SwitchPanel

This release addresses a critical bug regarding the application hanging upon closure.

Bug Fixes

• Application "Not Responding" Hang on Exit: Fixed an underlying deadlock where the application would appear visually stuck ("Not Responding") when the user attempted to close the window. The graceful shutdown routing was restored to properly close the UI, but a forceful process termination was added at the very end of the exit cycle to forcefully kill unmanaged Logitech DirectOutput SDK background threads that were refusing to close and causing the deadlock.

This release upgrades the basic Attitude Indicator gauge into a feature-rich Primary Flight Display (PFD) to significantly improve IFR situational awareness.

New Features

• Primary Flight Display (PFD) Upgrade: The Attitude gauge has been completely overhauled with illuminated, military-style HUD overlays.
  • Airspeed: Digital readout in Knots added to the left edge.
  • Altitude: Digital readout in Feet MSL added to the right edge.
  • Heading: Digital magnetic heading readout added to the top center.
  • Mach & G-Force: Mach number and current G-Force readouts added to the bottom left and right corners.
  • Visibility: All digital readouts are drawn in high-visibility luminous green over semi-transparent dark backing plates to ensure they remain readable regardless of the background pitch/bank attitude.

This release includes UI polish for the FIP preview screens and improved diagnostics layouts for single-engine aircraft, along with a fix for a background process bug.

Improvements

• FIP Preview Mirroring Fixed: The FIP preview screens on the dashboard are no longer mirrored horizontally. The 180-degree rotation fix in v0.2.21 was corrected to a vertical-only scale flip, ensuring text displays correctly in the app while remaining properly inverted on the physical hardware.
• Split-Screen Single Engine Layout: Redesigned all Single-Engine gauge variants (Piston, Turbine, Turboprop, and Dynamic). Instead of squashing the gauges into a narrow column, single-engine pages now utilize the full 320x240 display area with a large arc gauge on the left and vertical bar gauges on the right.

Bug Fixes

• Background Process Linger: Fixed an issue where the application would continue running in the background after being closed by the user. The application termination logic was reverted to forcefully exit the process to override the unmanaged DirectOutput SDK COM threads that were preventing a graceful shutdown.

Welcome to the v0.2.23 feature release of SwitchPanel! This update massively expands the engine diagnostics system with dedicated piston, turbine, and turboprop gauge pages - plus a dynamic auto-detect mode.

Features

Piston Engine Gauges (4 pages)

Premium diagnostics for piston-powered aircraft:

• RPM arc gauge (0-2800 RPM)
• MAP (Manifold Pressure) vertical bar in inHg
• EGT (Exhaust Gas Temperature) bar with caution/warning bands
• CHT (Cylinder Head Temperature) bar - new telemetry field
• Fuel Flow in GPH
• Oil Temperature in degrees F

Available in Single, Twin, Triple, and Quad configurations.

Turbine/Jet Engine Gauges (4 pages)

Full jet engine instrumentation:

• N1 (Fan/LP spool) arc gauge (0-110%)
• N2 (Core/HP spool) vertical bar
• ITT (Inter-Turbine Temperature) bar with threshold markers
• Fuel Flow in lbs/hr
• Oil Temperature and Oil Pressure bars

Available in Single, Twin, Triple, and Quad configurations.

Turboprop Engine Gauges (4 pages)

Hybrid turbine-prop instrumentation:

• Torque arc gauge (0-120%)
• N1 percentage bar
• ITT bar with caution/warning thresholds
• Np (Propeller RPM) bar
• Fuel Flow in lbs/hr
• Oil Temperature bar

Available in Single, Twin, Triple, and Quad configurations.

Dynamic Auto-Detect Gauges (4 pages)

Smart gauges that automatically detect your engine type from telemetry data:

• Receives N1 + Torque data? Renders as Turboprop
• Receives N1 only (no RPM/MAP)? Renders as Turbine
• Otherwise? Renders as Piston

No configuration needed - just fly and the correct gauges appear.

Technical Improvements

• New Telemetry Fields: Added N1, N2, ITT, CHT, Torque, and PropRPM per-engine arrays (up to 4 engines each)
• UDP Parsing: SimDataReceiver now accepts n1_1..n1_4, n2_1..n2_4, itt_1..itt_4, cht_1..cht_4, torque_1..torque_4, prop_rpm_1..prop_rpm_4
• Engine Type Detection: FlightData.AutoEngineType property auto-detects Piston/Turbine/Turboprop from field presence
• Shared Renderer: Extracted EngineGaugeRenderer.cs with reusable arc, bar, and layout utilities to eliminate code duplication

Welcome to the v0.2.22 feature release of SwitchPanel! This update adds drag-and-drop FIP device reordering and premium multi-engine diagnostics gauge pages.

