Setting Up Key Bindings / MFD Button Presses for Cougar Display

This is a supplemental extra to the key binding section in the User Manual.
Additional key binding troubleshooting can be found in the trouble shooing guide

Thrustmaster MFD Cougars


An assumption is made that your Thrustmaster MFD Cougars (if any) will be positioned in sequence with the Cougar Displays. That is, MFD Cougar #0 will be positioned on top of Cougar Display #0, MFD Cougar #1 ontop of Cougar Display #1, etc. Use the TARGET software to identify each MFD Cougar and program the LED lights so you are able to identify each one.

Overview

In simple terms, Elite Dangerous must have some keyboard bindings setup for actions, eg FSD Jump, Landing gear down, etc.
You would usually have a joystick (HOTAS/Mouse) mapped to these actions, but for MFD Cougar Display you must also have secondary keyboard bindings configured.

There are two ways to do this:

  1. Do this yourself in Elite and setup a secondary key bind for every action you want to use with MFD Cougar Display
  2. Have MFD Cougar Display setup secondary key bindings for you automatically

Each time key bindings are reconfigured in Elite, you should consider performing these actions to ensure everthing is bound correctly.

MFD Cougar writes its changes directly into Elite's binding file. MFD Cougar Display gets its default key sequences from MFD_Iconset.xml, in case you want to change the defaults.
What you need to do is link the MFD Cougar Icons to those Elite keys/actions you are interested in. This is done from the main application - the Layout Editor tab.

Layout Editor

Manual Process

  • You can select which MFD screen (layout) you want from the top of the editor page, and then you can pick and assign the Elite action to each icon
  • Switch between different layouts to save the assignments
  • Click the Save button to flush all the changes to the MFD_Layout.xml file.

Automatic Process

  • Click the Quick Bind button at the bottom of the editor window to assign default key presses into the Elite bindings file.
  • Keys sequences found in the MFD_Layout.xml are used
  • This is the fastest way to bind all actions in under 1 minute

There is a global option to use a pre-existing Elite key binding for the action, or to overwrite Elite's binding with a key sequence from MFD_Iconset.xml. The Layout Editor defaults to the safe option of using the existing bindings, but it is recommended to overwrite Elite's key bindings because not all key sequences are compatible.

Some experimentation will be required to configure a sequence of keys, see the troubleshooing guide for more information.

Elite Secret Key Bindings

These keys describe some of the hidden key sequences which can be quite useful!

Elite secret key binds