Frontier rolled me back two control config versions

[Nomad]

This is a remarkable screwup. This latest updated seems to have deleted my two most recent control bindings settings. I've been rolled back to the time before I adapted my binds for VR (this happened late 2017). I have to recreate over a year of control binding evolutions because Frontier seemingly lost them.

There's other bugs too. For the moment I've given up troubleshooting them because every time I restart this trash fire I see something different. Sometimes the game won't load into VR. Sometimes it just loads up a small game window in the center of my screen, with the rest of the screen blank.

I still seem to have my newest control configuration files, I see them in my bindings directory. But the game won't use them anymore, it refuses to see them and forces me to use a much older configuration.

[Nomad]

I figured out what they did. It's a little complicated, but basically... one of my control devices had its name changed. My rudder pedals underwent a change of name because of some driver weirdness, from a hex ID to a text ID, and because their name changed the game wouldn't let me use the config that used them. Any config that had that ID was rejected.

This is terrible game design. For this game I use three different logical controllers, my joystick and throttle and rudder pedals. But the rudder pedals change name and I lose all the settings for my joystick and throttle? The rudder pedals contributed a single analog axis, and that was it, but for that I lost everything. For that I lost countless binds associated with two complex controllers. Frontier, this is bad design.

If anyone experiences this and needs to fix it, it's not that hard to deal with. First, back up the config file that you want to use. The game overwrites it otherwise. I'll leave it to you to find where Elite keeps the bindings files, the info should be fairly readily available. Then look in that directory for a file named "BindingLoadingErrors.log". Open it up. In my case I see a pile of the same error, over and over again. "Failed to find GUID afor device: "068E00F2". That hex number is just the previous ID of my rudder pedals. But for reasons beyond the scope of this comment, it changed. If you don't know what the binding is for, look at your current binding file and see what has that name. In my case it was "YawAxisRaw". Yaw Axis is the rudder axis, so that told me that I was on the right track.

Then load up the game and select the preset of "empty". That's what I used, anyway, to keep it simple. Bind a key or axis on the device that changed names. So I just rebound the rudder axis, because that's all I used on my rudder pedals. Then I saved it. I think the game saves it to the "custom" bind file. Or possibly "custom 3.0".

Use a decent text editor and load up that file and look at the axis you just bound. I use Notepad ++, but simpler editors might work too. Because I selected the empty preset, the resulting file was very simple. I loaded it up and the binding I set was in the first page. In my case it was under the heading of <YawAxisRaw>. That's what was originally associated with 068E00F2, What mattered was the item below it labeled <Binding Device=CHProPedals" Key="Joy_ZAxis" />

It was the "Binding Device" bit that mattered. Before it was a hex number. For reasons beyond my control it's been changed to "CHProPedals". I had to go in and replace the hex number with that. But as soon as I adjusted my original binding file so that the hex number was changed to "CHProPedals", Elite saw the file once again and let me use it, and all my bindings were restored.

[Laurreth]

Originally posted by Nomad:

one of my control devices had its name changed. My rudder pedals underwent a change of name because of some driver weirdness, from a hex ID to a text ID, and because their name changed the game wouldn't let me use the config that used them. Any config that had that ID was rejected.

This is terrible game design.

[…]

It was the "Binding Device" bit that mattered. Before it was a hex number. For reasons beyond my control it's been changed to "CHProPedals". I had to go in and replace the hex number with that. But as soon as I adjusted my original binding file so that the hex number was changed to "CHProPedals", Elite saw the file once again and let me use it, and all my bindings were restored.

You uninstalled CH Control Manager or it doesn't handle the pedals any more. I would recommend you remove Control Manager entirely, the CH devices work well without it, it's been unmaintained forever, and eventually it started bluescreening my system.

It's not "terrible game design". The controllers are exposed to the game as completely different devices when CH's ancient software picks them up, and while it's not a big deal for the pedals, the throttle for example has its buttons completely rearranged. Ask me about the undocking attempt when that happened after I had simply replaced the device name in the binds file :-D

[Nomad]

Originally posted by Shadowdancer:

Originally posted by Nomad:

one of my control devices had its name changed. My rudder pedals underwent a change of name because of some driver weirdness, from a hex ID to a text ID, and because their name changed the game wouldn't let me use the config that used them. Any config that had that ID was rejected.

This is terrible game design.

[…]

It was the "Binding Device" bit that mattered. Before it was a hex number. For reasons beyond my control it's been changed to "CHProPedals". I had to go in and replace the hex number with that. But as soon as I adjusted my original binding file so that the hex number was changed to "CHProPedals", Elite saw the file once again and let me use it, and all my bindings were restored.

You uninstalled CH Control Manager or it doesn't handle the pedals any more. I would recommend you remove Control Manager entirely, the CH devices work well without it, it's been unmaintained forever, and eventually it started bluescreening my system.

It's not "terrible game design". The controllers are exposed to the game as completely different devices when CH's ancient software picks them up, and while it's not a big deal for the pedals, the throttle for example has its buttons completely rearranged. Ask me about the undocking attempt when that happened after I had simply replaced the device name in the binds file :-D

No, it's terrible game design. It's standard to have multiple controller devices on a flight sim PC today. In the case of Thrustmaster Warthog users, for instance, the throttle and joystick are two different devices entirely, the computer sees them as two different things. The rudder pedals are a third device. If I used my MFDs then that'd be two more devices that were part of the config.

If any single one of them went missing, that would make Elite reject the entire config. If I used a single button on one of the MFDs for something and later forgot about it and removed them because I wasn't using them anymore, I'd lose the entire configuration. It wouldn't matter how inconsequential that one control was, or how much work would be involved in recreating what could be the result of years of modification of my key binds, they'd just be gone. Bindings for four other control devices, in my case, would be lost because the game found one other one to be missing.

Rational game design would be to continue using that configuration, but perhaps to post a warning that the one device was missing. Then I could have rebound the one missing axis and that would have been the end of it. Making the entire configuration disappear without explanation was the worst possible way that the situation could have been handled. It's a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Incidentally, I continue to use the CH control manager because it gives me fine grained control over calibration. These rudder pedals are ancient, the calibration has drifted on the toe brakes especially. The app lets me fudge the calibration a bit to ensure that the toe brakes don't remain lightly pressed at all times. This is irrelevant to Elite, of course, but Elite isn't the only thing I use them with. I'll continue using it, I already had to manually fix the bindings file to take the change of names into account. I'd only have to change it again if I uninstalled the app because Elite would do the same thing all over again.

[ProLeetNoob]

Didn't read your rediculous wall of text, however I'm sure you learned your lesson, and will back up your keybinds file from now on like the rest of us know to do. (Insert fat guy waving lightsabers gif here)

[Wylie28]

Idiot proofing isnt frontiers job.

User error on your part.