Features

• Drag-and-Drop FIP Preview Reordering: FIP device preview cards in the Live Monitors section can now be dragged and dropped to reorder them. A subtle 6-dot grip handle appears on each card. This allows you to visually arrange your FIP previews to match your physical desk layout, making it much easier to configure and visualize what each screen is doing.

• Multi-Engine Diagnostics Gauge Pages: Added four new premium full-screen engine diagnostics pages:

  • Engine (Single) - Single-engine aircraft monitoring
  • Engine (Twin) - Dual-engine monitoring with side-by-side columns
  • Engine (Triple) - Triple-engine monitoring layout
  • Engine (Quad) - Quad-engine monitoring for heavy aircraft

  Each engine column features:

  • RPM Arc Gauge with color-banded caution/warning zones and digital readout
  • EGT Vertical Bar with green/amber/red threshold markers
  • Fuel Flow Bar with GPH readout
  • Oil Temperature Bar with threshold markers
  • Oil Pressure Bar with PSI readout

Technical Improvements

• Multi-Engine Telemetry Support: FlightData now supports per-engine arrays for up to 4 engines (RPM, EGT, Manifold Pressure, Fuel Flow, Oil Temp, Oil Pressure). The UDP data receiver parses rpm_1..rpm_4, egt_1..egt_4, ff_1..ff_4, oil_t_1..oil_t_4, oil_p_1..oil_p_4, and mp_1..mp_4 fields while maintaining full backward compatibility with single-engine telemetry.

Welcome to the v0.2.21 hotfix release of SwitchPanel! Following our migration back to graceful Shutdown logic, this release deeply resolves the underlying deadlock inside the Logitech DirectOutput SDK that was causing the Application to permanently hang unresponsively when attempting to close manually via the UI.

🐛 Bug Fixes

• FIP "Not Responding" Exit Hangs: The blunt Environment.Exit protocol has been reverted. Instead, we hunted down the exact Thread deadlock blocking the native Application Teardown. The DirectOutput.dll component aggressively calls background Events whenever hardware changes. Because WPF attempts to teardown on the UI Thread simultaneously, the synchronous cross-thread marshaling back and forth from the background hardware driver caused a classic unresolvable dead-lock, freezing the UI completely with a Not Responding error message. All UI interop events sent by the FIP hardware are now officially routed completely asynchronously, enabling the exit thread unblock automatically without any forceful kills.
• FIP Output Rendering Mirrored: Fixed a visual bug where the physical FIP screen correctly displayed the gauges "right side up", but the UI's Dashboard preview would show the exact mirror of the pixels, entirely upside down and backwards. The UI PreviewBitmap has been properly scaled and rotated 180-degrees to perfectly reflect the native bottom-up orientation that the FIP hardware intrinsically demands.

Welcome to the v0.2.20 hotfix release of SwitchPanel! This release implements a hard termination guarantee to fix the "Application Lingers in Background Processes" issue permanently.

🐛 Bug Fixes

• Background Processes: Fixed a process lifetime bug where the core executable would occasionally refuse to fully terminate after closing the window, even when MinimizeToTray was explicitly disabled. WPF's non-deterministic Application.Current.Shutdown() method was waiting endlessly on undisposed background services. This has been replaced with a native Environment.Exit(0) which guarantees the OS immediately forces all background threads to drop instantly when the UI commits to an exit.

Welcome to the v0.2.19 hotfix release of SwitchPanel! This release implements a critical fix to ensure the application fully terminates when gracefully closing from the system tray.

🐛 Bug Fixes

• Exit Loop and Background Processes: Fixed an infinite cancellation loop where clicking "Exit" on the System Tray icon would trigger the main window's native OnClosing hook, which would aggressively intercept the exit command and re-hide the window if the MinimizeToTray setting was still toggled on. The application will now safely bypass this UI interception and cleanly terminate all background dotnet.exe processes during an explicit system tray exit.

Welcome to the v0.2.18 hotfix release of SwitchPanel! This release corrects an issue where the auto-updater would fail to relaunch the application after downloading the latest executable payload.

🐛 Bug Fixes

• Bootstrapper Execution Failure: Adjusted the automated batch script generated during live-updates. The script was previously hardcoded to hunt for a compiled assembly named SwitchPanel.App.exe instead of targeting our explicitly formatted GitHub Release payloads (e.g., SwitchPanel-v0.2.x.exe), causing the updater window to erroneously panic after completing the extraction sequence. It will now dynamically launch the correctly versioned standalone executable directly.

