HELP, HELP, HELP, HELP, PLEASE!

[CrashAlot]

Sorry in advance for this super long post, but I screwed something up really bad, but I have no idea what I did or how to fix it.  There are a lot moving parts that I have to explain, so here it goes. Before yesterday I had all my flight controllers set up perfectly in DCS. I had spent hours and hours setting up custom bindings for all of the buttons, switches, and dials on my TM Warthog throttle, my Warthog stick, my TM TPR pedals, and my Bravo Throttle, that I repurposed to control all kinds of things in the F/A-18 Hornet, since I'm using my Warthog throttle for thrust. I also spent hours customizing dozens of key binds for my keyboard in the DCS control settings. Everything was working beautifully and I was flying my F/A-18 in the sim with no issues whatsoever, except for my shitty skills. 

The only controls that I couldn't use until a few days ago were my 2 Logitech Saitek control panels. So did some research and found an app on GitHub called DCS Flight Panels (DCSFP). I then used the DCSFP app as a keyboard emulator and set it so all of the buttons, switches, and knobs on my Logitech panels were bond to keyboard binds that I set up in DCS Control settings. Everything was set up and working great in the simulator. All of my Thrustmaster controls and my Logitech control panels were bound and set up just way I wanted them and the correct actions were happening in my F/A-18 in DCS when I activated my controls.

Then last night I downloaded, installed, and set up a bunch of new software that is supposed to compliment DCS. After I finished setting up all these new applications, I was too tired to fly in the sim, so I just went to bed. Then this evening I opened up DCS, started a instant mission in my F/A-18 and everything went absolutely haywire. When I moved my Thrustmaster throttles, the rudders moved in my F/A-18. When I moved my Thrustmaster rudders, nothing happened in the sim. When I moved my Thrustmast stick, my stick moved in the airplane, but my rudder pedals also moved. None of the custom key bindings that I had spent hours setting up were working and none of the switches, buttons, and dials on my Thrustmaster Warthog throttle and stick, or my Bravo throttle did what they were supposed to based on how I had set them up in DCS Control settings. 

So my first thought was that it was no big deal. I thought that somehow my DCS control settings had reverted to default or maybe all the control settings just went haywire. So I opened up DCS Control settings, and started testing all of my controls, and to my surprise every single control movement, button, dial, and switch on al of my controllers was still set up perfectly just the way I had set up it. Whenever I moved my stick or rudders or throttle, the correct axis in DCS control settings lit up with the white line showing the axis was working correctly. Whenever I flipped a switch or pushed a button on one of my controls, the correct action lit up in DCS control settings. Everything is still exactly as I had set it up in DCS Control settings, but as soon as I get into my F/A-18, nothing does what it's supposed to. 

Here is a list of all the applications/plug-ins that I installed and set up last night that could be the culprit:

-DCS Updater Utility

-DCS Flight Panels

-DCS Bios

-Voice Attack

-Vaicom Pro

-OvGME

-SRS 

-CombatFlite

-TACView

(I also have TrackIR, but I've had it installed for a long time and it's never caused any issues with DCS)

Last night after installed and set up all of these apps, I used the DCS Updater Utility app to uninstall the current release version of DCS 2.7 and replace it with 2.7 Open Beta, because the Open Beta is required by a lot of the squadrons that I may look to join. 

As far as the DCS Flight Panels app, I had been using for a few days and it worked perfectly and didnt cause any issues like what I described, but up until last night, I was only using the DCS Flight Panels app as a keyboard emulator. Last night is when I also installed a companion app to DCS Flight Panels, called DCS Bios. I was finding that it was limiting using DCS Flight Panels just as a keyboard emulator, so I wanted to try to use it with DCS Bios. It's possible that the DCS Bios app caused this issue somehow, but I never messed with any of the controls that were gong haywire. I just used the DCS Flight Panels app with DCS Bios to may buttons and switches on my Logitech panels directly to controls in my F/A-18 like the battery switch, light switches and dials, the wing fold level, the parking brake lever, the hook, the anti-skid switch, the harness lever, and the eject ARM lever.

The crazy thing is that when I started up DCS tonight and discovered that my Thrustmaster and Bravo controls were going haywire, the only controls that were working as they should were all the controls on my Logitech Panels that I had bound using DCS Flight Panels app and DCS Bios. I didn't mess with any DCS Bios relating to thrust, stick, rudder, or any of the controls I had mapped to my keyboard and to HOTAS controls that all of a sudden stopped working. 

Short of deleting all of these apps from my PC, as well as deleting DCS, and all associated folders and files, and then doing a fresh install of DCS, I have no idea how to trouble shoot this issue or how to fix it. I don't want to go tinkering more and cause even worse issues. 

Is anyone aware of a known issue with any of these apps that would cause what I described where the controls settings are correct in DCS Control Settings, but in the sim when in the aircraft, none of the controls do what they are supposed to based on the Control settings?

