Steam might be "stealing" your controllers
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Hi all, I’m not sure if this is the right forum to post this. Mods, feel free to move it as you please.
Also, I’ve searched and not found any post about this but, if there is, I’m sorry.
Last, it doesn’t happen with all controllers, just some. I can’t tell which ones but it might happen.To the point: as now with VR Steam is used, watch out about it “stealing” the controls. Not sure how to explain it but, when you open Steam and the controls are not in use by other programs before you opening it, it detects your controllers and grabs them. Sometimes it keeps the name, sometimes it renames it to something more generic. When you close Steam it “frees” them again.
So it has happened to me that opening Steam before opening BMS, it grabbed my joystick with a different name, so BMS launcher thought it was a new one, resetting all my bindings. But it didn’t do it with my throttle or pedals. My guess is my joystick was similar enough in axis and buttons to a gamepad and Steam “liked” it.
So if that happens to you, there are three options:
1- Always open BMS launcher BEFORE opening Steam, so Steam does not grab the controller.
2- Always opening Steam before opening BMS launcher, so it has name consistency. I wouldn’t go for this one.
3- Telling Steam to ignore the controller in “Steam (top-left corner)> Settings > Controller > General Controller settings”
There you select the controller you want Steam to ignore and press on “Hide Device”.
(as you see in my screenshot Steam detects it as some generic Xbox controller)This has the “problem” of needing to reactivate it if you use is for other Steam games, but, from my experience, Steam games interact better with my joystick when not going through the Steam controller thing.
So in some (probably small) cases, BMS launcher forgetting settings might be due this.
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@Ferde Great find … I’ve definitely seen Steam do weird, invasive things with the input stack… thought it was mostly limited to game controllers… but the HID spec models joysticks and gamepads (and button-panels) differently, and I suspect it is possible some joystick devices enumerate as both.
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