Welcome to the v0.2.17 hotfix release of SwitchPanel! This release addresses another XamlParseException specifically inside the FipPage.xaml binding layer.

🐛 Bug Fixes

• FIP Binding Exception: Fixed a critical XAML binding crash during UI loading. When looping over Connected Devices, the UI attempted to bi-directionally (TwoWay) bind text content to a SerialNumber property exposed only as a read-only string within the FipDeviceInfo view model container. The property constraint was modified to rigidly specify an explicit Mode=OneWay binding context, permanently resolving the runtime parsing crash.

Welcome to the v0.2.16 hotfix release of SwitchPanel! This release addresses a critical XAML parsing crash introduced in v0.2.14 during the FIP Dashboard Premium UI Overhaul.

🐛 Bug Fixes

• FIP Page Crash: Fixed an unhandled XamlParseException on the Flight Instrument Panels page. This was caused by an invalid WPF-UI icon enumeration (WindowVisual24) inside the "No Monitors Connected" placeholder empty state. It has been replaced with a supported library emblem (Desktop24) which stops the page from natively crashing the UI thread upon load.

Welcome to the v0.2.15 hotfix release of SwitchPanel! This release addresses a critical startup crash introduced in v0.2.14 related to the new system tray feature.

🐛 Bug Fixes

• Startup Crash: Fixed an unhandled FileNotFoundException that caused the application to immediately crash when launching the compiled production executable. The newly introduced system tray icon was mistakenly attempting to read app.ico from the user's filesystem instead of safely extracting it from the embedded application resources.

Welcome to the v0.2.14 release of SwitchPanel! This release brings a massive premium overhaul to the Flight Instrument Panel (FIP) page, alongside key background process fixes.

✨ New Features

• FIP Premium Overhaul: Completely redesigned the FIP dashboard with a multi-column glassmorphism layout, live Sim Data polling, and fallback placeholder states.
• Live Screen Mirroring: The FIP Page now displays a real-time live preview of the hardware screen output directly in the desktop app's UI.
• HD Gauges: Upgraded the visual fidelity of all static hardware gauges (Airspeed, Altimeter, Attitude, VSI) with high-contrast LinearGradientBrush textures, crisp drop shadows, metallic bezels, and neon highlights.

🐛 Bug Fixes

• Background Process Linger: Fixed an issue where the background dotnet.exe process would fail to cleanly terminate when closing the window with MinimizeToTray disabled.
• System Tray Hook: Fully implemented the "Minimize to Tray" persistence setting, binding application shutdown logic safely around a native system tray lifecycle.
• FIP Page Crash: Fixed an unhandled XAML parsing exception caused by a missing visibility converter.

Welcome to the v0.2.13 release of SwitchPanel! This release brings highly requested UX improvements to the automated updater alongside structural bugfixes for UI rendering.

✨ New Features

• Updater UI: Implemented a new realtime download progress bar on the dashboard InfoBar that gracefully bounds to the background UpdateService stream payload, giving visual feedback when a new release is being fetched and extracted.

🐛 Bug Fixes

• Layout Restraints: Flattened the MainWindow XAML structures and removed nested InfoBar components to prevent layout engines from swallowing the action buttons on the update prompts.

🔨 Technical Chores

• Update Payload Logic: Shifted the IUpdateService execution logic downstream to accept a generic IProgress<double> dispatcher to track binary chunk streaming dynamically over HTTP.

Welcome to the v0.2.12 hotfix release of SwitchPanel! This release addresses a vital build issue and pipeline blockage following the v0.2.11 updates.

🐛 Bug Fixes

• Build Pipeline: Fixed an unused _currentPageIndex variable (CS0169) in FipGaugeService.cs that was preventing successful code compilation and blocking the CI/CD pipeline.
• Workspace Cleanliness: Added a .gitignore to untrack binaries and prevent bin/ and obj/ output folders from polluting source control.

Welcome to the v0.2.11 release of SwitchPanel! This release brings UX polish and bug fixes following the v0.2.10 launch.

Enhancements

• FIP Gauge Sync: The Desktop UI now perfectly synchronizes its Active Page text with the physical Logitech hardware in real-time when the dial is turned.
• Software Controls: Added Previous Page and Next Page software buttons to the FIP Dashboard, allowing operators to change instrument screens natively via the desktop app.
• Premium Empty States: The FIP Dashboard now elegantly informs users to "Connect a Logitech FIP Device" via a beautiful empty state design instead of displaying a raw blank list when hardware is disconnected.
• Gauge Dashboard Layout: The Gauge Pages Overview box was completely redesigned from a simple string array to a clean visual Grid featuring list enumeration badges.

