Magenta Bridge for Octavi IFR-1

Magenta Bridge is a family of per-device clients. This one is for the Octavi IFR-1; each product installs alongside the others, with its own settings folder and its own entry in the taskbar, so they never collide.

I bought the panel, liked the hardware, and wanted to build on it. This is that.

Status: v0.2.4

Working and verified against live MSFS 2024 and a physical IFR-1, including FMS1 and FMS2 — the GNS530/430 knobs and bezel buttons, with no MobiFlight. Those need a small module that the app installs for you; see The FMS module below. Everything else works without it.

Requirements

• Windows 11 (Windows 10 may work; untested)
• Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024
• An Octavi IFR-1 (VID 04D8, PID E6D6)

The download is self-contained — no .NET runtime installation needed.

Run it

1. Close Octavi's own plug-in if it is running (see Two programs, one panel).
2. Start MSFS and load a flight.
3. Run MagentaBridge-OctaviIFR1.exe. If the FMS card appears, press Install the module and restart MSFS once — that is the only setup step, and nothing is downloaded.

The window opens and a tray icon appears. Closing the window quits; Hide sends it to the tray. Everything relevant — which panel is connected, whether the sim is running, what the radios are doing — is on the main screen.

What this does that the official plug-in doesn't

Being a replacement isn't a feature, so here is what is actually different.

What the official plug-in still does better: nothing that needs MobiFlight. Its FMS support reaches the GNS knobs and softkeys only by talking to MobiFlight's module; this bridge now does the same job through its own, which the app installs for you. If you already run MobiFlight for other hardware, its route still works — you just don't need it here.

What works

FMS modes also carry the six-button row: Direct To, MENU, CLR, ENT, and CDI / OBS / MSG / FPL / VNAV / PROC. Both the GNS and the G1000 event names are sent for each action, so the same panel works in an aircraft with either avionics suite; the one that is not fitted ignores the event.

Also: all six AP buttons, AP master, encoder acceleration, a guided Test your panel check, dark and light themes, always-on-top, start with Windows, a live radio-stack readout, and the name of the aircraft you are actually flying.

Two programs, one panel

The IFR-1 is a single HID device and cannot be shared. If Octavi's plug-in is running, the bridge receives nothing — the window looks connected and controls do nothing.

The app detects that and offers a Close Octavi plug-in button. Nothing is closed without you pressing it. Use one client or the other, not both.

What does not work, and why

Vertical speed on some aircraft. The increment events are correct and the simulator accepts them, but the C172's autopilot ignores remote VS by design; use its own UP/DN buttons. The app detects this and says so.

The mode at launch. The panel only reports on change, and although it answers HidD_GetInputReport it returns an all-zero report rather than its real state (verified with the panel in FMS1). Until you touch the panel the window shows press any button, then tracks it accurately.

GNS530/430 buttons need the module. They are not sim events, so a SimConnect client cannot press them on its own; the module below does it from inside the simulator. With the module absent, the FMS modes' knobs and buttons do nothing — deliberately, and the window says so rather than pretending. The FMS CDI button works either way, via TOGGLE_GPS_DRIVES_NAV1.

The GPS add-on (the WASM module)

New to flight simulators? This is the only extra step, and it happens once.

The GNS530/430 - the GPS unit in the panel - has its own buttons: Direct To, MENU, CLR, OBS, PROC and so on. They are not ordinary simulator controls, so an outside program cannot press them; only something running inside the simulator can. Add-ons of that kind are called WASM modules, which is a fussy name for a small file the simulator loads when it starts.

Magenta Bridge includes one. It is about 15 KB, already inside the app you downloaded, and there is nothing else to fetch.

• You never download it separately. It is embedded in the executable.
• If it is missing, a card in the window offers Install the module. One click writes three files into your simulator's Community folder, found by reading the sim's own UserCfg.opt.
• Then restart MSFS. The simulator reads the Community folder once, at startup, so FMS1 and FMS2 do nothing until it is restarted. The app says this when the install finishes.
• From a console: MagentaBridge-OctaviIFR1.exe --module status, --module install, --module remove.
• To uninstall, delete Community\magenta-bridge-module. Nothing runs in the background, there is no service, no settings file and no updater.
• It is one module for the whole Magenta Bridge family, not one per product.

Without it the bridge is exactly what v0.1.0 was: every radio, autopilot, transponder and CDI control, no GNS bezel buttons.

Settings

Panel status and the guided test, Start with Windows, Always on top, Theme, the resolved SimConnect client, and the About/Magenta details. Esc closes it and returns to the main view.

Light theme is a full second palette, not an inverted filter:

Troubleshooting

Logs live in %LOCALAPPDATA%\MagentaBridge\OctaviIFR1\logs\. Diagnostics in the app shows the tail; the file holds the full rotating history.

Build from source

dotnet build -c Release
dotnet publish -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained true -o dist

Requires the .NET 8 SDK. There are no third-party package references: the whole app is the base class library plus Win32/SimConnect interop.

The FMS module is built separately, with the MSFS SDK's own clang toolchain, and then embedded into the app at compile time:

.\Modules\build-module.ps1      # needs C:\MSFS 2024 SDK

--replay <path> runs the 47 self-checking assertions and writes the results; they cover every mapping, the shift latch and the held-shift range gesture, NAV accumulation, transponder clamping, the AP altitude/VS split, and the module's embed and routing contracts.

License

MIT. See LICENSE. Use it, fork it, ship it, ignore it — no permission needed.

No Octavi code, binaries or artwork are included. The HID protocol was recovered by observation and reverse engineering for interoperability.

Supporting this

It is free and it stays free. If it saved you a fight with the plug-in, there is a tip jar at magentadebrief.com/donate: one-off card payments, no subscription, and nothing here is ever gated behind a payment.

Feedback

Bugs and comments: alan@magentadebrief.com. A Magenta Debrief tool — free, no telemetry.