fine and if you are happy with the appearance of FSdesktop, there is no reason to touch this slider. If you are not, you can use this slider to increase or decrease the ingame panels resolution, making the appearance of the app's UI elements smaller or larger and also affecting the resolution of the streamed content.
-
Ingame Tour: Click this button to restart the FSdesktop ingame panel tour.
-
Input Speed: Optimize the input speed depending on your particular system and setup. For Windows 11, it is recommended to set the input speed to slow. This allows Windows 11 a little bit more time to switch between applications and finally process your input. The option "slowest" should only be used as a last resort. If you encounter issues with input processing, play around with these settings until you find a setting that works well for you.
-
Desktop DPI Settings: If you have a high resolution monitor, chances are that you are running Windows at DPI-Settings of 125% or above. If that is the case, adjust the DPI settings here to match your desktop resolution/DPI settings.
-
Always On Top: Pilots who encounter issues with controlling their apps through FSdesktop may improve their experience by floating the FSdesktop server window "always on top". This seems to be especially true for VR pilots, so give this a shot. If you enable this option the server window will automatically collapse when it loses focus, but will remain on top of all other applications!
-
Input Processor Privileges: If you run into issues where you find that a particular app cannot be controlled with FSdesktop, you can use this checkbox to restart the input processor (the software piece that actually takes your mouse clicks and sends them to the target application) with administrator privileges. Note that this will trigger the Windows UAC asking you for permission to start the input processor with elevated privileges. You may always revoke granted privileges by simply unchecking this box.
PLEASE NOTE: This feature is considered experimental. It may help with controlling other applications, particularly those that, themselves, run with elevated privileges. My own tests showed improvements with some applications, but your milage may vary. Either way, please provide tons of feedback over at https://discord.fsdesktop.com! 💪
Also, note that I typically advice users to grant third party software (mine included) as little privileges as possible. Please use this feature only as a last resort!_
-
Log Level: Configure the log level. Set to "Debug" if you want to submit a log for me to analyze, otherwise let it sit on "Warning".
In order to open up the actual FSdesktop panel inside MSFS, first enter VR mode. Next, hit the [TAB] key to bring up the ingame toolbar and click the FSdesktop icon to bring up the ingame panel.
How to open the ingame panel
Ingame Panel Settings
When actively streaming a window into Flight Simulator, FSdesktop will show a little "burger menu" on the top right of the ingame panel. Click it to reveal the ingame panel settings dialog with the following settings:
- Image Quality: Set the image quality of the streamed window to low, medium or high, depending on your particular needs. High will show the streamed window very crisp and with a high resolution, but streaming larger windows with this setting may impact Flight Simulator's performance. Use medium or low if you want to prioritize performance over quality.
- Refresh Rate: Set the frame rate of the streamed window to low, medium or high. High will update the image of the streamed window very frequently, i.e. result in a high panel framerate, but streaming larger windows with this setting may impact Flight Simulator's performance. Use medium or low if you want to prioritize performance over quality.
- Background: Set the background of the streamed window to either black or white.
In order to use the onscreen keyboard to send keyboard inputs to your application, click the keyboard icon on the bottom of the FSdesktop ingame panel. This will toggle the keyboard.
Now, click any key to send it off to the target application.
Please note that this feature respects your windows keyboard setup. If, for example, you are using a german keyboard on your machine and you type "Shift-2", you will not send an (@) to the application, but rather a (").
The FSdesktop server can be started with several commandline arguments to further customize its behaviour. In general, all you need to do is add them behind your "fsdesktop.exe" shortcut.
--log [level]: Set log level and enable logging to file.[level]can be any ofdebug | info | warn | error | off(defaults tooff). Use together with flag--verboseto also log tostdout. This will override/adjust the settings previously set through the GUI. Also, if you encounter issues during FSdesktop startup, runningfsdesktop.exe --log debugis the way to go!--resettour: Reset the tour(s).
Log Level Shortcut
Please make sure that your setup complies with the following prerequisites:
- Make sure MSFS runs in windowed mode
- Make sure that the window you are going to use is at least partly visible
- Ensure that your desktop runs at 100% DPI, or adjust the DPI settings on the settings tab to match your desktop's DPI scale.
Finally, it appears that Windows 11 users experience issues with controlling there applications when in VR. This issue is under investigation.
There are typically two reasons why this can happen:
- First, make sure that you have opened up MSFS's ingame toolbar. In 2D mode, that happens automatically when you hover your mouse over the chevron on the very top of the window. In VR mode you need to press the
[TAB]key to bring up this toolbar! Now, double-check whether the FSdesktop icon appears on that toolbar or not. If it does, then click it. Issue solved :-)- Second, if the icon does not appear, it is very likely that the ingame panel was installed to the wrong directory. To identify the proper community folder please read the next section and then come back... Got your community folder location? Great! Now uninstall FSdesktop and run the installer again. When prompted to enter your community folder location, enter the community folder path that you have just identified. Restart MSFS and the panel should appear.
Here's how to localize your active community folder with 100% certainty:
- Start MSFS and wait for the main menu to be loaded.
- Now click Options > General
- Open the "Developers"-settings-page, which is located at the bottom of the list on the left
- Turn on "Developers Mode"
- A new menu bar will appear on the top of your screen. Select Tools > Virtual File System
- Now you can locate the community folder under "Watched Bases"
Please make sure that the main MSFS window has roughly a 16:9 aspect ratio as shown below:
Flight Simulator Window Aspect Ratio
Easy. Open the FSdesktop main application and navigate to the settings tab. From here, click the "Restart Tour" button. Then close and reopen the FSdesktop ingame panel. The tour should now start.
This project was inspired by bymaximus/msfs2020-toolbar-window-template. Great work! Thanks for sharing your work with us!!!
- Icons provided by FontAwesome.
- Tour icons provided by:
Program zips and installers of FSdesktop FREE are released and uploaded here.
If you enjoy this project, please consider buying me a coffee and/or donating to the guys I mentioned in the Attribution section above. It allows us to keep developing addons and mods like these ones and making them available for free. Any amount is welcome! Thank you.
