I sort of snoozed into updating to 21H1 and the two new things were (1) a weather widget on the taskbar (yeah Bill, this ain’t happening; what’s next an ICQ widget?) and (2) as I prepared to liberate the Emirates the mission was made especially exciting as all my DCS Hornet throttle assignments were now gone.
So this post is more a 'If you are going to update to 21H1, back up your C:\Users\you\Saved Games\DCS.openbeta\Config\Input folder.
What seems to have happened is that the USB device IDs got shifted around (who knows, Windows probably looked out for things powering up and the throttle was asleep that day). If you didn’t back them up or it doesn’t work then to fix it rather than rebind it all you can do this:
After starting DCS and finding a controller’s bindings are now blank, look in here (per module): C:\Users\you\Saved Games\DCS.openbeta\Config\Input\FA-18C_hornet\joystick. It’ll look something like this:
So there are two throttle binding files now, and the new one with less in it (3 KB) has the id (the long number in brackets, a globally unique id) that DCS is wanting to use of the throttle device, with the old file still around but not used.
To fix it, just take out the new ID and rename the bit in the filename with the bindings. So it’ll look like this in the end, once you’ve rename the files in steps:
So in summary, Windows renamed the device Id for my throttle, DCS has a file of bindings where the filename is based on the old Id, so I rename the filename and all is now good.
There’s also the ‘Save Profile As’ and the ‘Load Profile…’ per device on the controls page within DCS (right click on the device category in the DCS controls screen), for those not wanting to rename files and do them module by module.
It looks like you can save out to a Saved Games folder of ‘InputUserProfiles’ and then keep them safe that way. If the Device Ids change you can load them back in and it should be good. I’ve not really used that before.
emm,my system is win10 ltsc 2021,21h1 too.and my rudder got same issue.but not reboot id changed,it is reslot a new usb port the id will change.Really disgusting
I had some weirdness with my controllers lately. I disconnected everything from my computer in order to replace the memory modules and display adapter. All looked fine after I booted the first time. No issues in ACC and LMU race sims.
But when I tried DCS, it seemed that I had lost all of the stick’s button assignments in every module. I assumed that the controller’s ID had changed. After not using it for almost 2 years, I downloaded Joystick Profiler with the intent of swapping controllers in the old profiles. But when comparing new and old profiles, the stick IDs were the same. Hmmm.
I began looking closer at the old Hornet profile. Normally I use the pinkie lever as shift, allowing a second function for each button or axis. In every case where there was a second assignment via shift, I found a red symbol conflict. The pinkie lever modifier function had been lost. I added this and went through my Hornet’s stick buttons reassigning them. A pain, but much better than reprogramming the entire stick for every module.
Next, I began repairing the Strike Eagle’s stick assignments. When that was done and I had moved on to the Tomcat, I realized that it needed no repair. Same for the Sabre and P-51D, modules that had shown conflicts prior. By fixing the Hornet and the Strike Eagle, I had somehow fixed the rest of the modules.
Not sure of the how/why this happened but happy to have it resolved without too much effort. Using JoyPro to backup all profiles.
