A guided introduction, and a camera that stops turning on its own
There is now a proper introduction to what OmniControl actually does between your controller and your game, built on the 3D controller and reachable forever from the sidebar. It exists because the same three questions come up constantly, and none of them are really questions about a setting. Alongside it, a fix for the emulated stick drifting by itself while playing with keyboard and mouse, and a fix for updates that could lose profile changes you made in the minute before updating.
Highlights
- Get Started: a guided tour that uses your own controller in 3D to explain how OmniControl sits between your device and your game, why a game can end up seeing two controllers at once, and how to play with keyboard and mouse. It stays in the sidebar afterwards so you can re-read any single topic.
- The pages that most often confuse people now link straight to the part of the tour that explains them, so the answer arrives when you hit the problem rather than on your first day.
- Play Mode can be opened and closed with a hotkey, so you no longer have to alt-tab out of a match to reach it.
Fixes
- The emulated stick could drift on its own while Drive a Controller was armed, turning the camera with nobody touching anything. A connected controller's resting position was reaching the game unfiltered; a brand-new pad drifted almost as fast as a worn one.
- Updating could lose profile and macro changes made shortly before the update, because the app was closed in a way that skipped its own save-on-exit.
- The input engine could stop working silently after a single hiccup talking to our licence server, and stay stopped until you restarted the app.
- Deleting OmniControl's virtual controller in Windows made it reappear about eight times a second, forever. It now gives up after a few tries and says what that device is.
- Removing a device from your account did not free up a device slot, so you could be locked out by devices you had already removed. The limit is also more generous now: ten new devices every fourteen days, up from five every thirty.
- Licence keys typed in lowercase, or without the dashes, were rejected as invalid.
- The Recorder could capture from OmniControl's own virtual controller instead of the one in your hands while output was running, so a take came out flat while the preview looked correct. Lightbar effects could pick the wrong device the same way.
- When ViGEmBus is missing, the Start button now offers to install it instead of failing.
A proper introduction
Three questions arrive more often than everything else combined. Why do my remaps not work. Why does the game see two controllers. Why is Drive a Controller not moving my character.
None of them are really questions about a setting. They are all the same missing idea: OmniControl does not reach into your controller and change it. It reads your controller, applies everything you have set up, and presents a second, virtual controller to Windows. Your game reads that one. Every remap, curve, trigger limit and macro lives on the virtual controller, which is why nothing happens until it is running, and why a game that is still listening to your physical pad ignores all of it.
That is hard to say in a tooltip and easy to show. So Get Started is a full-screen tour built on the same 3D controller the rest of the app uses. Pick your platform and it teaches you on your own pad, in your own button names. The camera moves to whatever is being explained, lights it up and dims the rest. Where a game would see two controllers, you see two controllers, drawn separately, with the signal path between them.
It covers what a new install actually needs: your controller detected, the pipeline, turning output on, why the conflict happens, HidHide, remapping, and Drive a Controller including the menu-flicker routine that has no setting behind it. Nine further lessons - sticks, triggers, macros, profiles, the overlay, Game Center, diagnostics and calibration - sit in a hub and are never forced on anyone.
It does not ambush existing installs. If you have used OmniControl before, it will not open by itself. It is simply there in the sidebar when you want it.
And it does not stay a first-run thing. The places where the app can already tell you are confused now link to the exact screen that explains it. Change a mapping with output stopped and the notice that says so offers to explain why. The same on the Emulation page where a game might be reading the wrong controller, and on the Play Mode card where menus flicker between mouse and controller prompts.
The stick that moved on its own
Several people reported the emulated stick drifting while using Drive a Controller: the camera turning slowly with nobody touching anything, at random.
It was not the aim engine. When you drive with keyboard and mouse, OmniControl takes over the aim stick and does all the shaping itself, so it tells the rest of the chain to stop applying its own. A connected controller shares that same channel, and in some situations its resting position was being let through unfiltered into that chain.
Every controller rests very slightly off centre. Normally that is exactly what a deadzone absorbs and you never see it. Here it was not being absorbed, and the result was sharp rather than gradual: a brand-new controller drifted almost as fast as a badly worn one. That is the odd part people noticed, and it is why it looked random - it depended on which window had focus, and it stopped the moment you clicked back into the game.
It is fixed. If you have Drive a Controller switched off, nothing about your setup changes.
Updates that kept what you just changed
OmniControl saves profiles and macros a moment after you stop editing, and again when it exits. Installing an update closed the app in a way that skipped the second one, so a change made in the last minute before updating could be gone afterwards. The update now shuts the app down properly first.
Two more that had no workaround. The input engine could stop dead after a single failed conversation with our licence server, with nothing on screen to say so and no way back except restarting. And if you deleted OmniControl's virtual controller in Windows - which is easy to do, since nothing named it - it came straight back, about eight times a second, indefinitely. It now stops after a few attempts, and the app tells you that device belongs to it.
Your device slots
Removing a device from your account did not actually free a slot, so it was possible to be told you had hit the limit by devices you had already removed, with no way to fix it yourself. Removing one now frees it immediately.
The limit itself was also tighter than it needed to be. It is now ten new devices every fourteen days, up from five every thirty.