Controllers - not support - but useful

[PaulB]

This is not a support post but it might be useful to some.

There is a free program, small, no installation, for windows to test Joysticks and controllers.
It's called joytester.exe

You just click it and run it. It read the Manufarture info in the controller and displays is and you can test the axes and see the typical square with center dot and a line as you move the stick and it also displays the raw data.
And of course you can test the buttons.
It's great.
For instance this is what I discovered testing m Xbox 360 and logitech F310 gamepad (hence referred to as 360 and F310).

(1) the 360 Sticks are very sloppy. Other than the 2 triggers. The sticks NEVER return exactly to center (32767) and the Right stick is the worst. They may stop an anywhere between approx -30400 to +34500 in the X & Y axes. BUT, they have a smooth even movement - for instance you can somewhat draw a circle of movement approx halfway from the center point. And there appears to be NO built in deadzone when that combine with the sloppyness, non-centering makes you have to use an EM deadzone of at least 2 to avoid drift in one or more axes (usually in the right stick).
The Sensitivity seems average. The above issues makes the 360 a lousy controller fairly lousy controller.

(2) the F310 sticks are a different story but just as vad or worse. Thet are NOT sloppy and DO tend to return to the SAME center value - but it may not be exactly 32767. Generally it is but the X axis in my Right stick will NOT return to 32767 and is off bay some 100's so that in EM you can use a deadzone of 1 but NOT 0 or whatever is using the Right Stick will drift in the X axis. All in all that's not so bad but NOW the bad part. There is NO WAY you can come close to describing a circle halfway around the Center. The Sticks ar so sensitive you just start to shoot to the max or toward center if you tried to describe a circle half around around center between center and max. So in EM, Fine movement is extremely difficult if not impossible and you have a terrible time tryhing to aligh Pitch to zero and Roll to exactly horizontal and Compass to the exact heading. If you try to teeny-tiny nudge the sticks to Fine Align you just tend to get a spurt of thruster and you are off in the opposite direction (I've read Post that Logitech has a big Deadzone - maybe it does and that's part of the problem).
And if you set the EM Sensitivity to Medium or Low that really doesn't help since that adversely affects your ability to fast maneuver in combat.
And trying to use the LGS 5.10.127 software (you must set the F310 to DInput mode thus making it no longed Xbox compatible and making the 2 trigger act as buttons instead of analod axis) to adjust the deadzones and sensitivity and max range of the Axes might help some but at the loss of the Trigger Axis that just wold not work for me since I use the 2 triggers for Roll.

Anyway - joytester let me observe all that so other might find the program useful. It's around 600kb in size.
You can download it at:
Joytester joystick tester