Troubleshooting a DCS‐BIOS Control

Problematic controls in general

• Some cockpit controls in DCS are actually two different controls, one for switching off and one for switching on but for the user there is only a single switch in the cockpit.
• One example is the F/A-18C parking brake handle. One control handles the rotation and another the pull/push action.

Reasons functioning controls stops working

• This is because with each DCS update there are a multitude of changes made to the various aircraft's lua files. These changes are not advertised, only by comparing previous version with the new version will you see the changes. The developers helping out with dcs-bios will in time correct the code so it works with the latest release, this takes time though.
• A bug is introduced via a DCS release
• A bug has been introduced via dcs-bios

Common changes in DCS

• The limit of the control changes eg 0-1 to 0-0.8
• Command numbers change
• Args (argument_id) changes, this is less common. This is the value you see in the ModelViewer

How to find out what values the control are using in DCS

• Install dcs-insight. This tool will give you the exact values for the control you are looking at. You can read the Args (argument_id) using device 0 and test commands.
• Read the DCS lua files found in the <aircraft>/Cockpit/Scripts/ folder

Testing

Using the information from DCS offical lua files, dcs-insight and Bort/BIOSBuddy you have enough information to test various values in the dcs-bios control's lua in order to get it working.

Example

These were changed with the first unified release in the Mirage F1 IFF panel.