Bug Fixes

• Startup Crash: Fixed a System.InvalidOperationException where MainWindowViewModel was missing from the App.xaml.cs Dependency Injection array, blocking application launches.
• WPF Data-Binding Crash: Fixed a XamlParseException preventing users from opening the FIP tab due to WPF enforcing a TwoWay constraint atop the read-only SerialNumber <Run /> element.

Welcome to the v0.2.9 release of SwitchPanel! This release brings a much-needed overhaul to the Profiles Page, turning it from a simple list into a proper Profile Manager.

Here's everything new inside this release!

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Features

• Redesigned Profiles Page: Completely replaced the old single-column list view with a brand new Master-Detail layout.
• Profile Editing: You can now select any profile in your list and instantly rename it, add extensive descriptions/notes, and tag its target sim (e.g., MSFS, DCS).
• Duplicate Profiles: Building a new profile from scratch is tedious. We added a new "Duplicate" button that clones the entire selected profile alongside all its configured bindings so you can experiment freely or create aircraft variants without wiping your main profile.
• Bindings Summary Viewer: The detail pane now includes a scrollable list detailing every physical Input mapped to a SimAction within the selected profile. You can now see exactly what a profile does without having to "Activate" it first!
• Empty States: Added friendly, visually-pleasing placeholders for when no profile is selected to keep the app looking great.

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Enjoy zero-configuration flights!

Welcome to the v0.2.8 release of SwitchPanel! Following up on the multi-monitor fix in v0.2.7, this release drastically improves the FIP gauges page UI and internal handling of FIP screen identities.

Here's everything new inside this release!

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Features

• Connected Device List UI: The "FIP Gauges" page has been redesigned. Instead of a single "Active Page" card, the UI now lists every connected physical FIP device independently! Each connected screen appears as its own card displaying its hardware Serial Number and its currently active gauge page.
• Smart Serial Number Fallbacks: Added an internal fallback ID generator for FIP screens that return empty serial numbers from the Logitech SDK (a common issue with clone FIPs or older drivers). This guarantees every generic FIP screen is perfectly tracked in our render loop without overlapping.

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Enjoy zero-configuration flights!

Welcome to the v0.2.7 release of SwitchPanel! This release contains a major fix for users with multiple Flight Instrument Panel (FIP) devices.

Here's everything new inside this release!

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Bug Fixes

• Fixed Multi-FIP Screen Glitching: Resolved an issue where multiple FIP screens would cross-communicate and glitch. Previously, turning the dial on one screen to change pages would force the renderer to send that page to all connected screens. The renderer now perfectly isolates each screen, tracking their active pages independently so you can have different pages open on different physical FIPs simultaneously without interference.

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Enjoy zero-configuration flights!

Welcome to the v0.2.6 release of SwitchPanel! This release contains internal improvements to the build process and warning resolution.

Here's everything new inside this release!

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Under The Hood

• Fixed Build Warnings: Resolved CA1416 warnings during the build process caused by the vJoy components using Windows-only Registry APIs while targeting a cross-platform framework. The vJoy project now explicitly targets Windows to match its actual capabilities.

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Enjoy zero-configuration flights!

Welcome to the v0.2.5 release of SwitchPanel! This release contains an important hotfix for FIP gauge initialization.

Here's everything new inside this release!

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Bug Fixes

• Fixed FIP Startup Crash: Resolved an issue where the app could crash when starting the FIP Gauges feed. The app now explicitly locates the Logitech DirectOutput.dll drivers directly from the C:\Program Files\Logitech directory instead of relying on the system PATH variable.
• Added FIP Error Messages: If the FIP drivers truly cannot be found or fail to initialize in the future, the app will now gracefully show a red error message on the FIP page instead of crashing.

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Enjoy zero-configuration flights!

Welcome to the v0.2.4 release of SwitchPanel! This is a critical fix release that resolves the application startup crash and a secondary exit crash.

Here's everything new inside this release!

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Bug Fixes

• Fixed Startup Crash: The app would immediately crash on launch because the window icon resource was not properly embedded. This is now resolved and the app opens normally.
• Fixed Exit Crash: The app would crash when closing due to a service cleanup conflict. Shutdown is now clean and graceful.

Under The Hood

• Improved Crash Logging: If the app ever crashes in the future, a detailed crash.log file is now written to the app directory with the full error details.
• Improved FIP Page Layout: The FIP Gauges page info display was reworked for better reliability.

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Enjoy zero-configuration flights!