2 controllers while 2 games are running simultaniously?

[Mr.Curious]

I often have 2 games running at the same time (Im recreating aspects one game inside another) and need to reference both games while they are running. I'd ultimately like to have 2 controllers working simultaneously, 1 for each game. Is this possible? Running Windows 10. I have input mapper if that makes any difference.

[Sazzouu]

Possible? Yes... But actually no.

Any modern OS can only focus ONE task at once. So even if you could manage to map several input devices to handpicked tasks it probably wont work as you would expect it.

However what you can do is Virtualize your machine.
https://youtu.be/LuJYMCbIbPk

That way you can do what you want to do however that would cause problems with DRMs. If there is a possibility such as Steams "play offline" feature you can circumvent that somehow.

But I guess that solution is not exactly what you want

[Kargor]

The first step, as always, would be experimentation: you need to figure out whether you even have a chance to do that.

First, you need to check the settings menu of the games -- can you select a specific controller, or does the game just respond to whatever inputs it gets, regardless of where they come from?

Next, find out whether the games in question actually work when they don't have input focus -- games might just go into a "pause" mode automatically, or the might receive inputs in a way that respects input focus. This might be rather obvious if you alt-tab out of a game and the music stops, and when you go back in you see the "pause" screen. If that doesn't happen, try doing something in the game while alt-tabbed out, or switch the game to a windowed mode, click outside the window to deactivate it, and see if you can still play.

Depending on the games, you may be able to work around such issues by using a virtual machine: you can usually decide which USB device is connected to which machine, and you can have an "active" window/fullscreen app in one virtual machine while the VM itself is just an ordinary window on your desktop...

The problem with virtual machines is operating systems -- most games don't run on Linux, and the combination of games, Linux and virtual machines is way worse than what you can do with Windows as 3D support in Linux-VMs seems to be much more restricted. However, even with Windows in your virtual machines, you might be out of luck with the games in question.

[Sazzouu]

Originally posted by Kargor:

The problem with virtual machines is operating systems -- most games don't run on Linux, and the combination of games, Linux and virtual machines is way worse than what you can do with Windows as 3D support in Linux-VMs seems to be much more restricted. However, even with Windows in your virtual machines, you might be out of luck with the games in question.

Originally posted by Mr.Curious:

Is this possible? Running Windows 10

Guess there is no Linux involved, neither virtually nor physically

[Mr.Curious]

Thank you both for chiming in, For the record, I do not need input on both games at the exact same time. One game will be minimized, while the other is maximized. I cant actually play both at once.. XD SO the issue of losing focus is not a big deal. Neither game allows for a selection of a controller. One must use the Steam configuration to work, while the other must use x360ce.exe paired with Input mapper.

I wont even care if one controller went to both games.. Its just that they are so different in the way they are mapped I assumed using 2 separate controllers would be easier. I really think this comes down to if a game will allow 'Controller 2' to be used as the main controller.

Also I am not sure about running virtual machines. Not worth the hassle. I know both games will accept input from the keyboard so I might be able to use AHK to bind controller to keyboard strokes. Oh an dyes, I always play steam offline.