Xbox 360 Controller Setup Suggestions?

[Absolution]

Short and sweet: I have a fancy joystick and throttle and pedals and a myriad of other control devices but I\'d like to give the old Xbox 360 controller a shot first. Is anyone interested in sharing their control set ups to give me a head start?

[Cthulufaic]

I don\'t think an XBOX controller is the best kind of thing to use while playing KSP.

I see how it could work though: Rtrigger for throttle up, Ltrigger for throttle down, A for staging, X for landing gear,Either of the thumbsticks to steer, and uh... B to toggle (A)SAS maybe, D-pad for RCS translation, Y for RCS toggle, and umm... I think that\'s it.

[trbinsc]

Maybe the other thumbstick could be the camera control?

[BlackShadow03]

Also right bumper could be RCS forward and left bumper could be aft. Maybe Back could be RCS toggle leaving SAS toggle on Y. Or maybe RCS Toggle could be clicking left stick and SAS Toggle by clicking the right stick...there are options for those two.

[semininja]

If you\'d like, I can send you my settings.cfg file. I\'ve got it set up, sort of. The triggers are a bit weird, but they\'re usable.

[Excalibur]

I\'m happy to send you my setup if you like as well. I don\'t use the triggers at all, as I found them too weird.

This is what I use if I\'m doing a lot of flying in spaceplanes:

LB/RB mapped to throttle increment

LStick L/R: Yaw

LStick U/D: Translate forward/back

RStick L/R: Roll

RStick U/D: Pitch

Dpad U/D/L/R: Translate U/D/L/R

X: Cut throttle

Y: Gear

A: Stage

B: RCS

If I\'m flying in space I\'ll swap LStick L/R with RStick L/R as it seems to make more sense to me that way.

I\'d also advise watching your dead zones - I\'ve made most of them between 10-30% and can really make control easier if tweaked right. Personally I think the \'ol 360 pad suits KSP pretty well... once you get used to it!

[Absolution]

Thanks for the feedback! I\'ve been thinking along the same lines and it\'s helped to have confirmation as well as alternate ideas.

[Excalibur]

No worries, let us know how you get on.

[6677]

The 360 pad works quite well for spaceplanes I find, however for some other things I want to use the triggers as a single axis (which is default on most non FPS games) but KSP uses them as split axis\'s which is default on FPS and the odd car games. Prevents me from using the triggers as roll which is what I prefer.

[Absolution]

I had initially set up the controls for a rocket meaning pitch and yaw were on the same stick but after realizing that a space plane control scheme would have pitch and roll on the same stick I settled on the later. It was a compromise that I think will allow me to switch between a space plane and a rocket without swapping controls. It wasn\'t hard getting used to yaw being on the right and in fact it may be easier overall. Now I can input any degree of yaw and pitch simultaneously without risking one input impacting the other.

Here\'s what I\'ve settled on so far:

LB/RB: Throttle +/-

LStick L/R: Roll

LStick U/D: Pitch

RStick L/R: Yaw

RStick U/D: No function

Dpad U/D/L/R: Translate U/D/L/R

X: SAS

Y: Precision control toggle

A: Throttle cut-off

B: RCS

'Back': stage activation

'Start': Pause

I\'ve been considering using the RStick U/D as the forward and back translate but I don\'t want to risk yawing my craft accidentally while translating. For now I just use the up and down arrows for that. Also, my first ride with this scheme was a roller coaster since I forgot to increase the dead zones and decrease the sensitivity. After playing around with them based on the suggestion from Excalibur I got it to a comfortable level... still tweaking but at least my kerbanauts wont lose their lunches anymore.

[BarryCarlyon]

This on windows or mac?

On mac I can\'t get KSP to read the thumbsticks, tho not tried on 0.15

[Mattstopher]

Thanks for the controls guidelines there, Absolution, that really helped out and actually managed to LAND my spaceplane as well as manage a wobbly take-off

I can\'t seem to get KSP to register my D-Pad and trigger buttons on my 360 controller but everything else works alright, which is a shame - I wanted to assign camera control to right stick and assign yaw control to the left and right bumpers. Any ideas on why those buttons won\'t pick up for me?

[Excalibur]

I can\'t seem to get KSP to register my D-Pad and trigger buttons on my 360 controller but everything else works alright, which is a shame - I wanted to assign camera control to right stick and assign yaw control to the left and right bumpers. Any ideas on why those buttons won\'t pick up for me?

Are you trying to treat the D-Pad as four buttons? KSP sees the D-Pad as two axes, so if you want to use it you\'re limited to the axial assignments only.

I\'ve changed my own setup somewhat and I think it\'s optimum for spaceplanes. Besides I\'m quite happy flying in space with keys.

This is what I\'m running now:

LB/RB mapped to throttle increment

LStick L/R: Camera horizontal Axis

LStick U/D: Camera vertical Axis

LStick Button: Camera Zoom In

RStick L/R: Roll Axis

RStick U/D: Pitch Axis

RStick Button: Camera Zoom Out

Dpad L/R: Yaw Axis

Dpad U/D: Unused

X: Cut Throttle

Y: Gear

A: Stage

B: RCS

Start: Toggle SAS

Select: Toggle Precision Control

For me this is the best setup. It allows you to get around the buggy \'chase\' camera in the game with easy camera controls. Yaw is still easy to get at and logical.

As I\'ve said previously, I think the key to getting the most out of any joypad/joystick/peripheral is to get your sensitivities and dead zones set to your tastes. Everyone has different opinions on the exact numbers - but once you find the ideal ones for you flying will feel natural.

[Speider]

It\'s not a problem getting all buttons to work, just download any version of 'Switchblade', a program designed to let people among other things, play wow easily with an xbox 360 controller.

