TeaTimeServers
Plugins / Stream Deck

Redline Deck

Forza Horizon 6, live on your Stream Deck. A shift light that flashes at your shift point, speed, revs, boost, tires, lap times and G-force, gauges on the dials, and keys that press the controls you already use in the game. It reads the telemetry the game sends for dashboards and motion rigs, so there is no mod and nothing to install in the game.

Setup guide No Stream Deck? Redline Link In testing
The Redline Deck Dash page on a Stream Deck XL, drawn as dark keys with small grey titles over a cyan hairline. Top row: the shift light, gear 4 under ten lights with seven lit green, yellow and red, at 6,650 rpm; speed 174 km/h; revs as a bar across three keys, green turning yellow, 6,650 rpm; boost 18.2 psi; power 523 hp; torque 600 N·m. Second row: tire temperatures 91, 87, 94 and 90 degrees in green; grip 0.1 on all four tires in green; G-force as a dot in a ring, 0.94 g, peak 0.9; inputs, the throttle bar full; fuel 82%; position P3, 3rd place; Lap 2, 1 done; lap time 0:41.207. Third row, command keys with the key they press: Rewind R (hold), Photo Mode P, Horn H (hold), Camera Tab, Map M, Handbrake Space (hold), Shift Down Q, Shift Up E. Bottom row: Back, the Race, Tires, Garage, Controls, Big RPM and Big Speed pages, and Follow, on, lit cyan.
The Dash page on an XL, mid-race. The keys are drawn by the plugin's own code from made-up telemetry.

What you need

  • Windows 10 or 11 with Stream Deck software 7.1 or newer.
  • A Stream Deck, Stream Deck XL, Stream Deck +, Stream Deck Mini, Stream Deck Neo or a Corsair Galleon 100 SD.
  • Forza Horizon 6 on the same PC, with its Data Out setting on (below). We test with the Steam version.
  • No mod. Data Out is part of the game.

1. Install the plugin

In testing. Redline Deck works in the game on our own decks and is being readied for the Elgato Marketplace. This page will link to the listing when it is up.

2. Turn on Data Out in the game

Forza Horizon 6 can send its telemetry, one small packet every frame, to a port on your PC. That is what Redline Deck reads. Turn it on once:

  1. In Forza Horizon 6 open Settings, then HUD and Gameplay.
  2. Set Data Out to On, Data Out IP Address to 127.0.0.1 and Data Out IP Port to 5605.
  3. Drive. The keys come alive.

Any port from 1024 to 65535 works, except 5200 to 5300, which the game uses itself. If you change it, enter the same number in any Redline Deck key's settings, under Connection and forwarding. Every key's settings also show what to enter in the game and whether packets are arriving.

The game sends nothing in its menus, while paused, in replays and during a rewind, so the readings pause too. Without the game the keys say what is missing instead of going blank: game not running, Turn on Data Out, paused or in menus, or port 5605 in use if another program already holds the port.

3. The Redline Deck key and its layout

Drag the Redline Deck key onto any profile and press it: your deck opens a ready-made layout with eight pages, with Back at the bottom left of every page.

  • Dash: the shift light and gear, speed, revs, boost, power, tires, G-force and pedals.
  • Race: position, lap, lap time, last and best lap, race time and fuel, with Rewind and the leaderboard at hand.
  • Tires: each tire's temperature, grip and suspension travel, with G-force and pedals.
  • Garage: your car's class and PI, drivetrain and engine, this run's top speed, best lap, distance and peak G, the Data Out connection and your control preset, plus Map, Photo Mode and Pause.
  • Controls: the command keys.
  • Big RPM: one large rev counter drawn across a block of keys, from idle to the rev limit, with a red zone past your shift point, a marker at the shift point, the gear big in the middle and the shift lights. The whole block flashes red when it is time to shift.
  • Big Speed: a large speedometer in km/h or mph, with this run's top speed marked, the gear and a small rev bar.
  • Engine: power, torque, boost and revs, the rev limit, idle and shift point, this run's peak power, torque and boost, fuel, top speed, class and PI, drivetrain and cylinders.

The big gauges are drawn as one picture across the keys, allowing for the gaps between them, so the dial reads as one: 3 by 3 keys on the Stream Deck and the Galleon 100 SD, 5 by 4 on the XL, 3 by 2 on the + and the Neo, and a quarter dial on the Mini.

Two Stream Deck pages side by side. Big RPM: a rev counter drawn across the middle three columns of keys, the green band running from 1 to 6 thousand rpm, a yellow zone, a white shift marker and a red zone towards 7, gear 4 big in the centre under ten shift lights, and 6,650 rpm with idle 850, shift 6,900 and limit 7,500 along the bottom; Speed 174 km/h, Boost 18.2 psi and Back on the left; Big Speed, Engine and Power 523 hp on the right. Big Speed: a speedometer across the same block, the blue band up to 174 km/h with a yellow marker at this run's top speed, 174 km/h and gear 4 in the centre.
The Big RPM and Big Speed pages on a Stream Deck. Made-up telemetry.

There is a layout for the Stream Deck, XL, +, Mini, Neo and Corsair Galleon 100 SD. Stream Deck offers them when the plugin is installed. On the Stream Deck + the dials fill the touch strip; on the Galleon 100 SD the two dials and their second layer (hold a dial for about 3 seconds) carry the gauges.

Two Stream Deck pages side by side. Race: position P1, Lap 3 with 2 done, lap time 0:12.300, last lap 1:21.902, best lap 1:21.902 in green; the shift light at gear 5 lit red at 6,900 rpm, speed 220 km/h, race time 2:57.600, fuel 82%, tire temperatures 93, 89, 96 and 92 degrees in green; then Back, Rewind R (hold), Leaderboard L, and the Garage and Controls pages. Tires: front left 88 and front right 89 degrees, working, in green; rear left 128 and rear right 129 degrees, too hot, in red; grip 0.6 and 0.7 in yellow, 2.4 and 2.6 in red; suspension 30% and 40% in green, 95% and 97% in red; peak G 1.17 g this run; G-force 1.17 g with peak 1.2; inputs with throttle and handbrake up; then Back, gear 2 at 6,800 rpm, speed 79 km/h, and the Race and Garage pages.
The Race page leading on lap 3, and the Tires page in a drift with the rear tires too hot. Made-up telemetry.

Follow

With the Follow key on, the deck turns to the Race page when a race starts, to the Garage page when you pause or the race is over, and back to the Dash page when you drive. Garage waits 5 seconds before it turns, because the game also stops sending during a rewind. A page you choose by hand stays put.

4. The keys and dials

  • Shift Light: the gear, big, under ten lights that fill green, yellow and red as the revs climb and all flash red at your shift point. You set the shift point, 85 to 98% of the rev limit (92% unless you change it).
  • Readouts: speed, gear, revs, boost, power, torque, fuel, position, lap, lap time, last and best lap, race time, distance, top speed, peak G, steering, altitude, and your car's class and PI, drivetrain and engine, in the units you choose (km/h or mph, °C or °F, hp, kW or PS, N·m or lb-ft, psi or bar).
  • Gauges: revs, speed, boost, fuel, throttle and brake as bars, on one key or stretched across up to three.
  • Tires: temperature, grip and suspension travel for all four wheels, coloured as they warm up, slide or bottom out, or one wheel big.
  • G-Force as a dot in a ring with this run's peak, and Inputs showing the throttle, brake, clutch, handbrake and steering.

On a Stream Deck + or a Galleon 100 SD, the shift light, gauges, tires, G-force and pedals also go on the dials. Turn a gauge dial to change what it shows. A Command Dial shifts gears (push for the handbrake), changes radio station (push for the horn), turns through the telemetry screens or changes camera.

