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XP Drivers for Sidewinder FF Pro don't give FF
Posted: Thu Mar 04, 2010 4:39 pm
by bass_player
I built the current circuit for my FF Pro using the teensy board and it appears to work perfectly except for one thing -- there is no Force Feedback. I suspect that it is a driver issue since the calibration function in XP works. The game I have been using to experiment with is MS Combat Flight Sim 2 and I know that it supports FF, since I once used it with Windows 95 and then 98.
Does anyone know of a solution? I have searched everywhere on the net and can't find an thing. Nobody seems to know how to make it work.
Posted: Thu Mar 04, 2010 4:53 pm
by Grendel
There is no FF support. From the rev2 discussion:
Grendel wrote:Just to clear this -- the converter in the current state does not support force feedback effects for the FFP and probably never will. Here's why:
Most gameports back in the day were located on a sound card sharing some pins with the cards MIDI interface. M$ added pin 12 to the FFP (MIDI TxD) and uses MIDI channel 6 to issue FF commands. It's too much work trying to reverse engineer the commands, add a MIDI interface to the 3DP-Vert (that's probably not possible anyway, since the MCU is pretty busy bit-banging the USB port) and modify its USB code to have a fully featured FF device. A limp stick is all you will get, sorry (I think. I never tried to plug power in..) Personally I prefer this -- I'm already busy with the game, I don't need to fight with the stick as well
Rev3 would have enough calculation power to add FF, the implementation would be a mayor task tho. You'd need to reverse engineer the FF midi commands, implement a
midi interface, and add a
PID class to the
USB driver. I'm not interested in FF so I won't do it but I could assist in learning about the 3DP-Vert if someone wants to pick up the job
Force Feedback
Posted: Thu Mar 04, 2010 6:52 pm
by bass_player
Thanks Grendel for the very cogent explanation. I guess the best solution might be to try one of my old sound cards which worked with the FF in other computers and see what I can do.
I had fun building your interface, but I actually have a USB Sidewinder, which is without FF and behaves essentially the same as the FF.
So, the plus is that I have two useable sticks. The minus is that I really like FF for flight simulators as I am an ex Navy fighter pilot and the FF that I previously got was pretty accurate.
Thanks again --