SouthernChap

Nah, you don't need any extra software. Well only if you're playing Elite Dangerous written by idiot Frontier Development programmers who are still using a version of DirectInput that was out of date 10 years ago! Windows generally has had 128 digital bindings on any HID via DirectInput/RawInput for over almost two decades. It's up to the game d2eveloper to use the right version of the APIs but it's not a problem. You may be being mislead by joy.cpl control panel tool which only has a UI capable of displaying 32 inputs but that's just MS being lazy about updating the displays in their control panel tools. DCS can handle 128 inputs from any joystick or throttle or any other HID no problem. Hell, even Star Citizen allows 100 inpouts per HID (and no, I don't know why Star Citizen's developers stopped at 100, I can't imagine handling another 28 inputs would put that much demand on resources but hey, it took long enough to get them to raise the limit from 50 to 100! )

Nah, not necessary. Windows RawInput/DirectInput API allows for up to 128 digital bindings and 8 analogue axes per HID. Even with a crazy collective like the Apache's I doubt you'd exceed that

I really don't think it's to do with the number of controllers. If you take a look at my two posts: you'll see that number of devices weren't significant. I think you might have had something earlier when you asked about USB hubs. My last post suggests that might be something to do with it.

"Use the...home key..." Ah, the blissful memories of being sarcastically patronised...

Cries in Z270... Ah well, Guess I know what my bonus is being spent on.

Yep, right. That's what I thought; what you're talking about is, what in English we'd call the throttle, or rather the parts of your design that implement the throttle. Because that's held in the 'head' I can see why that would be a problem swapping out grips. Thank you for the explanation.

The term 'angle corrector position mechanism' has confused me somewhat. Could explain what that means? Ah, do you mean the 'throttle', the twist part that controls the engine fuel rate? If so, I wondered if that might be a problem with fitting Virpil grips and this would explain it.

I've been thinking the same. Given the 'brains' are Virpil, I'm wondering if electronically at least the Virpil grips will be compatible. Obviously there'd be the physical fitting part to deal with but that's just a matter of crafting. The other possible wrinkle would be that the Virpil grips might be too heavy for the friction 'clutch' so maybe it wouldn't work after all. Eh, when Virpil come out with their collective grips, I might buy one and see.

Those naughty Virpil boys sleeping on the job eh? Mega_Mogz needs to get his soldering iron out and help out!

https://pointctrl.com/ Although you are right that a competent AI CP/G is going to be essential.

It won't be TM, that would require them to add more budget to their engineering department than their marketing department! If anybody it will be from a company with a name that starts with 'V'. In the medium term, Virpil are probably most likely; they already have announced their plans to sell a UH1 and a KA-50 collective (with some nice accompanying pictures). That said the Apache collective is a little epic! VKB may do a collective sometime in the future but lets not hold our breath as they are utter perfectionists and they rightfully take their time. Mind you the collective is conceptually about the simplest control peripheral other than rudder pedals so they might well be quick about it. That said, they're also likely to go Russian before Western.

This may be a factor for some and certainly I resolved my problems initially by moving my Logitech lit keyboard and mouse to a MB port away from my powered USB hub but I was also able to resolve problems by 'un-splitting' my Virpil throttle from the three virtual devices (can split the Virpil throttle into three separate virtual devices via a Virpil software setting, so that no device has more than 32 digital binds, this is required for games using a legacy version of the DirectInput API, that can't see more than 32 bindable controls) before mucking around with where stuff was plugged in. I think this is a complex one that's going to require either ED to have a eureka moment or some serious tedious mucking around with repro'ing the issue with lots of different peripheral setups by ED. I don't envy them one little bit!

Please add me to the list too. I'm in the UK. (I am far too excited about this for a nearly 50 year old! :D)

