How to fix the game not detecting your controller, gamepad or joystick

This is an illustrated guide explaining how to manually get the game to detect and assign the right controller (gamepad or joystick) to the Player1 and Player2.

The guide also includes Landor's steps to disabling the mouse in the GameOptions.sav file as a first part, to make sure it does not interfere with the manually assigned controllers later on.

This guide does not include:
- modifying the driver settings of peripherals
- modifying Microsoft Windows' Device Manager (and similar) settings

Feel free to contribute to the guide by mentioning your own fixes, suggestions and ideas in the comments.

First, let's properly disable the mouse control

It seems the game sometime is not properly disabling the mouse control when the gamepad/joystick are selected - so if you're having troubles with controllers, it's a recommended first step.

The source is the excellent post of Landor here, that says:

1. Right click on the entry for Sky Rogue in your steam library, and click on "Properties".
   
2. In the properties window, go to the tab for "Local Files", and press the "Browse Local Files" button.
   
3. Open the folder called "Save" in the new window.
   
4. Right click on the file called "GameOptions", and hit "Edit".
   
5. This should open up Notepad or an equivalent text editor (NOT Word or Wordpad.)
   
6. Look for the option "disableMouse":false, change the "false" to "true", preserving the punctuation and spacing.
   
7. Save the file, close it, and launch Sky Rogue, mouse control for flying should now be disabled.

Second, let's get the game to detect and assign the right controllers

Finally, the fun part!

1) Launch the game

2) Press Enter on your keyboard to open the Main Menu



3) Using the arrow keys on your keyboard, navigate to Options, press Enter



4) Go to Rebind Controls, press Enter



5) Look at Assigned Controllers on the right: it should show the wrong device (here, "Footswitch3...", a programmable USB pedal peripheral)



6) Move down to Players: Player2, select it with Enter. Look at Assigned Controllers on the right: it might be the device you're looking for, or another random one.



7) Move down to Remove, press Enter. Look at Assigned Controllers on the right again: it should say None.



8) Move back to Players: Player1, select it with Enter

9) Move down to Remove, press Enter. Look at Assigned Controllers on the right again: it should say None as well.

10) Move to the right twice to Assign Controller, press Enter



11) A popup should display "Choose Controller: Press any button or move an axis on the controller you would like to use" along with a countdown of 5 seconds. Press a button on your gamepad or joystick (or simply move the stick around).



12) Check the Assigned Controllers on the right: it should display the right device (mine was "Xinput Gamepad 1" for a standard 360 pad)



13) You can now Calibrate it (deadzones and all), using the keyboard to navigate the different settings.



14) Once you finished customizing the controls, move up to the Done button at the top, and press Enter.

Et voila, it should work! 😄

............................

What was the problem (in my case, and maybe yours):

The game detected another peripheral (an USB pedal switch here), and for some reason assigned it as the Controller for Player1, assigning my 360 pad to Player2 (who can't navigate the menu so I thought it couldn't detect it at all).

Manually assigning the right controller for Player1 (and Player2 if needed) seems to be the easiest way to solve this issue.

Note: the Rebind Controls menu is in two parts: Flight, for flying controls, and Menu, for menu navigation. Using the keyboard arrow keys, move to each category and press Enter to open each subset of controls.

............................


If you experienced a different issue with controllers detection, and possibly found your own fix, please share it in the comments so I can update the guide and credit you as well 👍

............................

Special thanks:

• Landor for helping countless players and watching over of the discussion forum.
  
• Fractal Phase for making Sky Rogue over the years

[3_ghosts]

Hello, I am on an M1 Mac and Thrustmaster t.16000M Hotas works with 2 other flight simulators. It recognizes in Sky Rogue, but does not map any Actions to the assigned controller. It is bound, just doesn't preassign controls. Anyone else have this issue? Just looking for some quick defaults to get up and running.