control config with Steam streaming

Hubble128 · Post by **Hubble128** » Wed Apr 15, 2015 4:05 am

Greetings, everyone! I've just started EM and am very excited to be joining such a welcoming and involved community.

I've made up a custom labeled keyboard just for controls, and am using a Thrustmaster HOTAS T-Flight which works very well on my gaming rig at my desk.

I've run into one minor problem, which is not a bug, but I thought I could run it by the forum and see if anyone has any ideas. As I said, the game works perfectly on my gaming PC, which has a good-sized monitor. I also have a projector in my family room with an older Mac Mini. The Mac is not very powerful, but it's capable of doing Steam In-Home Streaming without any problems (I've played several games on it successfully).

I could happily play EM on my gaming rig, but I have to admit it would be pretty amazing to have it on the big screen in my family room. EM launches fine, but when I go to the control config, it says it does not detect any devices.

Now, there are all kinds of reasons why this should not work: the Thrustmaster is supposed to be PC/PS3, and makes no claim to be Mac compatible. So I'm certainly not complaining that EM has a bug, or needs fixing. I'm just curious if anyone has any ideas on how I might get this working.

There's a Mac utility called "Joystick and Gamepad Tester" from AlphaOmega software. It detects the Thrustmaster just fine when it's plugged into the Mac. In fact, it detects all axes and all buttons.

I also tried the "USB Overdrive" utility, but the Thrustmaster was stilll not detected by EM.

Again, I have the Thrustmaster plugged into a Mac, which is STREAMING Evochron Mercenary from my PC gaming rig upstairs. EM launches, it just does not detect the joystick at all.

Any ideas?

Many thank in advance for your thoughts!

-Hubble

Post by **Vice** » Wed Apr 15, 2015 6:56 am

Not quite sure how such a setup would or should work, but I can say that in order for the game to see the control device, Windows will need to see it as well. Can you access the device manager and/or joy.cpl on the Windows machine through the streaming service to observe what Windows is seeing? That should help determine whether the device will be detected by the game or not. Once Windows sees it, the game should be able to as well. I suspect you'll either need some kind of software/driver solution that forwards the required device configuration for Windows to see it or it'll need a long USB cord that reaches to the Windows machine.

Hubble128 · Post by **Hubble128** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 12:50 pm

I don't think I can get access to the device manager THROUGH the streaming service. When you launch a game, it kind of takes over the screen.

However, I did just try a different controller on the Mac: a wireless PS3 controller. And it worked - all the axes were detected in Evochron no problem. Those controllers, as far as I know, are supported natively on the Mac, but not on the PC (PC installation requires the MotioninJoy drivers).

I'm wondering if perhaps the controller DOESN'T need to be readable on the PC for the control info to be "passed" to the streaming game - in this case EM. If the Mac can see it, somehow it's able to send the controller data to the server machine. Why then would the PS3 controller work, and the Thrustmaster not?

The Thurstmaster makes no claims to be Mac compatible. I got a 3rd party Mac utility to recognize the controller, but there must be something different between it and the PS3 controller that makes on readable and one not . . .

As I said, this is clearly not a bug or flaw in EM - I'm just fishing for ideas to help get this working, as I'd love to be able to play it on the big screen with a flight stick. And unfortunately I don't think a 150' USB cable is feasible! :-)

If anyone else has any thoughts, feel free to chime in. And thanks!

Post by **Vice** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 4:17 pm

I did some reading on this and Valve seems to imply that if a game uses XInput and/or DirectInput (which EM does), Steam Big Picture may be able to forward the input data to the client system. But SBP needs to be able to detect the device and have it configured within its system. So it sounds like the key will be whether Steam detects and can configure the device (which may require the use of a special driver that is compatible with their system, as in the case of an Xbox 360 controller). Here is a link to their support page that indicated this: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_art ... ollerinput

Hubble128 · Post by **Hubble128** » Thu Apr 23, 2015 2:55 am

Intriguing!

I tested this out and the results were encouraging, but not conclusive. :-)

My Mac Mini is running a slightly older version of Mac OSX - 10.6.8. I launched Steam, entered Big Picture mode, and much to my surprise it WAS able to detect the Thurstmaster, without any special driver or USB Overdrive.

Then a problem: SBP detected all the axes and most of the buttons on the stick without trouble, but then you have to save the configuration, and Steam would consistently crash any time I tried to save the configuration. This happened regardless of whether I configured ALL the controls, or just two buttons or two axes. Every time, hard crash to desktop.

My sense is that this COULD work, and if I'm still having trouble at this point, it's most likely an issue I have to take up with Thrustmaster, or Steam, or both. My next test will be to try this out on a Mac running a more current version of OSX - just need to wait for the wife's laptop to be freed up. If I get the same problem on ALL machines, then it would seem you're correct about there needing to be some kind of additional driver for the TM to talk to SBP.

Thanks so much for looking into this!

-Hubble