DualSense haptics on PC without a cable: the 007 First Light fix

Play 007 First Light on a PC with a DualSense and you may notice the controller only vibrates while it’s plugged in. Over Bluetooth it stays still. God of War and Horizon Forbidden West do the same. There’s no setting you missed: on PC, those games reach the DualSense’s haptics through a USB cable or not at all.

This post explains why, and how Dish and Satellite get the same vibration to your controller over Wi-Fi.

Why DualSense haptics only work wired on PC

A DualSense doesn’t have the two spinning rumble motors an Xbox pad has. It has voice-coil actuators, closer to small speakers, and that’s what makes its vibration feel so detailed.

PC games built on Sony’s own controller library drive those actuators with sound. The DualSense shows up on a PC as a USB sound card with four output channels: the first two go to its speaker and headphone jack, and the last two go to the actuators. The game plays its vibration as audio on channels 3 and 4, and many of these games never send classic rumble at all.

Over Bluetooth, a game on PC has no such sound card to play into, so there’s nothing to feel. That’s why the usual advice is “plug it in”.

Game streaming makes it worse. A streaming host usually hands the game a virtual Xbox or DualShock 4 pad, and neither has a DualSense sound card. The haptics have nowhere to go, even when your real controller is wired to the device in front of you.

What Dish does about it

Satellite, the receiver that runs on your gaming PC, can show the game a wired DualSense on Windows, sound card included. The game sees the controller it expects and plays its haptics into it as usual.

Satellite picks out those two haptic channels and sends them to the Dish app that holds your real controller:

• A DualSense plugged into Dish for Windows or Dish for Linux gets the haptics played straight into its actuators. It feels what it would feel plugged into the gaming PC.
• Any other pad, or a DualSense that can’t take audio, gets the haptics turned into regular rumble. Satellite reduces each 20 ms slice to a motor strength and mixes it with any normal rumble the game sends, so you still feel every hit.

That second case covers more than it sounds like. An Xbox pad on your phone, a DualShock 4, the on-screen controller, and a DualSense on Android 14 or newer all fall back to rumble instead of staying still.

The controller screen that waited for you

007 First Light had a second problem with streamed pads. Sony’s controller library opens a pad by waiting for its next input report, and a real DualSense sends one every 4 ms whether or not anything moved. Dish only sent input when something changed, so the game sat at its controller setup screen until you pressed a button, and could treat a pad you weren’t touching as gone.

Satellite now does what the real pad does: while a DualSense or DualShock 4 sits idle, it repeats the pad’s last report with its clocks moving. The game sees a live controller from the first frame.

How to set it up

You need Satellite on the Windows PC that runs the game, and your DualSense connected to a device running Dish.

1. Install Satellite on the gaming PC from the downloads page. The installer adds the HIDMaestro driver that provides the virtual DualSense.
2. Plug your DualSense in over USB to the Windows or Linux PC running Dish for Windows or Dish for Linux. The haptics need the cable on that end, but it’s a short one, to the machine next to you.
3. Pair Dish with Satellite with the 4-digit PIN from Satellite’s dashboard.
4. Set the controller type to DualSense. An Xbox or DualShock 4 type has no haptics for the game to play into.
5. Leave Controller sound on for that controller. The haptics ride the same switch as the pad’s speaker.

If the game shows Xbox button prompts, Steam Input is probably translating the pad for it. Turn Steam Input off for that game and launch it again.

On an Android phone

You can hold the DualSense at the couch with your phone instead. Plug it into the phone over USB and use Direct mode (the bolt icon on the controller card). Some phones on Android 13 and older pass the haptics through. Android 14 and newer hide the DualSense’s audio output from apps, so there Satellite sends rumble instead, and the adaptive triggers, lightbar, and touchpad still work.

What works where

The what’s new page has the full table of what each kind of host can carry.

Related reading

• DualSense adaptive triggers on PC over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth
• Dish 2.3: HD haptics, a fix for stuck controller screens, and Diagnostics
• All of Dish’s features

Dish and Satellite are free and open source. If this got your DualSense working again, tips keep it that way.