Need help with old-fashioned joystick, not controller

[twhedbee]

I have a question about using a regular old joystick (V1 Flightstick or Logitech Extreme 3D Pro) with Steam flight games (like AirCombat 7, Combat Wings, Project Wingman, etc.). The joystick is available for FSX and IL-2 Sturmovik but apparently not for these other games. I’m old and old-fashioned and don’t have much use for game controllers. I don’t have much experience with Steam (actually hate having another layer to go through but…), so I’m looking for some help. It would be greatly appreciated.

[Cronyx]

Are you on Windows?

Edit:

Look into Joystick Gremlin. I use it a lot for my joystick setups in older games, or games that have poor out-of-the-box joystick support.

http://whitemagic.github.io/JoystickGremlin/

[twhedbee]

Thanks, I'll check it out. Doesn't all this seem unnecessarily complicated? Or am I just a geezer who used to be up on tech and have lost a step or two?!

[Cronyx]

Hey I'm 40+, I feel it. :P

Honestly it has a lot to do with the way Microsoft implemented joystick support way back when. Joystick Gremlin gets around all the shenanigans by creating a virtual joystick, a piece of hardware that doesn't really exist, a kind of "phenomenological joystick" if I could coin that term, and allows you to define an arbitrary number of buttons, sliders, toggles, rotors, and axis to it. And then if you have multiple joysticks, throttles, foot pedals, button boxes, etc, you can pipe the output of all those devices, to individual events in the virtual joystick. This is beneficial for if you want to use multiple inputs, say a throttle and stick, in a game that only has the ability to recognize a single device at a time. You just tell the game to use the virtual joystick as your primary device, and route all your others through that. Also helps if for whatever reason, your old stick isn't being recognized by the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIAdeyY0IWI

This explains a lot.

[twhedbee]

Again, many thanks! I’m hoping to dig into it later today