Left, a Stream Deck +: the shift light at gear 3 lit red at 7,000 rpm, speed 174 km/h, position P3 and the Big RPM page, then Back and the Race, Tires and Controls pages; on the touch strip, an rpm gauge at 7,000, a speed gauge at 174 km/h, a boost gauge at 21.6 psi and a Gears dial on gear 3, turn Q and E, push Space. Right, a Corsair Galleon 100 SD: front left 88 and front right 89 degrees, working; rear left 128 and rear right 129 degrees, too hot; grip and suspension for all four tires; G-force 1.17 g, inputs and peak G 1.17 g; Back, gear 2 at 6,800 rpm and Next page, Garage; and on its two dials, tire temperatures and grip, G-force 1.17 g with peak 1.2 g, and the pedal bars.
Revs, speed and boost gauges and a gear dial on a Stream Deck +, and the Tires page on a Galleon 100 SD with its dials. Made-up telemetry.

5. Keys that press your controls

Command keys press the key you use in the game: rewind, photo mode, horn, camera, look back, cinematic camera, map, pause, start event, online, handbrake, clutch, shift up and down, convertible roof, ANNA, quick chat, text chat, leaderboard, the telemetry screens and the radio. Redline Deck reads the control preset you picked in the game and shows the key on each key's face. Hold the Stream Deck key to hold the horn, the handbrake or the rewind.

  • Keys go to the game only while Forza Horizon 6 is the window in front, one press for each press of yours. Nothing is automated.
  • If you use one of the game's Custom presets, pick the key in the command key's settings: the game keeps custom keys inside its save, where no other program can read them.

6. Using SimHub or other telemetry apps too

The game sends its telemetry to one port only, so only one program can receive it. Redline Deck can pass every packet on, unchanged, to up to four other ports, so SimHub, your wheel software, a bass shaker or a motion rig keeps working beside it.

  1. Leave the game sending to 5605, where Redline Deck listens.
  2. Set the other app to listen on another port, for example 5606.
  3. In any Redline Deck key's settings, under Connection and forwarding, enter 5606 in Forward to. A program on another PC takes address:port.

Do not set two programs to the same port: the second one cannot have it, and Redline Deck's keys say port 5605 in use when that happens.

Also on the XENEON EDGE

Redline Deck also writes a small dashboard file, %APPDATA%\RedlineDeck\state.json, about ten times a second while you drive. Redline Dashboard, our iCUE widget for the Corsair XENEON EDGE, reads it: a full race dash with the gear, shift lights, speed, tires, lap delta, G-force and the line you drove, on the touchscreen under your monitor, at the same time as your Stream Deck. A setting under Connection and forwarding turns the file off.

Redline Link is a small companion program for Windows. It receives the game's Data Out the same way Redline Deck does and writes the same dashboard file, so the Redline Dashboard widget works without a Stream Deck. It also serves the figures as a live stream on this PC that the widget can use for the smoothest updates, and it can forward packets to other apps like the plugin does.

It is one program in a zip: no installer, no window, just an icon in the notification area by the clock.

Download Redline Link 0.1.0 Windows 10 or 11 · 64-bit · 5.6 MB zip

Redline Link is open source (MIT), so you can read exactly what it does: github.com/AussieH/redline-link. The same zip is on its GitHub release.

  1. Download RedlineLink-0.1.0.zip and unzip it anywhere you like, for example into a folder in your Documents. Inside are RedlineLink.exe, a README.md with these steps and the LICENSE.
  2. Double-click RedlineLink.exe. A tray icon appears in the notification area. (If Windows shows a blue "Windows protected your PC" box, see below.)
  3. In Forza Horizon 6, set Settings, HUD and Gameplay: Data Out On, Data Out IP Address 127.0.0.1, Data Out IP Port 5605.
  4. Drive. Hover over the tray icon to see the status: waiting on port 5605 before any data, receiving with the packets a second while you drive, paused or in menus when the game stops sending.

Right-click the tray icon for its menu:

  • Open the folder: opens %APPDATA%\RedlineDeck, where the dashboard file and the settings are.
  • Start with Windows: tick it and Redline Link starts when you sign in, for your account only.
  • Quit.