If I were to take the nuclear option by deleting DCS and all of these apps from my PC, and then doing a completely fresh install of DCS, will all of my custom control settings be gone, requiring me to spend dozens of hours setting everything up again? 

Last question, I'm not sure if this is normal, but I found in the DCS folders on multiple drives in my PC and some of subfolders have the exact same names. I have DCS.exe installed on my E drive. The top line folder is titled "DCS World" and the subfolders include: downloads, API, Bazar, bin, Config, CoreMods, Data, DemoMods, distr, Doc, dxgui, FUI, JConfHtml, I10n, LuaSocket, Mission Editor, Mods, Scripts, Sounds.edc, and WebGUI. The DCS.exe file is located in the bin folder. 

What confused me is that I also found a folder titled "DCS" on my C drive inside of my Saved Games folder and this DCS folder has a lot of the exact same subfolders that I found in the folder titled "DCS World" on my E drive. The Subfolders inside of the DCS folder in saved games on my C drive include: Backup, Config, Data, fxo, ImagesShop, InputLayoutsTxt, Logs, metashaders2, MG, Mission Editor, Missions, Mods, Movies, ScreenShots, Scripts, and Tracks. So 5 have names that are the same as folders I found on my E drive. 

Is this normal? The reason I ask is because I had originally installed DCS on my C drive and months later that drive was getting full, so I moved the folders to my E drive, but I may have ended up with some duplicate folders on two drives. 

 

 

[The LT]

Not sure where to start... You need to be more specific...

[Art-J]

PC video games store their save and config files either somewhere in the main game directory, or somewhere on the system drive. DCS is the latter case. This Saved Games folder you found on C drive is where everything related to you-in-DCS is stored (controls, settings, replays, missions, logbook, campaign progress etc., the list goes on). 

Important note: reinstalling the game or runnig repair and cleanup command fixes only the main game folder, but doesn't do anything to Saved Games folder, so if you messed up something in that one, it will stay messed up unless you remove the folder and let the game rebuild a clean one from scratch. Make the backup of it first, of course (note: your control assignments are stored in \Config\Input\ location with all its subfolders).

No idea about the rest, because I don't use any of aforementioned apps (except OvGME for mods).

Edited October 22, 2021 by Art-J

[xoomigo]

Just my 2 cents...

It seems to me your issue came about after you ran the DCS Updater utility to switch from Stable to Beta version - most probably impacting your plugin .lua files and the associated configuration files. See whether you have the plugin folders and .lua files in "C:\Users\YOUR_USER_NAME\Saved Games\DCS\Scripts" (typical for DCS stable user folder). If they are there, there's still hope.

You will probably see "C:\Users\YOUR_USER_NAME\Saved Games\DCS.OpenBeta\Scripts" for your "newly converted" open beta installation.

[CrashAlot]

12 hours ago, Art-J said:

PC video games store their save and config files either somewhere in the main game directory, or somewhere on the system drive. DCS is the latter case. This Saved Games folder you found on C drive is where everything related to you-in-DCS is stored (controls, settings, replays, missions, logbook, campaign progress etc., the list goes on). 

Important note: reinstalling the game or runnig repair and cleanup command fixes only the main game folder, but doesn't do anything to Saved Games folder, so if you messed up something in that one, it will stay messed up unless you remove the folder and let the game rebuild a clean one from scratch. Make the backup of it first, of course (note: your control assignments are stored in \Config\Input\ location with all its subfolders).

No idea about the rest, because I don't use any of aforementioned apps (except OvGME for mods).

 

Thanks. 

So your saying that these folders on my C drive under Saved Games are related to specific settings, controls, missions, etc. relating to me and these folders with the same names that are on my E drive, which is my main DCS game folder, are relating to default and system  settings, controls, etc.

This makes sense because in my Config/Input folder in the Saved games folder, it only has 2 subfolder and 1 loose file. The lose file is named "disabled.lua". Could this be disabling my custom control settings?

The 2 subfolder inside of the Input folder in Saved Games are named "FA-18C-hornet" and "su-25T", but the latter is empty.  That's because the only aircraft that I've created custom control settings in DCS is the FA18 and inside the FA18 folder there are subfolders named joystick, keyboard, mouse, and trackir.  Inside the joystick folder, there are only 4 .lua files named after the 4 controls that I set up in DCS: My TM WH throttle, stick, TPR pedals, and  Bravo throttle. 

I also checked the DCSWorld/Config/Input/Aircrafts/Common/Joystick and Aircrafts/Default/Joystick subfolders on my E drive and the only files that are stored inside of them are default.lua files, which makes sense. 

I still don't understand how all my control settings can be perfectly set up and responding correctly when I'm in the DCS Control Settings interface, but as soon as I get into my FA18, none of my controls are responding the way they just did seconds earlier when I was in Control Settings.

