First launch

The first time FFB-Bridge starts, it runs a short welcome tour, looks for your stick, and makes sure there's a clean path to a sim. This page walks through every screen you'll see, plus the tray and window behaviour you'll rely on later.

Safety acknowledgement

The very first screen is a safety modal. The bridge drives a physical motor that moves the stick on its own, so before anything else you're asked to acknowledge the physical-hazard brief. The modal blocks dismissal until you tick the “I understand” checkbox.

This shows once, ever, on first launch. It's stored separately from the welcome dialog so upgrading from a pre-safety build still triggers it once.

Figure 1. Safety-acknowledgement modal. Tick the checkbox and click “I acknowledge” to continue.

Welcome dialog

After acknowledging safety, a seven-slide welcome tour summarises the app's layout, the arm/disarm safety model, and where to go for help. You can dismiss it at any time with Skip tour or Close; if you want to see it again later, the Help page has a Replay welcome button.

The main window

After the welcome dialog closes, you'll see the Dashboard. The layout is the same on every page: left-hand navigation rail, a thin telemetry strip along the top of the content area, and whatever page you're looking at filling the rest. At this point the device is detected but disarmed — no forces will reach the stick until you explicitly arm it.

Figure 3. The Dashboard in its initial state. Left-rail navigation (eight pages), top telemetry strip, Ready-to-engage banner, flight-state + effect panels, and the arm pill in the bottom-left of the sidebar.

The telemetry strip

The thin 32-pixel strip along the top of the content area is a quick-read of what the pipeline currently sees and sends. From left to right:

IAS — indicated airspeed in knots.
G — load factor.
MACH — Mach number.
PITCH F — the force the pipeline is currently sending on the pitch axis (fraction of full authority, signed).
ROLL F — same on the roll axis.
AGE — milliseconds since the last snapshot arrived. — when no data has been received yet.
TICK — the control-loop's target rate (always 50 Hz).

Connection state — Device, Sim, Profile — is on the Dashboard page itself, not the telemetry strip; see Dashboard for that.

The sidebar arm pill

The bottom-left of the sidebar carries the master arm state as a pill: green ARMED when forces are flowing, grey DISARMED otherwise. Above it, a smaller MASTER label with a coloured chip calls out the current mode: LIVE (blue), MOCK (orange), or IDLE (grey). The pill and the big Dashboard arm toggle are bound to the same state — arming from either flips both.

Arming the stick

The big toggle in the top-right of the Dashboard is the master arm. When it glows blue with a soft pulse, the app considers it Ready to engage — the device is detected, a sim is connected, and telemetry is flowing. Click the toggle (or press Space) to arm.

Safety first

Before arming, make sure nothing — including you — is resting on or near the stick. When forces first come online the centring spring snaps the handle to the trimmed centre position. Treat every arm as a “hands clear” moment the same way you would a sim yoke reset.

Figure 4. Arm toggle states. Top: Ready to engage (device + mock/sim flowing, awaiting arm). Bottom: Armed — forces engaged. The third state, full Disarmed with no data flowing, is the quieter pre-session version of Ready to engage.

First-arm confirmation

The very first time you arm, a confirmation dialog explains what's about to happen. Check Don't show this again if you'd rather go straight to armed from here on.

Closing to the tray

FFB-Bridge runs as a background service while you fly. Clicking the window's X button hides the window to the system tray; it does not quit the app. The stick keeps receiving forces as long as the bridge is running.

The tray icon menu is the fastest way to arm or disarm once you've set up a profile. It exposes:

Show window — bring the UI back from the tray.
Arm / Disarm — same effect as the Dashboard toggle.
Quit — shut the bridge down for real.

Figure 5. Close-X confirmation. “Minimize to tray” keeps the bridge driving the stick while the window is hidden; “Quit” shuts the app down and releases the device. Tick “Don't show this again” to skip the prompt on future closes.

Figure 6. System tray menu. Show / Arm / Disarm / Quit. On Linux this lives in whatever tray your desktop provides; on Windows it's the standard notification area.

GNOME Wayland note

GNOME Wayland does not have a native system tray. There the close button silently hides the window; use the taskbar or Alt+Tab to get it back, or the desktop menu entry to re-launch a new instance, which will re-attach to the running bridge. A tray fallback banner is on the short list of polish items.

Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
`Space`	Toggle arm / disarm (when not typing in a slider)
`Ctrl`+`S`	Save the current profile (Tuning page)
`Ctrl`+`Shift`+`S`	Save as… (Tuning page)
`Ctrl`+`,`	Jump to the Tuning page
`F1`	Open the Help page
`Ctrl`+`Q`	Quit the app (bypasses the hide-to-tray behaviour)

Next steps

If your sim was already running, FFB-Bridge should have found it — check the Sim chip under the Ready-to-engage banner on the Dashboard. If not, head to the connection guide for the one you use: