# Plasma & output integration guide

How to make a game, sim, or companion tool drive the cockpit's **outputs**
through RIOJoy: the lighted buttons (lamps) and the plasma/VFD text display.
This is the integrator's view — what the hardware can show, which addresses
mean what, and how to feed them. The exact wire grammar lives in
[FEEDBACK.md](FEEDBACK.md); the RIO serial protocol in
[PROTOCOL.md](PROTOCOL.md); the mirror direction (cockpit inputs → game) in
[INPUT-INTEGRATION.md](INPUT-INTEGRATION.md).

## The four output channels

| Channel | Trigger | Effort | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|
| **Automatic lamp feedback** | button press/release | none — built in | lighting the button the player just pressed |
| **Feedback endpoint** (`lamp` / `plasma` lines) | your code writes a text line to a pipe or UDP | small script | warning lights, status flashes, callsigns, scores |
| **Rumble → lamps** | game sets XInput vibration | config only, no code | damage/fire effects from **unmodified** games |
| **Plasma greeting** | profile activation | config only | a static per-game banner |

All four apply only while a profile is **active**; the profile opts into the
endpoint and rumble channels with its `"Feedback"` JSON section (see
[Gating in FEEDBACK.md](FEEDBACK.md#gating)). When RIOJoy is dormant or a
native game owns the ports, endpoint clients stay connected but commands drop.

## The lamp model

### What a lamp is

Each of the **72 cockpit buttons** (RIO addresses `0x00–0x47`) has a built-in
lamp. A lamp is set with a single state byte combining a **flash mode**
(solid / slow / med / fast) and a **brightness** (off / dim / bright). The
**board runs the blink itself** — one command starts a sustained flash, another
ends it. There is no per-frame cost to a flashing lamp.

The two 4×4 keypads (`0x50–0x5F` internal, `0x60–0x6F` external) are valid
protocol addresses but have **no physical lamps** — writes to them are
accepted and do nothing visible.

### Address map (functional groups)

From the panel model (`RioJoy.Core.Editing.CockpitPanel`, mirrored in the
profile editor):

| Group | Addresses | Layout |
|---|---|---|
| Lower Right MFD | `0x00–0x07` | 4×2; top row `07 06 05 04`, bottom `03 02 01 00` |
| Lower Left MFD | `0x08–0x0F` | 4×2; top `0F 0E 0D 0C`, bottom `0B 0A 09 08` |
| Secondary column | `0x10–0x17` | vertical 8 |
| Screen column | `0x18–0x1F` | vertical 8 |
| Upper Middle MFD | `0x20–0x27` | 4×2; top `27 26 25 24`, bottom `23 22 21 20` |
| Upper Left MFD | `0x28–0x2F` | 4×2; top `2F 2E 2D 2C`, bottom `2B 2A 29 28` |
| Upper Right MFD | `0x30–0x37` | 4×2; top `37 36 35 34`, bottom `33 32 31 30` |
| Throttle column | `0x38–0x3F` | vertical 8 (`3D` Panic, `3F` Throttle) |
| Joystick cluster | `0x40–0x47` | `40` Main, `41–44` hat B/U/R/L, `45` Pinky, `46` Middle, `47` Upper |
| Internal keypad | `0x50–0x5F` | 4×4, **no lamps** |
| External keypad | `0x60–0x6F` | 4×4, **no lamps** |

(`0x48–0x4F` is a gap — not valid addresses.)

### Ownership: pick lamps the profile doesn't use

Lamps on buttons the active profile maps as *lighted* (`Lit` in the editor,
`iRIO` bit `0x8000`) belong to the automatic press/release feedback — endpoint
writes to them are **dropped** (logged once per address) so your effect can't
fight the built-in behavior. Design your effects on buttons the profile leaves
unlit — a dedicated "warning" MFD cluster the game doesn't bind, for example —
or deliberately leave the target buttons un-Lit in the profile.

### Rate budget

The RIO link is 9600 baud, shared with the ~55 ms analog poll. RIOJoy
coalesces lamp state per address (latest wins) and sends **at most one changed
lamp per 25 ms** (~40/s). Practical consequences:

- Send *state changes*, not periodic refreshes. Repeating the current state
  costs nothing but also does nothing.
- A whole-panel effect (`lamp-all`, or sweeping many addresses) takes ~25 ms ×
  changed-lamp-count to fully land — a 104-lamp sweep is ~3 s. Fine for an
  attract mode; wrong for a fast strobe. For fast effects, use the board's own
  flash modes on a few lamps instead.

## The plasma display model

The plasma is a **128 × 32 dot-matrix panel** on its own serial port at 9600
8N1 (so display updates never contend with the input link). It is fully
dot-addressable: it has a text mode (cursor + fonts + attributes) **and a raw
bitmap mode** (`ESC P` graphics write — see
[Bitmap graphics](#bitmap-graphics-esc-p)). The command set is documented in
vRIO's `VPlasma.Core/Protocol/PlasmaProtocol.cs`, recovered from the Tesla
4.10 sources and the display firmware dump.

Text mode has two glyph sizes:

| Font | Cell | Fits per line | Auto-selected when |
|---|---|---|---|
| large (font 5) | 10×14 px | ~12 chars | text ≤ 9 chars |
| small (font 2) | 5×7 px | ~25 chars | text 10–20 chars (longer is truncated to 20) |

What the endpoint exposes (v1):

- **`plasma text <text>`** — auto-fit: short text renders large, longer text
  small, centered on the display (the `PlasmaPosText` behavior the original
  games used; its pivot is x=56, faithfully a touch left of the true 128-px
  center). This is the right default for callsigns, scores, and status words.
- **`plasma text <x> <y> <text>`** — explicit cursor position in **pixels**,
  top-left origin; the firmware accepts x 0–127, y 0–31. You choose the
  position; the font still auto-fits by length. Use this to keep two fields on
  screen at once (e.g. callsign top line, score bottom line:
  `plasma text 2 2 "VIPER 1-1"` + `plasma text 2 18 "SCORE 4200"`).
- **`plasma clear`** — blank the display.
- **`plasma row <y> <hex32>`** — one full 128-px bitmap row; see
  [Bitmap graphics](#bitmap-graphics-esc-p).

Text is **Latin-1** (one byte per char) — don't send UTF-8.

Not exposed through the endpoint yet (small extensions when needed): explicit
font/attribute selection and box draw/fill.

### Bitmap graphics (`ESC P`)

The display accepts **raw bitmap rows** — this is how the native Red Planet
game draws everything (it renders into a local 1-bpp buffer and streams the
*changed* rows). The wire command:

```
ESC P s y x w h data…
```

`s` = screen (single-screen hardware, ignored), `y` = top row (0–31),
`x` = left **byte column** (0–15), `w` = bytes per row, `h` = rows, followed
by `w×h` data bytes, **MSB = leftmost pixel**. The native game always sends
whole rows: `x=0, w=16, h=1` — 16 bytes covering one full 128-px row.

Budget the bandwidth: a full-frame repaint is 32 rows × (7-byte header +
16 data bytes) ≈ 740 bytes ≈ **0.77 s** at 9600 baud. That's why the native
game diffs and streams only changed rows — an animation that touches a few
rows per tick is smooth; full-frame repaints are ~1 fps. Text mode is far
cheaper for text; reserve bitmaps for logos, custom gauges, and icons.

The endpoint exposes whole-row writes as a line command:

```
plasma row <y> <32 hex digits>
```

`y` is 0–31; the 32 hex digits are the row's 16 bytes left-to-right, MSB =
leftmost pixel. Rows stream strictly in arrival order (up to 128 queued;
overflow drops the incoming row and counts it), so push a frame as rows 0–31
and it lands intact. Example — a horizontal rule across row 16 and a lit
top-left corner block:

```
plasma row 16 FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
plasma row 0 F0000000000000000000000000000000
```

For animation, keep a 1-bpp frame buffer client-side and send only the rows
that changed since the last tick — exactly what the native game does. The
partial-span form of `ESC P` (arbitrary `x/w/h`) exists in
`PlasmaCommands.GraphicsWrite` for host-side code but is not exposed as a
line command.

### Update semantics

Plasma writes are **single-flight over a bounded queue** whose rules follow
what each command means: flooded `text` updates coalesce to the newest value
(safe to spam a score — the display shows the latest), `clear` discards
everything queued before it, and bitmap `row`s stream strictly in order
(never coalesced — a frame is many rows). Still: update fields on change, not
on a timer.

Lifecycle: on profile activation the display clears and shows the profile's
`PlasmaGreeting` (if set); your first `plasma` command replaces it. On
teardown (profile switch, dormancy, native-game yield) RIOJoy blanks the
display and releases the port.

`plasma text` does **not** clear the rest of the display — it draws at a
position. When a new value is shorter than the old one (`SCORE 900` after
`SCORE 1200`), stale pixels can remain; pad the text to a fixed width or
`plasma clear` first when the layout changes.

## Recipes

### Any XInput game — rumble, zero code

Add to the profile's JSON (`%APPDATA%\RIOJoy\config.json`):

```json
"Feedback": { "Rumble": { "LargeMotorLamps": [32, 33], "SmallMotorLamps": [34], "Threshold": 24 } }
```

Vibration now flashes Upper-Middle-MFD lamps `0x20–0x22`: off below the
threshold, slow/med/fast flash as intensity rises, per motor. Works with any
game that rumbles the ViGEm pad (net48 flavor only).

### DCS World — Export.lua

A pipe opens as a file on Windows; write lines, flush, done:

```lua
local rio = io.open("\\\\.\\pipe\\riojoy-feedback", "w")
local wasCaution = nil

function LuaExportAfterNextFrame()
    if not rio then return end
    local caution = LoGetMCPState and LoGetMCPState().MasterWarning
    if caution ~= wasCaution then            -- send changes, not frames
        wasCaution = caution
        rio:write(caution and "lamp 0x12 fast bright\n" or "lamp 0x12 off\n")
        rio:flush()
    end
end

function LuaExportStart()
    if rio then
        rio:write('plasma text "' .. (LoGetPilotName() or "PILOT") .. '"\n')
        rio:flush()
    end
end
```

(Or configure `"UdpPort"` and use DCS's `socket` library — same lines over
UDP, one or more per datagram.)

### SimHub / other telemetry hubs

Any plugin that can emit custom TCP/UDP/serial output can target the UDP
endpoint (`127.0.0.1:<UdpPort>`) with protocol lines. Map telemetry properties
to `lamp` lines (e.g. shift light → `lamp 0x3D fast bright`) and text
properties to `plasma text`.

### Games with no API — log tailing

```powershell
$p = New-Object IO.Pipes.NamedPipeClientStream '.', 'riojoy-feedback', ([IO.Pipes.PipeDirection]::Out)
$p.Connect(2000)
$w = New-Object IO.StreamWriter $p, ([Text.Encoding]::GetEncoding(28591))
Get-Content 'C:\games\thegame\events.log' -Wait -Tail 0 | ForEach-Object {
    if ($_ -match 'PLAYER_HIT')  { $w.WriteLine('lamp 0x24 fast bright'); $w.Flush() }
    if ($_ -match 'SCORE=(\d+)') { $w.WriteLine("plasma text SCORE $($Matches[1])"); $w.Flush() }
}
```

## Testing without hardware

Both output ports accept `pipe:` endpoints, so the [vRIO](https://gitea.mysticmachines.com/VWE/VRIO)
emulators stand in for the cabinet:

- Profile `RioComPort: "pipe:vrio"` → vRIO's board emulator; its panel shows
  lamp states, including flash.
- Profile `PlasmaComPort: "pipe:vplasma"` → the vPlasma display emulator
  renders the 112×32 output. On a machine with neither display nor COM2, set
  `PlasmaComPort: "off"` instead (the app default is `COM2`).

Then drive the feedback pipe from PowerShell (snippets in
[FEEDBACK.md](FEEDBACK.md#client-snippets)) and watch the emulators.

## Checklist for a new integration

1. Give the game's profile a `"Feedback"` section (it's off otherwise).
2. Choose effect lamps that the profile does **not** mark Lit; note their
   addresses from the map above.
3. Decide plasma layout: one auto-centered field, or fixed pixel positions for
   multiple fields (pad to fixed width).
4. Emit on **state change** only; let the board do the blinking.
5. Reconnect logic: on pipe write failure, close, reopen, retry — RIOJoy's
   endpoint accepts reconnects forever, and commands sent while dormant are
   dropped by design (your client doesn't need to track RIOJoy's state).
6. Bench-test against `pipe:vrio` / `pipe:vplasma` before touching the cabinet.