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.

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: a full-width status strip across the top, a left-hand navigation rail below it, the page itself filling the centre, and a thin flight-telemetry tape along the bottom. At this point the device is detected but disarmed — no forces will reach the stick until you explicitly arm it.

The status strip

The strip across the top is the operational dashboard for the bridge — everything you need to know about what the bridge is doing right now lives in one row. From left to right:

• Brand block — the FFB-Bridge logo + name, lined up with the navigation rail below.
• Cockpit ARM gauge — boxy framed indicator that's the visual hero of the strip. Three states: DISARMED (grey glyph, warm border at rest), ARMED (amber gradient, bright glyph), FAULTED (red — see "Recovering from a fault" below). Click the gauge to arm or disarm.
• SIM · DEVICE · MODE lamps — colour-coded one-word status per prerequisite. Green = healthy, amber = attention (e.g. Demo source), red = failure (e.g. stick unplugged), grey = not in play.
• Profile picker — dropdown trigger showing the active profile name with a warm dot when the live tunables differ from the saved file.
• Tune / Save button — outlined "Tune →" navigates to the Tuning page; filled "Tune" indicates you're already there; filled amber "Save" appears whenever you have unsaved tuning changes — clicking it commits and jumps to the Tuning page so you see the confirmation.

The flight-telemetry tape

The thin tape along the bottom of the content area is a quick-read of the live numbers the pipeline is working with. 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).

Arming the stick

Click the cockpit ARM gauge in the strip to open the arm-confirmation dialog. Confirm and the gauge flips to ARMED with the amber gradient — forces are now reaching the stick. Click again to disarm. Esc cancels the confirmation dialog if you change your mind before confirming.

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.

Recovering from a fault

If a prerequisite drops while you're armed — most often the stick gets unplugged or the sim crashes mid-flight — the gauge flips to FAULTED (red), forces stop, and the matching lamp goes red so you can see exactly what failed (DEVICE for an unplug, SIM for a sim drop). Click the gauge to acknowledge and reset back to Disarmed; restoring the missing prerequisite then lets you re-arm normally. The open Diagnostics link next to the gauge takes you to the event log if you want the full story.

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.

Keyboard shortcuts

The bridge is mouse / tray-driven by design — there are no global hotkeys for arming or navigating between pages. Earlier builds tried Space=Arm and D1–D8 to switch pages, but they hijacked the spacebar and digit keys while a TextBox owned focus (saving a profile name, for example), and only fired when the bridge window was foreground anyway — which is rare in practice because the sim is usually foreground while you fly. Use the tray menu for arm / disarm / quit when the window is hidden.

The one keystroke the window does intercept is Esc, which cancels the open arm-confirmation dialog (no-op when no dialog is open).

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:

• Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024
• X-Plane 11 / 12