Hi everybody. I recently replaced my old broken x52 Pro with a Defender Cobra M5 and a CH Throttle Pro. I was going to go for a full CH setup for ease of playing older games, but assumed that there would be tools that would allow me to do so with a mixed-brand setup (I... should have checked, first). I got back from picking up my throttle, plugged 'em in, fired up Elite Dangerous and puttered around for a bit. Then I updated my FSO install, as it had languished for the year I've been without a HOTAS, and tried to play - only to run into the problem that it only recognised one of my two devices.
So I googled, and I searched the forum, and I found recommendations for vJoy and UJR (Universal Joystick Remapper). Figured "okay, let's try this." Unfortunately, while vJoy allows for the maximum amount of buttons and hats that a Windows machine can handle, UJR is limited by AutoHotKey's joystick interface, which it is built on. So UJR only allows for thirty-two buttons and one hat. Which is more than you need for any joystick I can think of, but once you start combining it with a throttle, you can run into problems. My CH Throttle Pro alone has four hats and three buttons, or nineteen buttons if you don't count the hats as hats! ...Which was another problem. AutoHotKey wasn't seeing those four hats on my throttle at all. So I would have had my throttle's axis and the ministick, but only three of the buttons, leaving sixteen inputs unutilised.
So I kept looking around. And then I found an in-progress project by the guy who made UJR, U
CR, Universal
Control Remapper. It's still a little glitchy, lacking a few features, and the UI needs work, but it allows for the full utilisation of vJoy's virtual interface! So that's up to eight axes, a hundred twenty-eight buttons, and four hats! Which sounds like more than you'll ever need, and probably is, but I was surprised to find that when I counted my shift button and the three-way mode switch, my HOTAS can go up to seven axes and a hundred and
eighty combined button and hat inputs! So there's still a limit. But since it's built on an enhanced AutoHotKey base, you can actually have some of the physical inputs trigger macros, instead of additional virtual buttons - so you could have some of your buttons/hats instead carry out a sequence of commands, like for using the communications menu, or something.
UCR is itself built on another of the guy's projects, AHK-CHID - a rewrite of AutoHotKey's joystick support that is in-progress.
Some links.
Here's vJoy's site.
Here's UJR's site.
Here's CHID's forum thread.
And
here's UCR, which I am in the process of teaching my setup.
While I'm using this for a Cobra and a CH Throttle Pro, it will also work for any other two-USB-port setup, such as a Saitek X-55, or any mixed-brand combination.
Hope this proves to be helpful, and saves someone the six-plus hours of googling, installing, experimentation, and reading documentation that I did!