Star Wars Squadrons & MFPLAT.DLL Missing, Screen & Joystick issues

I've just installed Star Wars Squadrons via Steam, being a huge fan of X-Wing, Tie Fighter, X-Wing vs Tie Fighter etc...

The nasty surprise came very quick, MFPLAT.DLL is missing from my system with the following message :

"the code execution cannot proceed because mfplat.dll was not found"

then I got Graphic Drivers issues, Screen resolution issues, Joystick issues...

I'm explaining here how to fix these issues.

MFPLAT.DLL issue

(there's still a long way to go for Microsoft ecosystem to have something useful and intuitive. This should be transparently fixed for the user)

I've got a "Windows 10 Pro N" without the Media Feature Pack, and that's apparently what's missing.

Detailed instructions from Microsoft can be found here :

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4562569/media-feature-pack-for-windows-10-n-may-2020

Basically :

Type the windows key
In the search field, type "add remove", choose "Add or remove programs"
In the new window, click the "Optional features"
In the search field, type "media"
Select Media Feature Pack, and install
Reboot (yep, still here since 1995...)

I also add to update my GeForce Drivers to the latest version before being able to launch the game.

(here no reboot required)

You also need a Electronic Arts account.

I suggest you to create the account beforehand.

In the game, the "back key" was not working, neither the arrows key, so a typo is not correctable...

So I had to restart the game... yep 😅

This second time I got the mouse working, but still had trouble, typing the '@' followed by the next letter would erase the field....

So I copy paste the email, typed the password, and it worked...

Now I've some resolution issue, and joystick issue :

See below to fix this...

Here are some screenshots to illustrate the steps :

Screen issue fix

Once the game starts, I get this screen, yes, it's the whole screen I could view... and the first option is accessibility, how ironic ;)

To fix that, use the arrow key to go down through the options,

go to screen options, choose full screen and enter or space bar, and it should fix the issue.

Then you can choose to go 4K, with 30 or 60Hz if your screen supports it.

My planar IX-2850 4K monitor should support 4K 60hz with Display Port, and all I got is black screen, I often have to switch off/on the screen to get an image (for example with RDR2).

Also I recently noticed that the screen was in 29Hz (yep, that exists...) and the screen was significantly less bright than normal... switching back to 30Hz get the screen much brighter.

Joystick Issue

I own an old Saitek Cyborg 3D GOLD USB joystick (quite dusty), and when I first launched the game, It was partially working : up and right direction were working, not the down and left ones.

I've tried with the mouse and It's absolutely not playable, even worse than on the first X-Wing or Tie Fighter...

So I've search a bit more...

The last drivers were published in 2004 😅😅 for windows 2000/XP/98 so... no luck on that point.

Still searching, I've typed "Joystick" in the search bar and found the generic calibration tool for windows 10.