With the program you can map the controller so your computer recognizes the left stick as the mouse, the right trigger as left click, left trigger as space, left bumper as a modifier for a complete set of 4 buttons on A/B/X/Y and so on. I reccommend it alot. Been trying Call of duty on pc with it, and having a great time.

Also, here is a setup i\'ve tested that suited me very well.

LT/RT: Throttle.

LB/RB: Roll Axis.

Left Stick: Pitch/Yaw.

Left Stick click down: Toggle SAS.

Right Stick: Control Camera.

Right Stick click down: Toggle camera mode.

A: Landing gear up/down.

B: Cut Throttle.

X: Stage.

Y: RCS

Back: Toggle preciscion control.

[Absolution]

This on windows or mac?

On mac I can\'t get KSP to read the thumbsticks, tho not tried on 0.15

In my case it is PC.

I\'d like to use the triggers for throttle control but I can\'t figure out if there\'s a way to set the right trigger to throttle up and the left one for throttle down.

[theflyingfish]

In my case it is PC.

I\'d like to use the triggers for throttle control but I can\'t figure out if there\'s a way to set the right trigger to throttle up and the left one for throttle down.

I\'m pretty sure that the triggers are separate axises (Axis\'s?, Axis\'? Axi?), and can\'t be bound to the rudder control. I use left and right buttons for my yaw, U&D D-pad for my throttle, left stick for roll and pitch, and right stick for view. But I don\'t really use translation, so I didn\'t leave any space for that and your needs may be different. I actually use Y to toggle Map view, so I can check my orbit info while climbing out on spaceplanes without having to remove my hands from the stick.

I have a fancy Saitek for IL-2, but Unity has a bug that causes a 1 second lag between input and output on Saitek products, so I pulled out the 360 pad and found it to be excellent on KSP. The good thing is that KSP doesn\'t really require the precision a full stick would require, and on my setup you only need the left hand to control the craft, while the right can manipulate the mouse.

[TerranCmdr]

I have a Saitek AV8r and haven\'t had any lag problems...

I do want to try out the 360 controller though, I just don\'t have a wireless receiver.

[VincentMcConnell]

When I click the button that says 'pitch up' I press up on my xbox thumbstick... Nothing happens...

[semininja]

You have to set the joystick axes to game axes, not buttons. Scroll down to the bottom of the list; you\'ll see what I mean.

[Rickenbacker]

I would really like to use the same setup that worked well for me in MS Flight, which is roughly as follows:

Right stick: Roll and pitch axes

Left stick: Camera controls

Triggers: Yaw axis (left trigger = left pedal, right trigger = right pedal)

Bumpers: Left bumper = throttle down, right bumper = throttle up

I can set up most of it OK, but I can't seem to get KSP to use the triggers as one single yaw axis. This worked fine in several other games, not sure what KSP does differently...

Also, how do you remove an axis assignment in the settings screen? I have to go to the cfg file and erase them manually, because when I hit the setting, and move the mouse towards the 'clear setting' button, it chooses the mouse axis for that function instead!

[Sbowyer28]

How do you set up your controller to your Laptop and KSP though, Tried it but it didnt work =/

[Liquid]

To anyone having trouble getting a 360 controller to work on a Mac, you simply need a driver to let OS X recognize the hardware, a free driver can be downloaded from: http://tattiebogle.net/index.php/ProjectRoot/Xbox360Controller/OsxDriver/

Once you have this installed and restarted the computer (it runs a lightweight startup daemon), KSP should recognize input from any buttons pressed, though there is some limitations (also present on the Windows version) due to how KSP handles input:

Both triggers and analogue sticks count as axes (analogue inputs) rather than buttons, and so can't be mapped to a button functions, so for instance you can't map "throttle up" to a trigger. You can map "throttle axis" to a trigger, but the throttle will fall back down as soon as you let go of the trigger (that and incremental throttle controls will stop working until a new flight is loaded :| ).

Also, kerbonauts walking can't be mapped to an analogue stick.

While I still use the mouse for building and map view, and the keyboard's "d-pad" for time-warp/change-vessel, the controller is great for general flight controls and kerbonaut controls, here's my 360 controller layout:

--Flight--

Left analogue: pitch / roll (click: landing gear)

Right analogue: camera movement (click: precision controls)

Left bumper: yaw left

Right bumper: yaw right

D-pad: (RCS)translate forward,back,left,right

A: throttle up

Y: throttle down

X: RCS

B: SAS

Back: map view

Xbox guide button: Launch/Stage-separation

Start: pause (esc)

--Kerbonaut EVA--

D-pad: walk/EVAPack forward,back,left,right

Left bumper: EVAPack down/orient to view

Right bumper: EVAPack up/run

A: jump

Y: use/grab

X: toggle EVAPack

B: toggle lights

[RedJimi]

It\'s not a problem getting all buttons to work, just download any version of 'Switchblade', a program designed to let people among other things, play wow easily with an xbox 360 controller.

It would appear that this program is no longer supported and their servers exist no more. Their site www.switchblade.com is also down. This matters because the program requires a connection to servers to properly start. They might have been out of business for at least a year now.

On another forum their follow-up program was recommended: joystixpro.com

I can't yet say anything concrete about the thing itself.

[karolus10]

X360 controller is perfect solution, they are more common than joysticks and offer much better control than using only keyboard .

Also (for example recent Saitek joysticks) are supposed to be console controller (so they don't manufacture "only PC" controllers) so this would help with joystick compatibility too.

[Amphiprion]

Oh man, I just bought an xbox360 controller to play Mortal Kombat on this PC and now Im using it in KSP.. very cool to use ... very very cool.