Flight Stick Support Under Linux

[Karatorian]

I have a Logitech X3D (aka Extreme 3D Pro) that I bought to use with KSP. Barring a few throttle bugs, it used to work perfectly. Now it doesn't seem to work at all. I think the problem started when Steam added gamepad support, but I can't be positive. All I know is that it worked, I didn't play KSP for some time and then it didn't work.

The stick itself works fine. Both jstest-gtk (a standard Linux joystick config program) and Steam's gamepad configurator can see the stick and all it's axes and buttons. When I first tried to get it working again, some of the buttons and most of the axes wouldn't register in the input settings menu. However, once I figured out that Steam's gamepad mapping was part of the problem and configured my stick in Steam (to a reasonable approximation of a Gamepad), all the buttons and axes worked in KSP's settings menu. Mapping buttons worked in the menu and even worked in game.

Mapping axes doesn't seem to work at all. When I move the axes in the settings menu, it detects them, but I don't think it saves them. In the button you click on to map them it just says "<". And when you click on it, it says the current mapping is "None", even after you just set it. In any event the axes in game don't do anything. All of this was with Steam Controller Configs disabled.

Thinking that might be the problem, I enabled Steam Controller Configs for generic gamepads. However, the official settings aren't really usable with a flight stick. The analogs are mapped like buttons and there's no throttle axis (or any axis really) support. I tried to modify the settings to map the main stick to left joystick and the throttle and twist to right stick (and/or the trigger axes) in hopes that that'd solve my problem. But it didn't. I still couldn't get any analog controls to actually work. I had the same problem with them basically not actually saving in the menu, even though the game detected them.

Thinking Steam was the problem, I launched KSP without Steam. The launcher detected my stick no problem:

Importing game controller configs
/dev/input/js1: driver version: 2.1.0 (20100)
/dev/input/js1: fd 4, buttons 12, axes 6, name Logitech Logitech Extreme 3D
/dev/input/js1: axis  0: raw      0, mapped 0.000000
/dev/input/js1: axis  1: raw      0, mapped 0.000000
/dev/input/js1: axis  2: raw      0, mapped 0.000000
/dev/input/js1: axis  3: raw      0, mapped 0.000000
/dev/input/js1: axis  4: raw      0, mapped 0.000000
/dev/input/js1: axis  5: raw      0, mapped 0.000000
Assigning joystick 1

Then it complained about not finding Steam, but launched the game just fine. However, at this point, the game didn't see the joystick at all. When I tried to configure it, it didn't respond at all.

And that's when I gave up. I tried Googling and searching here, but I didn't find much? Are analog controls just broken now?

[JoE Smash]

There's a mod that might help...

Make sure you download the Linux version of the mod and follow the installation instructions in the original post....

 

[steve_v]

2 hours ago, Karatorian said:

it used to work perfectly. Now it doesn't seem to work at all.

Regression introduced in 1.4.0.
5 month old bug report, no apparent progress despite 5 patches.
Primary reason I'm neither playing KSP at the moment nor buying the DLC.

 

2 hours ago, Karatorian said:

Are analog controls just broken now?

Short answer: Yes. Completely FUBAR.
Squad and/or Unity completely borked USB HID input on GNU/Linux when switching to SDL2, and the touted "steam controller" support isn't usable either.
Make of it what you will, but your joystick ain't going to work properly (or at all in most cases) with any 1.4.x release.

 

Just in case someone at @SQUAD reads this: Thanks, thanks a bunch for this horribly broken update. I'll be sticking with 1.3.x (and no DLC) until you fix the mess you made.
As demonstrated here, 1.4.5 still isn't it.

 

1 hour ago, JoE Smash said:

There's a mod that might help...

Yeah, AFBW works just fine... and makes squad look somewhat incompetent in the process, by fixing their bugs and generally leaving the stock input system for dead.
What it does should have been implemented in the game engine a long time ago.

Edited August 17, 2018 by steve_v

[JoE Smash]

14 minutes ago, steve_v said:

Regression introduced in 1.4.0.
5 month old bug report, no apparent progress despite 5 patches.
Primary reason I'm neither playing KSP at the moment nor buying the DLC.

 

Short answer: Yes. Completely FUBAR.
Squad and/or Unity completely borked USB HID input on GNU/Linux when switching to SDL2, and the touted "steam controller" support isn't usable either.
Make of it what you will, but your joystick ain't going to work properly (or at all in most cases) with any 1.4.x release.

 

Just in case someone at @SQUAD reads this: Thanks, thanks a bunch for this horribly broken update. I'll be sticking with 1.3.x (and no DLC) until you fix the mess you made.

 

Yeah, AFBW works just fine... and makes squad look somewhat incompetent in the process, by fixing their bugs and generally leaving the stock input system for dead.
What it does should have been implemented in the game engine a long time ago.

Careful or you'll get fanboi attacked....

[steve_v]

8 minutes ago, JoE Smash said:

Careful or you'll get fanboi attacked...

Bring it.
A spade is a spade, and this one is (still) broken.
The only fanboi attacks I've weathered so far are variations of "Linux users are a minority, so Linux bugs won't/shouldn't get fixed", an argument I am not about to buy.

Oh, I forgot: "It's probably hard, cut them some slack" (written by people with no programming experience of course), I get that one too.

Edited August 17, 2018 by steve_v

[Karatorian]

Thanks for the feedback. I generally only buy games with explicit Linux support, since that's the best indicator that the devs might actually care about Linux.

Sad that that isn't the case here.

Edited August 18, 2018 by Karatorian

[JoE Smash]

2 hours ago, Karatorian said:

Thanks for the feedback. I generally only buy games with explicit Linux support, since that's the best indicator that the devs might actually care about Linux.

Sad that that isn't the case here.

Oh it's the same with the windows controls too...

I use the windows version of that mod to use a controller as well....

I believe either in this tech support or the modded one someone was having issues with a controller on the windows version. I linked the same mod for him...

I also have a thread going myself in modded technical support, because I recently discovered my crashing was due to the xinput1_3.dll installed with the 64bit version of the game in KSP_X64_DATA/plugins is the 32bit version of xinput1_3.dll....not the 64bit version 

Copying the 64bit version of xinput1_3.dll from my Windows/System32 folder to the plugins folder I listed above and deleting the 32bit xinput1_3.dll already in there solved my constant crashing...