General Joystick/Pedal/Controller/Gamepad issues [Q&A CUI-2]

crumbsdm · Post by **crumbsdm** » Mon, 18. Nov 13, 13:28

and it would be nice if I could delete the duplicates rather than editing them with new words.

Ameer Nuub · Post by **Ameer Nuub** » Mon, 18. Nov 13, 13:46

Grimm Spector wrote:So it would all just be keypress emulation, and a giant waste of my time, awesome.

Pretty much... hence all the "righteous outrage". I do agree and understand the old "quit flaming and just post constructive criticism" but that only really applies when the product was an honest offering. Bugs are understandable (but still deserve some flame after so many). But the problem here goes way beyond just "bugs", and they deserve to pay a price for that.

spitzfire · Post by **spitzfire** » Mon, 18. Nov 13, 14:45

There is a multi-page thread about all kinds of joysticks, with configuration help, workarounds, etc.

Maj3stic · Post by **Maj3stic** » Mon, 18. Nov 13, 16:35

I have the same set up as you and the same problem as you.
The way I fixed it was to buy a cheep Logitech joystick and use the profiler to map the keys. Yes it sucks that you can't use the good setup but this works great for now.

WhoCares01 · Post by **WhoCares01** » Mon, 18. Nov 13, 19:07

On this page of this thread I posted a way to manually patch some joystick functions as they worked for me,
Scroll down - strafe with hat switch

You may be able to map other functions in the same way - it is just a bit tedious to figure out the name of the the different button...

Slorm · Post by **Slorm** » Mon, 18. Nov 13, 20:57

Slorm wrote:
Afterburnerz wrote:Same problem with Saitek Cyborg EVO - fixed by using the "Enter" key for the Yaw to clear and then move the joystick until it registers the movement. Did the same for the Pitch control --> Enter key to clear field then rocked joystick back and forth until it registered the correct response.
Had to revers axis for Pitch.
Do the same for your Thrust control.

Can not get it to recognize the Trigger though , so have to use control key to fire lasers.

Hope this helps.
I tired this (I have the Saitek Cyborg Evo as well) and the problem is that it reads the "Enter" as "Left Trigger" as soon as it's pressed. Oddly it worked once for pitch and yaw but for nothing else (hit enter get left trigger) but stopped working again for all these settings now.

Not had any problems with reassigning the buttons though just the stick itself.

Just to check I verified the files were okay on Steam and nothing was wrong

EDIT: Just to be clear the field isn't cleared it just puts in Left Trigger instantly

I finally got this to work. After a reboot I was able to get one of the axis to register. Tried another reboot and this time it let configure everything without problem, so there's clearly something wrong in that configuration routine.

It does have a wide deadzone and it seems pretty sluggish responding even with sensitivity set to 100. The guns seem to fire above and left of the reticule some of the time as well so things are still a bit messy but it's some progress at least

FluffyNinja · Post by **FluffyNinja** » Tue, 19. Nov 13, 00:55

I have an X65f with rudder pedals and two cougar mfd panels. Plus a 360 controller. Ship drifts uncontrolled because the toe brakes on the rudder pedals are mapped to something in the game. Just reinstate the option to choose one controller for the game like in X3. There is no way Im going to unplug all that stuff just to play this, please fix.

BigBANGtheory · Post by **BigBANGtheory** » Tue, 19. Nov 13, 15:10

I have finally arrived at a work around with Saitek Combat Pro Pedals + TM HOTAS Warthog.

The Pedals are the main problem in that X Rebirth detects them as axis controls for:
Rudder : Right Trigger which you can assign to Roll in XR
Left Toe Brake / Pedal : Left Stick Horizontal
Right Toe Brake / Pedal : Left Stick Vertical

...and you can't easily change that even with the Saitek Profiler program

However what you can do is use the TM TARGET program to re-assign the axis on the HOTAS controllers to something else X Rebirth recognises e.g.

Joystick X : DX_XROT_Axis now seen as Right Stick (Horizontal) by XR
Joystick Y : DX_YROT_Axis now seen as Right Stick (Vertical) by XR
Throttle : DX_Slider_Axis now seen as Slider 2 by XR

[ external image ]

The trick is to work out how XR is recognising the axis input then use the vendor software to force different unused axis but an axis still seen by XR as being unique and represented by a gamepad in some fashion.

[ external image ]

If your ship is spiralling out of control it probably means your toe brake or pedal is using Left Stick Horizontal and that is mapped to Yaw control in XR so it thinks you are pulling on your gamepad joystick.

With the rudder assigned to Roll you can then use the toe brakes to scroll the menu options without taking your hands off the HOTAS.

[ external image ]

Its messy and its taken me a good 6hrs now messing about and testing the effects but it is a work around I am finally able to use HOTAS & Rudder Pedals

with the PoV hat switch handling strafe with keyboard macro's as already discussed.

Bobucles · Post by **Bobucles** » Tue, 19. Nov 13, 15:28

Using a logitech F310. I'm getting a steady 150-200ms lag with every input.

Edit: Was fixed by installing real drivers.

Schmierwurst · Post by **Schmierwurst** » Tue, 19. Nov 13, 16:00

Im also trying my best to setup a logitech g940.

The g940 consits of 3 single devices recognized as single devices by windows if u use the logitech driver....

Because of that i first tried to use the g940 without installing the logitech drivers. When using the windows driver it is recognized as a single device
but in this case the game wont start. I recive a CTD when the g940 is plugged in.

So i installed the logitech drivers and the game startrs.....

I also had to use the logitech software to make use of the buttons.
I had to bind the keyboard commands to them....

Now im stuck with the axis cause the game recognizes the axis wrong.
For examle: thrust is recognized as same axis as yaw / pitch......

I hope for a update and much better joystick implementation....
Already lost 2 evenings......

Anybody modified .xml for the g940 yet?

ziporama · Post by **ziporama** » Tue, 19. Nov 13, 20:31

So, what I ended up doing on my CH Products gear was to combine the throttle (it has 3 axes - throttle + thumb stick x/y), the stick (3 axes - x/y + throttle wheel) and the pedals (3 axis, rudder + left/right toe) into a single virtual device (CM1) using the CH manager.

DirectInput limitations, which I assume apply to XR because it has to use DirectInput somewhere as it's DirectX based, we find the following axis mapping per device (physical or virtual) - this is based on the MS documentation on device capabilities for DirectInput (version 8 being the latest and last):

X, Y, Z, RX, RY, RZ, S1, S2 (R meaning rotation, S meaning slider) for a total of 8 possible axis mapping per device. There's an additional POV too.

Because I have 9 axes total across all controllers I want to use, and a single device can only support 8, I ended up not using the throttle on the stick. The other thing is that the sliders cannot be centered axes, which is fine for toe brakes. That covers all the axes (so, I have the stick x mapped to yaw, stick Y to pitch, throttle to throttle (centered so forward and reverse), thumb x to strafe left/right, thumb y to strafe up/down, and rudder z to roll. I have the toe brakes mapped via keyboard to full stop and full forward.

It looks from my testing that XR will in fact recognize all 8 axes per device, and you can use the directinput names in the inputmap.xml file in lieu of the Xbox360 controller names (these show up both in the xml file and the game UI). What's not clear to me yet is how XR handles multiple devices it detects internally. It maps inputs (and certainly buttons) to functions on my throttle quad even when I haven't mapped them specifically - something that actually drives me crazy because I can't turn it off and I have no idea how to turn if off because it doesn't show up in any mapping file.

For mapping complicated joystick axes, I recommend that you exit the game and just modify the xml map file directly (it's in "my documents/egosoft/<some number>/inputmap.xml) so that any weird joystick movement (flutter) doesn't mess up the mapping using the game's menu interface. The game is very sensitive to any axis pickup and will sometimes trigger a read when you don't want to.
Buttons are a lot less problematic because they won't register a movement like a fluttering axis will, so that seems to work better in the in-game controller setup.