[CrashAlot]

13 hours ago, xoomigo said:

Just my 2 cents...

It seems to me your issue came about after you ran the DCS Updater utility to switch from Stable to Beta version - most probably impacting your plugin .lua files and the associated configuration files. See whether you have the plugin folders and .lua files in "C:\Users\YOUR_USER_NAME\Saved Games\DCS\Scripts" (typical for DCS stable user folder). If they are there, there's still hope.

You will probably see "C:\Users\YOUR_USER_NAME\Saved Games\DCS.OpenBeta\Scripts" for your "newly converted" open beta installation.

I don't see a folder in Saved Games named DCS.OpenBeta. It's still:  SavedGames/DCS and inside of the DCS folder there are 16 subfolders. Config and Scripts are 2 of the 16 subfolders

Inside of the Scripts folder, there are 3 subfolders and 2 lose files. The subfolders are: DCS-BIOS, Hooks, and VAICOMPRO and the 2 files are Export.lua and TacviewGameExport.lua. Inside of the DCS-BIOS folder, are 2 folders and 2 files.

The folders are doc and lib and the files are BIOS.lua and BIOSConfig.lua. The doc folder appears to have a bunch of stuff relating to graphics. There subfolders inside of the doc folder are: CSS, images, js, and json. 

In the lib folder there are 52 .lua files named after all the DCS modules and there is a file named address.txt.

I think I will try using the DCS Update Utility app to switch back to DCS 2.5 stable and see if that fixes my issue. 

[CrashAlot]

OK, so I sort of figured out what is causing my controls in the FA18 to go all haywire, but I still don't know why it's happening or how to fully fix it. So when I set up all my controls initially, in DCS Control settings, I selected the FA-18 from the drop down menu in the upper left corner of the Control settings screen. Then I proceeded to customize all the controls for keybaord, mouse, stick, and throttle. 

Before all this started happening, when I jumped into the FA18, all the controls responded exactly how I have them set up in Control settings. Now the Control Settings are still right, but my controls aren't responding to match what's set up in Control Settings. 

So I just pulled up the Control Settings and in the drop down menu where you select the aircraft, I selected "General". I never set up any control settings for General, but now there are a bunch of really weird control settings set up for my throttle, stick, rudders, keyboard, and mouse and these really weird control settings that I am seeing the Control settings interface match up exactly with what my controls are now doing when I'm in the FA18.  For example, in Control Settings the toe brake axis on my rudder pedals are bound to control pitch and roll. My throttle, and joystick axis are also set up to control pitch and roll. Obviously, I never set things up this way. 

So for some reason, even though all of my F18 control settings are still set up in the Control Settings app, the FA18 aircraft in the sim isn't using those settings and is only using the General control settings.  

I think I have a workaround, but its not really a total fix. I have all of my customized FA18 control settings as Saved Profiles. So what if I select "General" from the drop down menu in Control Settings and then load all of my saved FA18 profiles, which will change the General control settings from all those wacky settings to my customized FA18 control settings. This should enable me to fly my F18 with correct control settings, but it wont fix the issue that is causing the FA18 to use the General Control Settings instead of the FA18 control settings. 

Does anyone have any idea how to fix that? 

[Art-J]

Not quite. Let's clear some things up:

1) default control assignments are stored in default.lua files in the main game folder indeed;

2) whenever you make any change to these, the game creates a new control file in Saved Games with .diff.lua extension ("diff" for difference from defaults which cannot be overwritten);

3) separate diff files are created for each separate USB device plugged into your PC. It also means that "save" and "load" profile command only works for each device alone after highlighting its column by clicking on it;

4) for every newly purchased and installed module, the game tries to make automatic assignments to every USB controller it detects. Usually that means a crapton of duplicated assignments which don't make sense. Yes, it's "normal". But also yes, you should go through the whole controls table, delete all duplicates and leave only one assignment per one function as you intended.

5) "General" tab comprises game commands not related to any individual aircraft, or a couple of functions which are universal for all aircraft.

6) DCS has "simulation" and "game" flight and avionics modes, selected in gameplay option tab (IIRC?). It also has SEPARATE control tables for each (usually named "real"/"sim" and "easy/game" respectively). Are you abolutely sure you bind sim controls and then use sim mode? I suspect you might have mixed up sim mode with game controls (or vice versa), and that won't work obviously.

7) when converting/switching versions, folder name in Saved Games isn't changed, that's why yours is still called "DCS" and not "DCS.OpenBeta";

8 ) I recommend going to "doc" folder in your DCS install and check the "User Manual 2020" - you might find answers for other questions over there.

