After much finagling, and jiggering, I figured out how to get my brand new Xbox One controller to work in Elite Dangerous. For this to be effective, the following must be true:
- You have a USB cable you can connect your computer to the controller
- The controller works flawlessly in other games.
- You do not have any custom drivers/mods loaded for the controller itself. This is using Microsoft/Steam default drivers/options.
So if you have Xbox Controller Support checked in steam (because you want to increase compatibility in other games), feel free to also enable extended features. Enabling this will require a computer restart.
Now, for some reason Elite: Dangerous HATES this configuration from Steam. We can make Steam Settings ignore Elite Dangerous.
I wish this was the end, but there's one last thing. Remember that USB cable? Yes. Connect your wireless Xbox Controller via usb to your computer, then start the Elite: Dangerous Launcher. After getting into the game, you will find that the controller should be working now.
In additional experiments, after the game is going/operational, you can actually unplug the USB cable and it will continue to function in game. NOTE: DO NOT SET CONTROLLER BINDINGS IN WIRELESS – The game will read it as an Xbox AND Generic game pad and will overlap these inputs.