I still think that XR should have a control mapping UI specific to the XBox360 controller if you have one, and lets you turn that off and conform to the standard directinput device list for any non xbox devices. It should also display which device number and axis it's mapping so you verify it mapped the correct axis.

If I don't have an X button, for heavens sake call it device 1, button 1 or whatever it is!

It's very confusing to map controls to the game when the names do not match the input names on the device you're using. To add to the confusion, the game auto-switches (which probably was a good idea at the time) and creates mappings on its own that will make no sense (such as, mapping an axis to the fire primary weapon that causes you to shoot continuously when you're not even touching the controls lol).

Hope this helps others map their stuff.

Z.

pref · Post by **pref** » Wed, 20. Nov 13, 14:19

I heard there are joy problems. Anyone uses the game with saitek x52? Does throttle/strafe work with it?

chrisreb · Post by **chrisreb** » Wed, 20. Nov 13, 15:29

Well this game is pretty useless to me without proper joystick support and now I find my savegame will not load after the patch.

Time to store it away I think and go back to previous games.

pirke123 · Post by **pirke123** » Wed, 20. Nov 13, 17:15

I have no joystick issues. I also use the HAT switch for strafing after a little hack in the inputmap.xml: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=351778

Korant · Post by **Korant** » Wed, 20. Nov 13, 18:26

ziporama wrote:So, what I ended up doing on my CH Products gear was to combine the throttle (it has 3 axes - throttle + thumb stick x/y), the stick (3 axes - x/y + throttle wheel) and the pedals (3 axis, rudder + left/right toe) into a single virtual device (CM1) using the CH manager....SNIP...Hope this helps others map their stuff.

Z.

this helped me a lot in getting my HOTAS setup to work. thank you much...

crumbsdm · Post by **crumbsdm** » Thu, 21. Nov 13, 00:10

pirke123 wrote:I have no joystick issues. I also use the HAT switch for strafing after a little hack in the inputmap.xml: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=351778

I looked at the inputmap.xml in Documents\Egosoft\X Rebirth\ as discussed in that post and I think it actually holds and fixes all the problems. I might look at it more carefully if I get the time (ie after Xmas * sigh *)

Devilize · Post by **Devilize** » Thu, 21. Nov 13, 03:19

Hi, I use my joystick, Extreme 3d pro from logitech, and my keyboard to fly in x games, i bind my pitch and roll to my joystick and my yaw to my a/d to make pin point rapid accuracy easily attainable. When using these settings in rebirth i cannot use yaw input while rolling or pitching at the same time. basically i have to put my joystick at center before using yaw or stop yaw before i can pitch or roll. Any solutions would be helpful. atm im replacing yaw with strafe but its not my preference.

normntaz · Post by **normntaz** » Thu, 21. Nov 13, 18:08

I have almost the exact same setup. The only thing I did differently was I didn't map the toebrake axes.

The ability to use the thumbstick on the PT is a major improvement over the original X series once I figured out how to get it working.

I don't know if this observation has been made before (I didn't read all 14 pages of posts.), but I was having the problem where moving around in FPS mode with the mouse would stop working. I found that if I centered my throttle (i.e. the same position where ship speed would be zero), I did not have the mouse problem. I think it is another case of these "hidden inputs" that you mention.

ziporama wrote:So, what I ended up doing on my CH Products gear was to combine the throttle (it has 3 axes - throttle + thumb stick x/y), the stick (3 axes - x/y + throttle wheel) and the pedals (3 axis, rudder + left/right toe) into a single virtual device (CM1) using the CH manager.

DirectInput limitations, which I assume apply to XR because it has to use DirectInput somewhere as it's DirectX based, we find the following axis mapping per device (physical or virtual) - this is based on the MS documentation on device capabilities for DirectInput (version 8 being the latest and last):

X, Y, Z, RX, RY, RZ, S1, S2 (R meaning rotation, S meaning slider) for a total of 8 possible axis mapping per device. There's an additional POV too.