Edited October 22, 2021 by Art-J

[BlackLibrary]

What i read, i assume that you use DCSBIOS from the FlightPanels.

these programs are all use the export.lua 

-DCS Bios

-Vaicom Pro

-SRS 

-TACView

the wrong order can also cause problems and stop these programs from working.

the lua is in savegames/dcs/scripts located.
here you find an order that works: (pic the programs you use)

https://github.com/DCSFlightpanels/DCSFlightpanels/wiki/Troubleshooting

Edited October 23, 2021 by BlackLibrary

[CrashAlot]

I discovered something else. I opened up DCS settings and on the Gameplay tab, I saw that I had Game Flight Mode turned off, but I had Game Avionics Mode turned on.  I tried turning "Game Avionics Mode" off and then I did a cold start in my F/A-18 and all of my controls were back to responding in the plane just as I have them set up in DCS Control Settings.

Then I turned Game Avionics Mode back on and started a new flight in my F/A-18 and all the controls were back to not matching what I have set up in DCS Control Settings for the F/A-18. So having Game Avionics Mode turned on is forcing my control settings into the F/A-18 Game mode. I thought that you had to have Game Flight Mode turned on in order to have the aircraft use the F/A-18 Game Control Settings. 

But I have since tested it by turning on Game Flight Mode by itself and Game Avionics Mode by itself, and both of them force the aircraft to use the F/A-18 Game Control Settings. I figured this out because one time I started a flight in with a hot start in Ready Ramp mode and as soon as I clicked the "Fly" button the plane started hauling butt down the taxi way and went into the woods and blew up. None of my controls worked the way they were set up in Control Settings for the F/A-18 Simulator Control settings.

So then I opened up Control settings and looked at the settings for F/A-18 Game mode and I saw that the gray slider on the right side of my Warthog Throttle was set up to control the thrust. But the slider was in the off position and when I tried another flight with Game Avionics Mode turned on, the plane took off down the taxi way again, but the slide wasn't responding properly. Then I figured out that there special selection in the axis tune window for sliders. Once I checked the slider box, it started working like a proper throttle. 

What's still confusing me is that I could swear that when I've been flying in DCS for the past few months, I always had that Game Avionics Mode turned on and Game Flight Mode turned off and the Game Avionics mode being on wasn't forcing my F/A-18 to use the F/A-18 Game control settings. I could be wrong, but I feel like something in one of the new apps that I installed or maybe an update to DCS is what caused the Game Avionics Mode turned on to start forcing the F/A-18 to use the F/A-18 Game control settings. Whenever I hover over the Game Avionics Mode setting on the Gameplay tab in DCS Settings, a floating pop-up appears that says "Aircraft and units will be marked in surround space".

When I was playing DCS prior to installing all those new apps, I was definitely seeing aircraft and units marked with floating blue and red text and my F/A-18 definitely wasn't using the F/A-18 Game control settings. This is only started happening a couple days ago.

Having the Game Avionics mode setting on shouldn't force you to use the F/A-18 Game control settings, because if you want to control the plane with your more advanced sim control settings you can't do it, because the F/A-18 Game control settings have very limited options of what you can control in the plane and how you control them. I tried Loading my F/A-18 Sim control settings profiles into the F/A-18 Game control settings, but the F/A-18 Game mode only has about 30% of the controls available for F/A-18 Sim control settings. 

You should be able to have Game Avionics mode turned on and still use the Sim level control settings and not be forced to use Easy or Game level control settings. 

 

[Art-J]

22 hours ago, CrashAlot said:

When I was playing DCS prior to installing all those new apps, I was definitely seeing aircraft and units marked with floating blue and red text and my F/A-18 definitely wasn't using the F/A-18 Game control settings. This is only started happening a couple days ago.

Having the Game Avionics mode setting on shouldn't force you to use the F/A-18 Game control settings, because if you want to control the plane with your more advanced sim control settings you can't do it, because the F/A-18 Game control settings have very limited options of what you can control in the plane and how you control them. I tried Loading my F/A-18 Sim control settings profiles into the F/A-18 Game control settings, but the F/A-18 Game mode only has about 30% of the controls available for F/A-18 Sim control settings. 

You should be able to have Game Avionics mode turned on and still use the Sim level control settings and not be forced to use Easy or Game level control settings. 

 

I think your memory might be a bit fuzzy and adds to the confusion. If you saw blue and red floating text, it means you used labels, which are separate gemeplay option, not related to avionics and flight modes in any way whatsoever. Unless you saw the big red, pink indicator in top right like on the screenshot below, you were not using game avionics mode, but normal one.

Also, game avionics mode reduces number of systems being simulated, so there's less stuff co control and thus - game controls must be forced. In other words, You can't have sim controls on with game avionics on at the same time, because half of functions to be potentially controlled don't exist (they're disabled in game mode). I'm fairly sure that's how it's always been in DCS, so I don't think new patch introduced any changes here.

 

Edited October 24, 2021 by Art-J