Joystick Is Not Seen

[QS89]

I cannot get my joystick to be seen when setting it up in the input settings of KSP. KSP acts like it is not even plugged in, no recognition or acknowledgement of it at all. Anyone know what the issue is or how to fix it?

 

Ubuntu: 19.04

KSP: 1.7.2, no mods, no expansions

Joystick: an old Microsoft one, sidewinder 2 I think

 

I have installed 'joystick' and 'jstest-gtk' on Ubuntu. Using this I can bring up a window that allows me to test the joystick. Everything works great there. I have verified all the buttons an axes work correctly. So this does not appear to be a problem with the joystick or Ubuntu.

I have searched the internet extensively for answers to this problem but have found no one with my exact situation or a solution that works for me.

I have tried the advanced fly by wire mod, which some people say can allow you to set up the joystick, however it looks like it is only compatible with KSP 1.5 or older, so it looks like this mod has been abandoned and won't work for me unless I want to be stuck on an old KSP version, which I do not.

I used to play KSP successfully using this joystick, but it was on a much older KSP version (back when it was still in beta) and was on an old Linux Mint OS (but same hardware). Does anyone have an ideas I haven't tried yet? Thanks for any help.

[Geonovast]

Native Joystick support has been broken in Linux since 1.4.  AFBW is the only option I'm aware of.

1 hour ago, QS89 said:

I have tried the advanced fly by wire mod, which some people say can allow you to set up the joystick, however it looks like it is only compatible with KSP 1.5 or older,

Did you actually try it, or are you basing that on the thread title?  I seem to recall using it in versions after 1.5 and the latest post in the thread reports it works with 1.7, but with issues.

I will test in 1.7.2 when I get home.

Edited June 21, 2019 by Geonovast

[QS89]

56 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

Native Joystick support has been broken in Linux since 1.4.  AFBW is the only option I'm aware of.

Did you actually try it, or are you basing that on the thread title?  I seem to recall using it in versions after 1.5 and the latest post in the thread reports it works with 1.7, but with issues.

I will test in 1.7.2 when I get home.

Yes I did. I tried using ckan through the gui, which would not install it because it was out of date. I was able to put it in place with command line ckan using the flag to override incompatibility and also with manually dropping in the files. Both approaches resulted in KSP warning the mod was outdated when it started and I could have it check for updates or remind me later. Either option I chose led to a result where I could not see any evidence of the mod being installed. I am not very familiar with KSP mods but I could not find anywhere in the gui to access the mods or even see a list of installed mods, which led me to believe it was no loaded.

[Geonovast]

I'm wondering if CKAN wasn't installing the dependencies correctly.  Nearly all of LGG's mods require ClickThroughBlocker and ToolbarController to be installed.

Did you do this part first?

Quote

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libsdl2-2.0-0

I'm installing it now in 1.7.2, I'll let you know what I find out.

[Geonovast]

Working for me.

[QS89]

4 hours ago, Geonovast said:

I'm wondering if CKAN wasn't installing the dependencies correctly.  Nearly all of LGG's mods require ClickThroughBlocker and ToolbarController to be installed.

Did you do this part first?

I'm installing it now in 1.7.2, I'll let you know what I find out.

Yes I did install libsdl2-2.0-0. I had to manually install the ClickThroughBlocker and ToolbarController using command line ckan with the --allow-incompatible flag.

I don't know if maybe I was blind before, but I fired up the game without making any further changes to it and there is advanced fly by wire and it was able to see my joystick. Huzzah. I did just upgrade from 4 GB to 8 GB ram (it's a very old computer). Maybe not enough memory was making the mod not show up before (or maybe I was blind)? The machine is currently taking up 4.6 GB with KSP running (and it runs so much smoother), so maybe I just didn't have enough memory to load the mod?

But anyways, I was able to map my pitch and yaw successfully. The throttle mapping seems a bit wonky, it moves the throttle but then the game immediately snaps it back to the previous position, so I am not sure what the deal is with that.

So overall yay, I have basic joystick functionality. Thank you for your help. Do you know why the standard settings panel does not see my joystick? It is a nice interface that I know used to work and it would be nice if I could get the throttle working. I do dislike having to rely on mods. They always are such a hassle and in general always seem to break whenever the main program is updated.

[Geonovast]

14 minutes ago, QS89 said:

(or maybe I was blind)?

Were you looking in flight?  It won't show up in the editor.

14 minutes ago, QS89 said:

The machine is currently taking up 4.6 GB with KSP running (and it runs so much smoother), so maybe I just didn't have enough memory to load the mod?

The game wouldn't choose to not load modules.  The computer would just simply lock up if it ran out of memory.

14 minutes ago, QS89 said:

Do you know why the standard settings panel does not see my joystick?

You mean the stock settings panel?  Simple.  With KSP 1.4, they upgraded to a different version of Unity, which broke joystick input in Linux.  And here we are, almost 9 version of the game later, and it still isn't fixed... and I haven't seen them indicate it even will be fixed.  I imagine Linux joystick users are a small enough userbase that it doesn't warrant a priority over bugs that affect everyone.... but it really should be addressed since it is a regression.  Joysticks in Linux in 1.3 worked perfectly (I can't speak to versions before that, as that's when I started playing.)

Edited June 22, 2019 by Geonovast