To uninstall, untick Start with Windows if you ticked it, quit from the tray menu, and delete the folder you unzipped it to. Nothing else was installed.

The first time you run Redline Link, Windows may show a blue box that says Windows protected your PC. Windows SmartScreen shows this for any new program that is not yet signed and that few people have run yet. It does not mean anything was found wrong with it. Click More info, then Run anyway. Windows remembers your choice for that file.

  • Redline Link never needs administrator rights, and never asks for them.
  • It talks only to this PC: it listens for the game on 127.0.0.1 and serves the widget on localhost, and sends packets elsewhere only if you list a forward target yourself. It makes no internet connection, has no account and never updates itself.
  • It writes only to %APPDATA%\RedlineDeck, plus the Start with Windows entry if you tick it.

On its first start Redline Link writes companion-settings.json in the same folder. Most people never need to change it. To change the port or forward packets to another app, edit it in Notepad, then quit Redline Link and start it again. 

{
  "port": 5605,
  "network": false,
  "forward": [],
  "wsPort": 5605
}
  • port: the port the game sends to (not 5200 to 5300).
  • network: true to accept packets from another PC or an Xbox, not just this one.
  • forward: up to four targets, "5606" for this PC or "192.168.1.20:5606" for another, to pass every packet on to unchanged, for SimHub, wheel software or Redline Deck.
  • wsPort: the live stream for the widget. Leave it at 5605, where the widget looks for it.

With a Stream Deck you do not need Redline Link: Redline Deck writes the widget's file itself. If you want both, for example for Redline Link's live stream to the widget, remember that only one program can receive the game's port. Let one receive it and forward to the other:

  • Game to Redline Deck, then Redline Link. The game sends to 5605. In Redline Deck's settings, Forward to 5606. In Redline Link's settings, "port": 5606.
  • Game to Redline Link, then Redline Deck. The game sends to 5605. In Redline Link's settings, "forward": ["5606"]. In Redline Deck's settings, Port 5606.

Either way, while Redline Link runs it writes the dashboard file and Redline Deck steps aside, so the two never fight over it. The widget's stream stays on 5605: it is a different kind of connection from the game's packets, so it does not clash with either.

8. What it can and cannot do

  • It reads only the telemetry the game sends for this purpose. No mod, nothing changed in the game or its files.
  • It listens on 127.0.0.1, this PC only, unless you tick Listen on the network. Nothing you drive leaves your PC unless you forward it yourself. No account.
  • Command keys send one key press for each press of yours, only while the game is in front.
  • It writes one file, the dashboard file for the widget, and a setting turns that off.

Frequently asked

The keys say Turn on Data Out.

The game is running but nothing has arrived. Check the three Data Out settings in HUD and Gameplay, and that the port matches the one in a key's settings. Then drive: the game sends nothing in menus.

The keys say port 5605 in use.

Another program, often SimHub or Redline Link, already listens on that port. Move one of them to another port and forward to it, as in Using SimHub or other telemetry apps too or Running Redline Link and Redline Deck together.

The command keys do nothing.

Keys only go to the game while it is the window in front. If you use a Custom control preset, pick each command's key in its settings. If the game runs as administrator, Windows blocks key presses from programs that do not, so start the game normally.

Can the game run on another PC?

Yes, for the readings. Tick Listen on the network in a key's settings and enter this PC's address in the game instead of 127.0.0.1; Windows asks once whether to let it through the firewall. Command keys press keys on this PC only.

Do I need a Stream Deck for the XENEON EDGE widget?

No. Use Redline Link.

Is this made by Playground Games or Microsoft?

No. Redline Deck and Redline Link are unofficial projects made by TeaTime, not affiliated with or endorsed by Playground Games, Microsoft or Xbox Game Studios. Forza Horizon is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. No game logo, artwork, font or screenshot is used: every key is drawn in code.

Something is still wrong.

Email support@teatimeservers.ca and tell us what the keys say.