Because I have 9 axes total across all controllers I want to use, and a single device can only support 8, I ended up not using the throttle on the stick. The other thing is that the sliders cannot be centered axes, which is fine for toe brakes. That covers all the axes (so, I have the stick x mapped to yaw, stick Y to pitch, throttle to throttle (centered so forward and reverse), thumb x to strafe left/right, thumb y to strafe up/down, and rudder z to roll. I have the toe brakes mapped via keyboard to full stop and full forward.

It looks from my testing that XR will in fact recognize all 8 axes per device, and you can use the directinput names in the inputmap.xml file in lieu of the Xbox360 controller names (these show up both in the xml file and the game UI). What's not clear to me yet is how XR handles multiple devices it detects internally. It maps inputs (and certainly buttons) to functions on my throttle quad even when I haven't mapped them specifically - something that actually drives me crazy because I can't turn it off and I have no idea how to turn if off because it doesn't show up in any mapping file.

For mapping complicated joystick axes, I recommend that you exit the game and just modify the xml map file directly (it's in "my documents/egosoft/<some number>/inputmap.xml) so that any weird joystick movement (flutter) doesn't mess up the mapping using the game's menu interface. The game is very sensitive to any axis pickup and will sometimes trigger a read when you don't want to.
Buttons are a lot less problematic because they won't register a movement like a fluttering axis will, so that seems to work better in the in-game controller setup.

I still think that XR should have a control mapping UI specific to the XBox360 controller if you have one, and lets you turn that off and conform to the standard directinput device list for any non xbox devices. It should also display which device number and axis it's mapping so you verify it mapped the correct axis.

If I don't have an X button, for heavens sake call it device 1, button 1 or whatever it is!

It's very confusing to map controls to the game when the names do not match the input names on the device you're using. To add to the confusion, the game auto-switches (which probably was a good idea at the time) and creates mappings on its own that will make no sense (such as, mapping an axis to the fire primary weapon that causes you to shoot continuously when you're not even touching the controls lol).

Hope this helps others map their stuff.

Z.

ziporama · Post by **ziporama** » Fri, 22. Nov 13, 14:39

normntaz wrote:I have almost the exact same setup. The only thing I did differently was I didn't map the toebrake axes.

The ability to use the thumbstick on the PT is a major improvement over the original X series once I figured out how to get it working.

I don't know if this observation has been made before (I didn't read all 14 pages of posts.), but I was having the problem where moving around in FPS mode with the mouse would stop working. I found that if I centered my throttle (i.e. the same position where ship speed would be zero), I did not have the mouse problem. I think it is another case of these "hidden inputs" that you mention.

Glad someone else uses CH Products stuff! I really like mine and I've had them for years.

I may have a workaround for the throttle not centered thing moving your FP avatar:

I ended up using "position mode" on the pro-pedals toe axes, one is mapped to full stop (the position string is NULL BKSPC ), the other is mapped to "exit highway", which is one of those you can't change the keyboard mapping for, but it's set to Z (the position string is NULL z). When I press the toe pedals, it sends either backspace or z, and sends nothing on pedal release. This comes in handy because it allows me to center the throttle in FP mode or in space and thus come to a dead stop easily, and it is also is very convenient to get out of the highway (and gives my toe axes some purpose). Curiously, it turns out that hitting Z or backspace in a highway gets you out regardless.

Still exploring the possibilities. What I still don't get is how buttons I have never mapped still trigger some function or other - I seemingly end up shooting missiles or firing my main weapon for any unmapped button press so I have to be very careful what I touch...

Z.

BigBANGtheory · Post by **BigBANGtheory** » Fri, 22. Nov 13, 18:50

pirke123 wrote:I have no joystick issues. I also use the HAT switch for strafing after a little hack in the inputmap.xml: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=351778

Do you not see the deadzone issue?

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

General Joystick/Pedal/Controller/Gamepad issues [Q&A CUI-2]

Any issues with saitek x52?

[Bug]? Combined Input from joystick and keyboard problem.