Author Topic: vJoy and Joystick Gremlin  (Read 1069 times)

Offline AKIron

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vJoy and Joystick Gremlin
« on: September 20, 2024, 09:07:07 AM »
Here's how to get more than 32 buttons from a single Joystick.

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Offline Drano

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Re: vJoy and Joystick Gremlin
« Reply #1 on: September 20, 2024, 01:07:23 PM »
I bought a VKB Gunfighter years back when it came out. Great stick. Software is a bit to get your head wrapped around but it'll do stuff with a button or hat I'd have never thought of. I waited for about 5 years for them to come out with the often teased and never delivered TECS throttle. I wanted to stay in the same software ecosystem--one was hard enough! Figured it was vapor after all that time so I ended up buying the Virpil Throttle. Another great device with equally over the top software. I watched a video, forget who did it, want to say Shadowze or something like that (a DCS Player). He was using Joystick Gremlin to map all his stuff. He had a technique that was perfect for me that involved setting up the 5 position rotary switch on the throttle that would switch the mapping of ALL the controllers plugged into JG at the flip of that switch. I can go from having my AH map for my stick, throttle, quadrants and pedals at position 1 to my whole mapping for IL2 at position 2 and so on. VERY handy. Takes a while to get that all plugged into JG but once you're done, it's in there. I made blank copies of that profile so that I could go from plane to plane in the same sim the same way.

I use another program called Spad.next for MSFS. That one is pretty complicated mostly because of the way that sim maps stuff but it's aware of what you're flying and will just apply whatever mapping you've set up for that particular plane. For that I still use JG but just to have all th devices in one place. Those mappings are blank with Spad handling what's mapped.
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Offline AKIron

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Re: vJoy and Joystick Gremlin
« Reply #2 on: September 20, 2024, 01:46:04 PM »
vJoy is a blank joystick. You can configure with all the buttons and axes that you want but Windows limits that. By blank I mean the buttons and axes are there but there's no way to activate them without Joystick Gremlin or similar app. Joystick Gremlin creates a link between a physical device (joystick) and vJoy. With Joystick Gremlin you can take 2 axes, as I did in that video, and turn them into 4 buttons. Then pass them along to vJoy which appears as a physical device to Windows. BTW, I could have added a lot more buttons to those same axes in Joystick Gremlin. Instead of just using the outer edges I could have pressed a different button every 5% change in the axis.

The original physical joystick remains unaffected and can be read by whatever game completely separate from vJoy.
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Offline AKIron

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Re: vJoy and Joystick Gremlin
« Reply #3 on: September 20, 2024, 01:55:14 PM »
In some sims the wheel brakes can be mapped to two separate axes. The CH Pro pedals have toe brakes and they are two separate axes. If you don't have pedals or your pedals don't have toe brakes you use a two axes hat. We'll call the left-right axis X and up forward-back axis Y. How confusing would it be to map left-right to one wheel and forward-back to the other? Instead, we can map the left half of the X axis to the left toe brake and the right half of the X axis to the right toe brake. Sure, we don't have the full range of the axis but it's a lot better than using a button which full brake or none. Then map the back half of the Y axis to both wheel brakes for when you need to apply both brakes evenly.
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Offline AKIron

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Re: vJoy and Joystick Gremlin
« Reply #4 on: September 27, 2024, 01:14:23 PM »
In regards to my last post on Joystick Gremlin and splitting an axis. You can do pretty easy in Joystick Gremlin. It has a split axis remap function built-in. Take an analog mini-stick for example. You can split the x axis (typically left/right) and make it two axes on vJoy, X and Y axes. Then map those to your left and right wheel brakes in a sim.

« Last Edit: September 27, 2024, 01:29:58 PM by AKIron »
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Offline AKIron

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Re: vJoy and Joystick Gremlin
« Reply #5 on: November 18, 2024, 03:34:55 PM »
I've made other videos on converting an axis to buttons but this one is new.  ;)

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