VKB-SIM

Hello I've been experimenting and reading through the NJoy32 documentation and tried to search for an answer but I haven't come up with anything just yet. I have an Gladiator NXT EVO with SCG Premium grip on firmware v2.199 and I'm using VKBDevCfg-C_v0.93.43 on a Windows 11 system.

My question is that it seems like the Screen settings for the absolute mouse don't actually do anything, so I'd like to understand what is actually being changed. No matter what I set the values to under screen if I move the joystick while in absolute mouse mode it goes to the center of Screen 1 and if I move the joystick to the limits of the stick it goes to the edge of my computer screen. Which is perfect for most cases, but it seems like it doesn't matter what my resolution is or what I have set in the box it always behaves the same. For example, my screen is set for 2560x1440, which is what I have set as my screen resolution currently. But if I change the values in screen to 100 x 100 for example, it behaves the same. It doesn't seem to be changing the dpi or sensativity of the mouse pointer either. I assumed that, if for example, I set the screen value to something less than my screen size, for example, that I could use that to limit the travel of the mouse point on the screen or change the shape of how the joystick translates to the mouse pointer, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Edit: Oh also, it doesn't feel like changing the curves of the joystick axis is having any affect on the mouse sensitivity either.

Try the latest configurator and firmware from here.

Ok, I'll give that a try before continuing. I had already updated to the latest posted on the on the main website before posting here, but hopefully it's been fixed in the most recently firmware and software. It's going to be a bit before I can dedicate the time to going through all that, so in the mean time can you tell me, what is the expected behavior from changing this sitting? I observed the same exact behavior in firmware 2_16_5 and VKBDevCFG-C_v.0.92.88 as well.

I'm hoping that the behavior will be that if I were to set the screen size to something smaller than my actual screen that it will restrict the mouse cursor to that area. I'm finding that for some titles, like MW5, that actually works very for controlling the torso, as that game has a lot of quirks with how it handles movement, and confining the mouse to a square area that matches the range of motion of the joystick seems to help with that a lot, as well as limiting the speed of the mouse cursor. (The game will stop reading the mouse if it goes faster than the chassis and this causes a kind of desync with the joystick where it will go off center with absolute mouse control.) I'm actually using a software solution to that very same thing right now and it's working a lot better than if you just use the entire screen area for with an absolute mouse. But it would be nice to be able to use the built in joystick function to achive this. (Especially since, like I said, these settings seem to do nothing right now. )

Screen parameters are set for fixed-points.
Speed ​​and nonlinearity parameters are set for relative mouse operation (R+A enabled).
The absolute pointer is always linear.

But I haven't yet encountered a game or simulator that supports absolute mouse operation. Therefore, this only works in windows or common apps

Alex Oz wrote:Screen parameters are set for fixed-points.

So you're saying the only purpose of setting of setting the screen height and width for absolute mouse is so that you can set the screen points SP1 through SP7 which can be called back when programming the stick?

If so, that's unfortunate. I was really hoping it was possible to restrict the mouse cursor to a specific portion of the screen and to define that area with this setting.

As I said previously I've found that the absolute mouse is pretty key to playing Mechwarrrior5 and Mechwarrior Online. A lot of people have been using this implementation in these games for years due to the poor joystick support in PGI's titles. I recently switched over from using the built in mouse function to using a software function Joy 2 Mouse as it has the ability to restrict the mouse pointer to a specific area of the screen which makes it easier to configure to interact with the game because you can get the pointer to move in a shape that matches the joystick. It's also pretty much required for Mechwarrior Online as the mouse moves too fast when using the built in absolute mouse functionality.

Furluge wrote:

Alex Oz wrote:Screen parameters are set for fixed-points.

If so, that's unfortunate. I was really hoping it was possible to restrict the mouse cursor to a specific portion of the screen and to define that area with this setting.

What we have now is not a stone. We can work together on this.
How do you intend to set up this area?
But I'm not yet sure about the absolute pointer support in MW. I'll try it.

Alex Oz wrote:What we have now is not a stone. We can work together on this.
How do you intend to set up this area?
But I'm not yet sure about the absolute pointer support in MW. I'll try it.

I'd recommend checking out that link I sent for Joy2Mouse, it explains the problem pretty well, and the quirks that Mechwarrior 5 has.

As for how I'd like to set this area, ideally what I would like to do is set up a horizontal and vertical in vkbdevcfg-c and have that be an area that the mouse cursor is restricted to on screen. I think having it always return to the center point is fine. For example, If I have a 1920x1080 screen resolution, I'd like to say, setup the software to be 500 x 500. Then leaving the stick at center would goto the centerpoint of the screen, then the cursor would be restricted to a 500x500 box on my screen. Moving the stick full the the left would move it 250 pixels to the left from center point of the screen, and full right would be 250 pixels from the center point to the right. Similar for up and down. This also has the added benefit of giving us some control over the mouse sensitivity the game is reading since if we are restrict our mouse movements to only a small area on the screen we're moving the mouse less, so we can be a bit more flexible in our configuration, since we can't really know 100% how a particular game will react to our emulated mouse. (For example MW5 works fairly well with the standard absolute mouse mode we have in the software currently. But Mechwarrior Online will not work well at all because you can't lower the mouse sensitivity enough.) Keeping our screen area in a box also has an added benefit as we can get our mouse's movement area to match the movement of the stick more closely, which makes it easier to control sensitivity, especially if we have horizontal and vertical mouse sensitivity settings in our game software.

If you are planning to test out MW5 specifically, I can share a bit more how I configured it.

It is a bit annoying to setup, but MW5 just does not have great joystick configuration in general. The mouse emulation helps us get around that somewhat.