Okay, did a little more digging, just to confirm my suspicions. I unhooked my Azeron keypad (3 devices) and uninstalled OpenTrack (1 device called 'TrackIR') That left me with 8 devices in total. We can see this here in this snippet from the log: 2021-01-31 19:59:00.558 INFO INPUT: Device [Keyboard] created deviceId = -1 2021-01-31 19:59:00.565 INFO INPUT: Device [VPC Rudder Pedals {FE77EA30-F9B1-11e9-8001-444553540000}] created deviceId = -1 2021-01-31 19:59:00.565 INFO INPUT: Joystick created[VPC Rudder Pedals {FE77EA30-F9B1-11e9-8001-444553540000}], ForceFeedBack: no 2021-01-31 19:59:00.571 INFO INPUT: Device [VPC Throttle MT-50 {DFF49E80-F9B8-11e9-8001-444553540000}] created deviceId = -1 2021-01-31 19:59:00.571 INFO INPUT: Joystick created[VPC Throttle MT-50 {DFF49E80-F9B8-11e9-8001-444553540000}], ForceFeedBack: no 2021-01-31 19:59:00.574 INFO INPUT: Device [VPC Throttle MT-50 {B04DDD60-FA88-11e9-8001-444553540000}] created deviceId = -1 2021-01-31 19:59:00.574 INFO INPUT: Joystick created[VPC Throttle MT-50 {B04DDD60-FA88-11e9-8001-444553540000}], ForceFeedBack: no 2021-01-31 19:59:00.576 INFO INPUT: Device [VPC Throttle MT-50 {B04E0470-FA88-11e9-8002-444553540000}] created deviceId = -1 2021-01-31 19:59:00.576 INFO INPUT: Joystick created[VPC Throttle MT-50 {B04E0470-FA88-11e9-8002-444553540000}], ForceFeedBack: no 2021-01-31 19:59:00.580 INFO INPUT: Device [ VKBsim Gunfighter MCG Ultimate Twist {72F317C0-5692-11eb-8001-444553540000}] created deviceId = -1 2021-01-31 19:59:00.580 INFO INPUT: Joystick created[ VKBsim Gunfighter MCG Ultimate Twist {72F317C0-5692-11eb-8001-444553540000}], ForceFeedBack: no 2021-01-31 19:59:00.595 INFO INPUT: Device [BU0836X Interface {FEF009B0-174F-11e9-8005-444553540000}] created deviceId = -1 2021-01-31 19:59:00.595 INFO INPUT: Joystick created[BU0836X Interface {FEF009B0-174F-11e9-8005-444553540000}], ForceFeedBack: no 2021-01-31 19:59:00.600 INFO INPUT: Device [Mouse] created deviceId = -1 But DCS still fails to start with the same error (as it does with any of the below failures): 2021-01-31 20:16:07.426 ALERT Dispatcher: Error starting Game GUI: [string "./Scripts/Input\Utils.lua"]:52: invalid order function for sorting Okay so I unplugged my BU0836X based button box (1 device), that leaves us with 5 'joystick' devices. Still failing. So I unplugged my rudder pedals which leaves us with four devices. DCS GUI loads up. Success. So is it just four 'joystick' devices that's the maximum that works? No. I unplugged my stick (1 device) and plugged back in my pedals (1 device) and my button box (1 device) to bring the total back up to 5. DCS GUI loads up. I then plug my stick back in and try again DCS GUI loads up. I then restart my pc DCS fails to load. Unplug button box Fails Unplug Pedals DCS GUI loads up. Replug pedals DCS GUI loads up. What the hell? Okay, so I actually haven't been paying attention to where I'm unplugging and replugging devices. So I then move my mouse and keyboard off the powered USB hub, plug my keyboard direct into one of the MB ports, plug my mouse into the keyboard USB port. Move all my flight stuff so that they're next to each other in the powered usb hub and in the 'correct' order (stick, throttle, pedals, button box; no, of course this doesn't matter but it is tidy). DCS GUI loads up. Close DCS down and try again DCS GUI loads up. Restart PC Try again. DCS loads up. Bind axes plus thrust. Free flight, all works well (apart from my usual clumsy flying of course ). Restart PC Try again DCS loads up Try free flight: axes I bound are still working. So yeah, the problem isn't the number of devices or number of 'joystick' devices. It's something much less obvious (to me at least). It seems to be working for me at the moment but I'd not bet any money on this continuing. I'm now terrified of plugging anything else back in! Hopefully the above will spark some thought in one of your clever devs and it'll get fixed.

Any news on this?

Yep Baldrick33 has it right. It doesn't seem to be the number of HIDs or the number of axes or even the number of bindable button (my Virpil pedals only have axes of course) but something about the devices themselves; or rather something about the specific instance of the device and how it's configured.

Just to throw my hat into the ring, I had exactly the same issues and here are my 'debugging' steps Here's my log (I'd previously commented out the section in missioneditor.lua so got to the error) My Virpil throttle is split into 3 virtual devices due to Elite Dangerous (yeah, thanks Frontier for using a version of the DirectInput API that wasn't even current when you started your kickstarter) so that adds to the number of devices. So in total (not including mouse and keyboard) I have 9 devices. When I 'unsplit' the throttle (thus the throttle would be just the 1 device, rather than 3 devices) to see what would happen, I was able to get to the DCS main GUI. However, when I split it back into 3 devices again, I was still able to get in to DCS. I then noticed I'd left my Virpil (3 axis) pedals unplugged (the Virpil software only likes configuring 1 Virpil device at a time) so I then plugged the pedals back in. I restarted DCS and got the original problem. So I unplugged my Azeron keypad as it seems to want to be 3 devices too for some reason (dunno why, it's built around a teensy controller board I think) thinking that if 1 device (the pedals) would push me over a limit then unplugging the Azeron, it being 3 devices would get me back under with the pedals plugged in. But to my surprise, no joy. Then I thought, "maybe it's total number of axes?". So I unplugged my DIY button box (based off a Leo Bodnar board) that has 6 axes. If the three axes on the pedals pushed it over, removing the 6 axes on the button box should get it back under yeah? Nope. I did also unplug my Gunfighter too for completeness but that had no effect. So, if I remove either my Virpil pedals or ensure my Virpil throttle is just one unified device (not problem with DCS since it nicely respects the 128 button/8 axis DirectInput/RawInput limit) then all is fine. If I either have my Virpil pedals plugged in or have my Virpil throttle split into three virtual devices I get the error in utils.lua Eh, I'm only a humble C#/Java programmer and this is beyond my wits to offer conclusions, so I'll let you clever chaps sort it out! ;) dcs.log